Zenefits asks court to drop ADP lawsuit | Hacker News Reader

Zenefits asks court to drop ADP lawsuit

businessinsider.com

37 pointschermanowicz22 comments

Brilliant legal maneuver? Filing a motion to dismiss on grounds of frivolity happens in pretty much every lawsuit. And, if you interview Zenefits execs, of course they'll explain their side only.

I think this is dishonest reporting by Business Insider, however. The article reads as if they took this Tech Crunch article (http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/07/zenefits-fires-back-at-adp-...) and made it more clickbait-y.

"and made it more clickbait-y"

As Business Insider is wont to do.

Gotta love how BI has synthesized both HuffPo and BuzzFeed for the tech news channel.

Note that the article only spoke with the COO of Zenefits and no one from ADP.

As has been detailed numerous times, ADP absolutely has a right to cut off access based on violations of its ToS. They want to be put in the same boat as Uber and AirBnB, as white knights against injustice, but they don't have a "right" to use ADP's product however they see fit.

ADP is not an innovative company and if you'd like to build your own payroll provider (hi ZenPayroll) to make a better product, you are welcome to compete. They are simply saying "we have official ways to integrate and choosing to ignore them to do whatever you want is not acceptable."

I thought the lawsuit in question was about Zenefits allegedly slandering ADP and not the legality of ADP cutting off Zenefits.

Sure, the lawsuit is about Zenefits lying about the situation after ADP cut them off. That is important because the Zenefit/ADP hybrid customers want to know who is at fault and Zenefits is implying that ADP terminated some kind of "partnership", which is both false and casts ADP in a bad light. That, in turn, could cost them money and customers. and these factors together are pretty much the base criteria for slander.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/10/adp-sues-zenefits-for...

Eh. I don't think they (ADP) has a right to cut off access. If I am a customer of a financial company and I want to have my accountant deal with them and I give the accountant my password, that is a thing I should be able to do.

I think it is reasonable to disagree with that, but I don't see it as open-and-shut as you seem to.

That's pretty much how I saw it (Zenefits is similar to a contractor working on behalf of an ADP customer), but there are some issues with that point of view. It could be argued that Zenefits is not only profiting off of their own customers, but also profiting off of ADP's hard work. Basically, ADP is only seeing one revenue stream (the client) whereas Zenefits is using ADP's data to generate income via the insurance policies and other HR services Zenefits resells. Whether that's improper or just sly business sense is a matter for the courts, of course.

The downside no matter what is that the innocent clients are the ones ultimately losing access to both services in this brawl.

Probably depends on the "Terms of Service" that the client agreed to when they first logged into the system.

Most online backing systems have specific "Terms of Service" regarding account security that indemnifies them from responsibility if you share your username/password.

I expect that a payroll system's "Terms of Service" would be much more restrictive than that.

Wow this article is ridiculously biased - it reads like a press release from Zenefits.

I have no dog in this fight but have to agree, it failed to get a quote from ADP or at least a "requests for a comment from ADP went unanswered" type thing, much less a neutral third party.

I think regardless of which side turns out to be "right", this fight is an interesting case study in the tone of press coverage/sentiment that a traditional large company receives versus that of a startup. And damned if the Zenefits guy doesn't know it, trying to elicit a comparison of themselves to better known startups such as Uber and Tesla.

The author, Julie Bort, seems to love Zenefits. She has written several articles that heap praise on the company and the founder, Parker Conrad. She has also tweeted comments that could be perceived as biased toward Conrad.

I wonder why?

How else would she show her appreciation for all of these emails between the two parties?

Yeah, "Zenefits has officially filed its legal response to a defamation lawsuit filed against it by ADP. And the legal move was brilliant."

I don't think most companies would have the guts to issue a press a release as skewed and laudatory as the article.

The Zenefits business model is to sit between ADP customers and ADP and provide it's interface to the customers data stored with ADP - all without asking ADP for permission or using an actual API. It bears some resemblance to the Craigslist scraper's business model and also to Aaron Swartz's activities. While I wouldn't expect Zenefits to go to jail over their activities, it's pretty well established that a company can say "hey, you can't make a continuing practice of using our data in a way we don't want".

The broker model is pretty common in payroll and other HR services.

> "That’s the old economy way of dealing with new products: to throw up legal and regulatory roadblocks"

I had a tiff with Zenefits failing to notify me about a cancelled policy while still collecting payments. They denied responsibility because they were "only an HR software company." This is blasphemous to say in SF, but perhaps some of those "roadblocks" are there for a reason.

Agreed, and Uber is starting to run in to this as well. Turns out if you remove all the roadblocks for Uber, you also remove all the roadblocks for everyone else, and Uber becomes just as shitty as riding in a taxi. Where I live, Uber Black Car is stupid expensive (easily 2-3x the cost of a taxi) and UberX is crazy people in barely-functioning cars. As a result, my $150/mo Uber habit has become maybe $20/mo. I know they still make a lot of money off of people with corporate expense accounts, but many of my friends have reverted to taxis (ironically, Uber gave taxi companies a lot more leverage over their drivers and they were able to improve service, at least around here).

I'm surprised this doesn't say it's sponsored by Zenefits. The author should be ashamed of themselves for publishing this crock of shit.

The author's post immediately before this one was another story about how David Sacks joined Zenefits as COO. So, possibly the author isn't a shill, but she's just scraping her inbox and publishing anything that comes across her desk.

See also: "Zenefits is now a $4.5 billion company but its founder still can't afford a new car"

This website has ADP's official response to Zenefits motion to dismiss. More interesting is the way that the reporter humorously points out that Zenefits kind of brought this on themselves. http://dnsr.com/adp-vs-zenefits-the-unicorn-who-lives-in-a-g...

Valley journalism sucks.

EOM

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