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Comment by shaqbert | Hacker News Reader

If credible illegal behaviour has happened, why did Google not forward the information to law enforcement?

If Amit did do something bad, allowing him to resign makes Google complicit in letting him off the hook scot free. In that case how would the poor victim feel?

If Amit did not do something bad, how can he ever clean his name from the allegation?

Really poorly handled by Google. And now made even worse by leaking stuff to the press. Stuff like that belong in a court of law, not in some HR department.

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Not all bad actions are illegal. It's generally legal to ask people to have sex with you, even if they're working for you. But it would be a poor company which tolerated that from its managers.

Is that true? Isn't harassment at least a misdemeanor?

Generally speaking, no. It can escalate to the point where other criminal statutes apply (harassment, stalking, assault). But on its own, I don't think the US has any criminal penalties specifically for sexual harassment?

Ah! Here it is. The Employer is legally liable:

https://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/penalties-sexual-haras...

Sexual harassment is illegal, but it is a tort and not a crime, and it is a tort on the part of the employer (and, maybe, in some cases the employees supervisor; most Circuits do not allow this, but there are District Courts.in the First Circuit that have, apparently) not the individual harasser (unless the harasser happens to be the supervisor, though that seems to be the case in the hypothetical here.)

The conduct involved overlaps with a number of different torts (some against the victim of harassment, some against the employer) and crimes on the part of the perpetrator, even when they are not the supervisor, though.

There is such a thing as criminal harassment, but not all harassment is criminal harassment (nor should be).

Not to single you out or anything, but this comment is representative of a class I regularly see in threads about alleged illegal activity.

Simply put, that is not how the legal system works. Whether that is how the legal system should work, is another matter.

It is not clear whether your comment, or this type of comment generally, is expressing an inquiry: why did this not happen the way I thought it was supposed to? Or a more rhetorical, why isn't the system set up differently?

So, if the latter, my bad. But my intuition says the former, and it seemed worth addressing.

> If credible illegal behaviour has happened, why did Google not forward the information to law enforcement?

please learn the difference between civil and criminal law

The country I am coming from does not have this kind of distinction.

It just feels that the US system is really unsatisfactory in actually resolving an incident. Is Amit a baddie or not? Who can tell. Here we're in a state of limbo.

which country are you coming from?

the purpose of the justice system is to determine if a person accused of breaking a law did or did not break law. that actually has nothing to do with determining whether or not someone is a "baddie" or not.

Those sorts of moral judgments might be taken into consideration by legislators when they draft and vote on legislation in the first place, but once the law exists it is no longer really about morality. Only about legality. Many legal actions are deeply immoral. Many illegal actions are not immoral.

There is no state of limbo here. If Amit Singhal broke a criminal law then he would be investigated by the police. He isn't even accused of that. He is accused of having possibly violated a civil law that would make him (and his employer) liable for financial damages. That will only happen if the injured parties come forward and file suit against him though. It's not in limbo. The injured parties have not filed suit. There might be many possible reasons for that but it means that there is no legal action against Amit Singhal and it also probably means there won't be. His reputation on the other hand, is a totally different subject.

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