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Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

Wha? Can you elaborate? Did they say you introduced a critical bug or something? Is there such thing a programmer malpractice?

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They claimed it was an attempt to sabotage their company, yet they were the ones that asked me to make the change, jesus, FML.

Definitely learned my lesson on how important it is to get the initial contract correct, clarifying legal liabilities, responsibilities, etc. All your hard work and savings can go down the drain in a second if your employer wants to screw you over.

Can you elaborate on their claim for specific damages? How could a temporary change to robots.txt cause millions of dollars in damage? (Assuming you weren't telling Google to de-index TripAdvisor or some other huge SEO-dependant site.)

The code change was requested by an employee and it wouldn't have caused any damage. Feature, not a bug. Imagine trying to explain this to someone who doesn't know what "code" is. It's just people making up a story to blame you. The point is that you can be blamed for anything you do and become involved in a frivolous lawsuit.

Usually in the US you can only be sued for actual, provable economic damages that are suffered as a result of your actions. It sounds like there may have been more to the story here.

They claimed to be damaged all throughout the complaint, yet didn't provide any evidence. Imagine explaining this to someone non-technical like your grandmother. You can make up a story and that non-technical person is going to have no idea if you are telling the truth or not.

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