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Comment by grellas | Hacker News Reader

There is a lesson here about lawsuits, which will drain you of both money and peace of mind all at the same time. Sometimes you can't turn the other cheek, much as you would like to do so, and have no choice but to fight. Having the guts to stand up for yourself (or for your company) is in itself a virtue and there are times when it is best not to walk away. Unless you are in such a spot, though, always consider that the engagement will cost you dearly in just the ways pointed out in this fine essay - it will consume your waking thoughts and may even pop up in your dreams (or nightmares) (and it will cost lots of money, enough to sink most startups as a matter of course). Therefore, when it comes to lawsuits, use your best judgment but always count the cost before proceeding.

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Absolutely right. I was sued over trademark (see TalentZoo vs WorkZoo) in 2005 and it was just my wife and I running the startup. Thankfully 2 acquisition offers came in which became more distracting and resulted in a happy exit. From the moment the cease and desist notice was hand delivered up until we sold the business almost all work on the product stopped.

I tell myself these days that legal wranglings are simply a cost of doing business, but unless you're a large org with layers to abstract you away from the lawsuit, getting sued is paralysis for startups. So if you do get sued I'd recommend you settle it if possible, be mad for a few days and then just move on.

> There is a lesson here about lawsuits,

And consequently, there is a lesson here about the incredible loss of productivity caused by patent trolls on the economy. It's a percent of GDP, if you think about it.

There are many cases where it would be nice to be able to hand things off to an agent who takes care of them reliably. Aren't lawyers kind of supposed to do that for you.

Now that I think about it: I currently have two items I returned, now I need to wait for getting my money back. Could that kind of thing be outsourced (agent in India who keeps nagging the companies in question?). In general, a nagging service?

For many situations, having really good radar so you know how to avoid stepping in it before it puts you on a slippery slope is the only hope of avoiding the necessity to take a stand. I'm fortunate in that I seem to have a natural knack for such things (and have intentionally honed it with both formal and informal study). Of course, one problem with being good at something like that is that it essentially cannot be proven. Avoiding trouble often doesn't look to other people like one has done anything. :-/

What are the indicators you have identified that you think are responsible for giving you the ability to avoid trouble? In other words, what do you recognize as being the cause of your lack of trouble?

Awareness of how people operate and subtle indicators of what they are likely to do, combined with, in essence, an assumption of innocence in the way I respond. (Not that I think a single sentence can possibly really explain it.) That doesn't mean trouble never visits. That does mean that I have managed to get far better than average outcomes for some situations that promised to be very ugly if handled the way most people would have handled it. (See my remarks about my amicable divorce, above, as an example.)

If you are actually hoping to learn how to do some of the same, two good books are "Getting to Yes" and "The heart and mind of the negotiator" (or mind and heart -- I never can quite remember which). Both were required texts for a class I took on negotiation and conflict management.

Good radar or no, you still have to keep an eye out for the unknowable "black swans". In any case, good radar for trouble just means you've traded away most of the peace of mind that comes with obliviousness in exchange for an unquantifiable reduction in hassles.

you've traded away most of the peace of mind that comes with obliviousness in exchange for an unquantifiable reduction in hassles.

There is some truth to that. I do, at times, fret too much. So there is some cost in terms of peace of mind. However, even though I cannot prove to other people that there is a cause and effect relationship (between my actions and specific outcomes) and even though the reduction in hassles cannot be quantified with exactitude, that doesn't mean I cannot quantify it sufficiently to conclude that the benefit is well worth the cost.

For example: My divorce was amicable and there were no lawyers. IIRC, the average cost of a divorce lawyer when and where I got divorced was $18,000. No, I can't know if I "would" have spent $5000 or $18,000 or $40,000. I can know that I saved thousands of dollars on lawyers fees by having an amicable divorce. I am also very certain that it benefited me by more than that: I got thousands more from my husband than I was legally entitled to. My husband was not a wealthy man. After paying lawyers, there wouldn't have been that much to fight over. (He had a job, we had a bunch of debts and some household possessions.) I have every reason to believe that the approach I took was all to the good. Can I prove that to skeptics beyond a shadow of a doubt? No. Can I measure it with a high degree of confidence for my own peace of mind? Yes.

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