Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

Don Fertman, Subway’s chief development officer and a veteran of the company for 38 years, said... that owning restaurants helps give development agents “a better understanding of all aspects of owning a small business.” He said the company reviews the agents’ work and expects them to uphold ethical standards, dealing with violations “on a case-by-case basis.”
....

“Our business development agents are well-respected members of our business community,” [Fertman] said. “And when we hear these allegations, I would say that they are false.” He said he was not aware of any exceptions.

This is literally the same C-level clown claiming (a) that all violations are investigated carefully and (b) that no violations exist. No ethical person could have heard about this ridiculous "development agent" scheme and remained silent about how obviously abusive it is, therefore no manager at Subway corporate is an ethical person. I'm also pretty disappointed in USA courts: did no judge ever look at these bankrupted immigrants and see someone deserving of justice?

I haven't been in one of these dumps in at least a year, and after reading TFA I don't plan to go back. I'm just glad it's privately held, so the upcoming fire-sale to private equity will hurt the family and not honest investors. Not as much as they've hurt the poor entrepreneurs who trusted them, but that would be too much to expect in USA...

> I'm also pretty disappointed in USA courts: did no judge ever look at these bankrupted immigrants and see someone deserving of justice?

What do you expect the judge to do? The contract has an arbitration agreement, and the FAA is quite restrictive on the basis that allow a judge to overrule such a decision. Blame your lawmakers.

> did no judge ever look at these bankrupted immigrants and see someone deserving of justice?

Probably, but identifying the deserving is something we train judges not to do. One of the great achievements of the law is the expectation that whether someone is deserving or not they should be given the same justice as everyone else.

If the courts are doing something you don't like, save your disappointment for the lawmakers.

the picture you paint seems to not actually reflect the reality of the american justice system.

I don't see a conflict in what they say and the actuality of what happens overall. How would you describe it?

in which state do you have the most experience with the justice system?

The whole concept of equity at law is contrary to what you described. In legal systems descended from English tradition, fairness trumps codified or common law.

Indeed, in NZ a judge will occasionally say "imposing the sentence required by law would be manifestly unjust" and the politicians get annoyed their new three strikes law isn't being used.

http://r139.publications.lawcom.govt.nz/Chapter+11+-+Sentenc...

Ok, sure - but I suspect fairness in that sense means 'make sure this person isn't being treated (by the legal system) differently from someone else due to a technicality'.

Based on the phrasing, I suspect jessaustin was taking more of a 'justice for these bankrupt immigrants at the expense of Subway and their execs'. The judge would have looked at the bankrupt immigrants, seen people who deserved justice, then looked at Subway and its execs and seen another group of people who deserve justice and then made a decision most consistent with how such cases are handled.

Being deserving in the sense used in this thread isn't enough to overrule the basic priority of same situation -> same outcome in common law. And that is a principle that is worth defending, even in the passion of the moment when it causes outcomes that are unsatisfying.

Courts of Equity are a thing. Their goal is fairness.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_equity

It’s more along the lines of a discretionary override when strict application of the law would offend the judge’s interpretation of fairness. It used to be the King’s privilege, and later became a judicial power.

That's a cop-out. A great deal of horrible shit that happens in our courts is entirely the output of judges and lawyers. (For instance, the courts who support themselves by repeatedly sending poor folks to jail, charging them for their stay, and then sending them back when they can't pay.) Our courts should do the right thing if the law allows them. Instead they do the right thing if the law forces them to do, but only sometimes, if some hardass journalist writes enough articles about their evil deeds. If the victims of this scheme had been mostly WASPs born and raised locally, the courts would have found a reason to seek justice. Instead the victims spoke the wrong language, ate the wrong food, and had skin the wrong color. Sickening.

Yeah, same opinion. Shame they're shit, they were a consistently OK option for roadtrips that wouldn't upset stomachs, but this is pathetic. I guess I'm not surprised that no real consequences have come of it, but wow Subway should be dissolved. This is rot all the way through the organization.

How is it possible that Mr Patel is not in jail? This is just blatant fraud and corruption.

Surely you understand the difference in burden of proof is different between a compelling news article and a court of law.

It’s entirely plausible that he acted ethically and legally at all times and the authors or sources were heavily biased towards a certain editorial conclusion.

Please apply some skepticism before reading one article and condemning people to jail.

He acquired restaurants personally of owners that were on his target list. This alone is a clear conflict of interest and if not legally, at least ethically very questionable. There is a source saying she was his "hit man". I'm sorry but this does not leave a lot of room for interpretation.

I, too, think there's a massive conflict in allowing the development agents and their inspectors to be simultaneously franchisees, but if this were to hit court, here's how his defense might play it out:

1) One man's "hit man" is another's "demand for rigorous quality standards".

2) Through years (decades?) of ownership, Mr. Patel has developed a keen sense of what constitutes a high-quality operation and a shop that's cutting corners on quality. His comments were just "suggestions" and "gut feeling" based on his experience being an operator.

3) While he ended up acquiring some of the restaurants, he didn't acquire all of the restaurants closing under his watch. Through his tremendous experience (see above), supplier connections and economies of scale peculiar to a large franchisee, he saw a potential to "clean up the act" under new management and keep the jobs in the community (insert a tear jerker story of some employee extremely happy about such outcome).

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