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Comment by HugThem | Hacker News Reader

But can't anybody sue anyone for anything anytime? Does that mean anybody can bankrupt anyone at will?

As far as I know, being bankrupt means you owe someone more money then you have.

At what point does this situation occur?

I would think at first a court needs to accept the plaint and order him to write a rebuttal or to appear in front of the court or something? I wonder what exactly would happen.

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Anyone with enough money can bankrupt anyone with a sufficiently lower amount of money at will.

They are called class action lawsuits. And lawyers wield them like blazing hammers. Basically, corporation A doesn’t like what you are doing so they speak to a lawyer. The lawyer puts out advertisements on busses and craigslist to find people to join the “class.” And once they have enough info they can turn the “class” into millions of people. Now you are facing lawsuit with payout in the tens or hundreds of millions. And you have to fight it and it is extremely expensive. Then at the end of the day you have spent a boat load of money and settle and the lawyer pockets 4% which is usually several million dollars. Then you wait until the next class action comes around. And thats what owning a company in the United States is like.

It may be a sometimes-abused legal tactic, but you seem to have described an effective consumer protection system. How else would you defend everyday people from regular corporate civil lawbreaking?

I’ll concede that point in that the very threat of a class action is enough to keep most companies in line. But look at the Experian thing. A lifetime of threat for the people who had data exposed, a payout in the range of cents per person, and then lawyers pocketing millions of dollars. And Experian walks away with essentially no lasting effects. It’s just very frustrating.

Elsevier would not be filing a class-action lawsuit in this case. Just a normal lawsuit, in which the plaintiff would be Elsevier, who has an interest in protecting its intellectual property or intellectual property it has an exclusive license to.

Nah what will happen is Elservier will find all the other corporate entities that are also being linked to. Their lawyers will say these companies are “similarly situated” and seek to form a class. The class will end up being literally anyone who has their content being linked to. Then their lawyers will file motions of discovery. Those motions will seek every single piece of information conceivable in regards to how the information was linked. Computer make and model. Software installed. Who did it when where why and how. It’ll be a flood of paperwork. That’s how all major companies operate.

My impression is that almost all class actions are filed by individuals on behalf of classes consisting primarily of individuals rather than companies. I'd be curious to see if you have a counterexample of companies abusing the class action process as plaintiffs.

Example? This seems a very unusual scenario for a class action lawsuit to me, I can't think of a comparable example, involving corporations forming a class like this.

I don't think "That’s how all major companies operate," but if it is, it should be easy for you to find an example of a class action lawsuit like this?

(I agree that harrasment lawsuits where it is very expensive to defend regardless of your chances of victory -- are how all companies with enough money to do it operate. Just without the class action component).

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