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Comment by jayp | Hacker News Reader

Looks like Googe send in a pretty useless paralegal to defend their case. Instead, if they had send you (or someone with the same arguments as you), they'd have probably won.

I think it is fairly obvious what this guy did wrong. I am just surprised Google's paralegal was not apt enough to figure this out.

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The argument wasn't that he hadn't done anything wrong, it was that he was not informed what he had done wrong. He admitted to violating the ToS.

AFAIK, to win a small claims court, you still have to prove that you deserve the money. I see nowhere in the story he admits to the judge that he violated to ToS. He simply used the lack of customer service at Google/AdSense to win this case. As I mentioned it is amazing that Google sent an unprepared para-legal to defend themselves.

On the contrary, it would have been amazing if Google had sent a highly trained lawyer to deal with this. The amount in question, about $760, is probably less than a day's wages+benefits for a Google lawyer.

If you want to optimize for justice, there are plenty of failures in Google and Google's ad programs. They seem to be pretty clear about their intention of optimizing for profit, though.

Do small claims have any bearing on legal precedent? Could someone site the legal reasoning in this case to also sue Google for their small claims, or even higher amounts?

No, (at least in Canada) they do not. Small claims is not judged by a "real" judge and those courts do not have the ability to set precedent. Same with most traffic courts. Of course you can always bring up the judgment in another small claims court, just won't be taken as rule of law.

As the article states, lawyers aren't allowed in small claims court.

The same para-legal would have sufficed with better preparation -- finding out the reasoning for account termination (i.e., non-content domain).

> I see nowhere in the story he admits to the judge that he violated to ToS.

It was the difference between their right to terminate for no reason and any reason.

1. He didn't mention that to the judge. 2. That is not an admission of anything tangible.

"Since lawyers are not permitted in small claims court, Google instead sent Stephanie Milani, a Litigation Paralegal."

Drat. She's not on LinkedIn.com. I was going to invite her to this forum to have her tell the other side.

It sounds like she just wasn't told (or didn't bother to look up) why Google terminated his account. She couldn't even say for sure if he violated the TOS!

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