
Zenefits asks court to drop ADP lawsuit - chermanowicz
http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-asks-court-to-drop-adp-lawsuit-2015-7
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huac
Brilliant legal maneuver? Filing a motion to dismiss on grounds of frivolity
happens in pretty much every lawsuit. And, if you interview Zenefits execs, of
course they'll explain their side only.

I think this is dishonest reporting by Business Insider, however. The article
reads as if they took this Tech Crunch article
([http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/07/zenefits-fires-back-at-
adp-...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/07/zenefits-fires-back-at-adp-with-a-
motion-to-dismiss-frivolous-lawsuit/)) and made it more clickbait-y.

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acaloiar
"and made it more clickbait-y"

As Business Insider is wont to do.

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chralieboy
Note that the article only spoke with the COO of Zenefits and no one from ADP.

As has been detailed numerous times, ADP absolutely has a right to cut off
access based on violations of its ToS. They want to be put in the same boat as
Uber and AirBnB, as white knights against injustice, but they don't have a
"right" to use ADP's product however they see fit.

ADP is not an innovative company and if you'd like to build your own payroll
provider (hi ZenPayroll) to make a better product, you are welcome to compete.
They are simply saying "we have official ways to integrate and choosing to
ignore them to do whatever you want is not acceptable."

~~~
gergles
Eh. I don't think they (ADP) has a right to cut off access. If I am a customer
of a financial company and I want to have my accountant deal with them and I
give the accountant my password, that is a thing I should be able to do.

I think it is reasonable to disagree with that, but I don't see it as open-
and-shut as you seem to.

~~~
rpiguy99
Probably depends on the "Terms of Service" that the client agreed to when they
first logged into the system.

Most online backing systems have specific "Terms of Service" regarding account
security that indemnifies them from responsibility if you share your
username/password.

I expect that a payroll system's "Terms of Service" would be much more
restrictive than that.

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mkaziz
Wow this article is ridiculously biased - it reads like a press release from
Zenefits.

~~~
joe_the_user
Yeah, _" Zenefits has officially filed its legal response to a defamation
lawsuit filed against it by ADP. And the legal move was brilliant."_

I don't think most companies would have the guts to issue a press a release as
skewed and laudatory as the article.

The Zenefits business model is to sit between ADP customers and ADP and
provide it's interface to the customers data stored with ADP - all without
asking ADP for permission or using an actual API. It bears some resemblance to
the Craigslist scraper's business model and also to Aaron Swartz's activities.
While I wouldn't expect Zenefits to go to jail over their activities, it's
pretty well established that a company can say "hey, you can't make a
continuing practice of using our data in a way we don't want".

~~~
pbreit
The broker model is pretty common in payroll and other HR services.

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curo
> "That’s the old economy way of dealing with new products: to throw up legal
> and regulatory roadblocks"

I had a tiff with Zenefits failing to notify me about a cancelled policy while
still collecting payments. They denied responsibility because they were "only
an HR software company." This is blasphemous to say in SF, but perhaps some of
those "roadblocks" are there for a reason.

~~~
exelius
Agreed, and Uber is starting to run in to this as well. Turns out if you
remove all the roadblocks for Uber, you also remove all the roadblocks for
everyone else, and Uber becomes just as shitty as riding in a taxi. Where I
live, Uber Black Car is stupid expensive (easily 2-3x the cost of a taxi) and
UberX is crazy people in barely-functioning cars. As a result, my $150/mo Uber
habit has become maybe $20/mo. I know they still make a lot of money off of
people with corporate expense accounts, but many of my friends have reverted
to taxis (ironically, Uber gave taxi companies a lot more leverage over their
drivers and they were able to improve service, at least around here).

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infamouscow
I'm surprised this doesn't say it's sponsored by Zenefits. The author should
be ashamed of themselves for publishing this crock of shit.

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RokStdy
The author's post immediately before this one was another story about how
David Sacks joined Zenefits as COO. So, possibly the author isn't a shill, but
she's just scraping her inbox and publishing anything that comes across her
desk.

~~~
huac
See also: "Zenefits is now a $4.5 billion company but its founder still can't
afford a new car"

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dininglogistics
This website has ADP's official response to Zenefits motion to dismiss. More
interesting is the way that the reporter humorously points out that Zenefits
kind of brought this on themselves. [http://dnsr.com/adp-vs-zenefits-the-
unicorn-who-lives-in-a-g...](http://dnsr.com/adp-vs-zenefits-the-unicorn-who-
lives-in-a-glass-house)

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CPLX
Valley journalism sucks.

EOM

