
I fought Equifax's lawyers in court and won: Part 2 - evashang
https://medium.com/@christianhaigh/i-fought-equifaxs-lawyer-in-court-and-won-here-s-how-a16930c53af3
======
hyperbole
Equifax is yet another form of financial corruption. The charge/fee incurred
in freezing your credit is so close to a shakedown - this is absurd. Credit
ratings of the population are a product they sell to financial firms and then
they charge (read shakedown) that population for pausing the sale of that data
so you the consumer can prevent irreparable credit harm. Then when they screw
up and allow a leak of your data which will eventually cause irreparable harm
they have the audacity to bully those they've screwed over.

~~~
losteric
It's even more ridiculous: The _bank_ lets criminals walk out the door with
money in our name.

Equifax demands money to avoid punishing us when banks are defrauded through
their own incompetence.

This is worse, because Equifax aided the criminals, but we were always getting
screwed over.

~~~
njarboe
Wonder why there aren't class action law suits against banks and other
companies that lie to the credit bureaus about people defaulting on loans? It
is not "identify theft" that is the problem, it is banks libeling people and
the credit bureaus passing the libel along.

You loaned money to someone and didn't even have their correct identifying
information. Well that's a bit of a problem for you. You say that the
fraudster used my name and other info to impersonate me. I can see you are in
a bit of a pickle in how to get your money back. You are going to lie and say
I defaulted on your loan to a credit bureau? Fuck you, asshole. I'm going to
call the police and you are going to get a big fine and/or go to jail.

One can dream, anyway.

~~~
drieddust
It is because these shenanigans are perfectly legitimatized.

I recently read "A Man for All Markets" by Edward O. Thorp and it opened my
eyes to the level of corruption practiced by Financial Institutions.

I find India incredibly corrupt but now I think America is not far behind.
Only reason financial crimes in America does not come to light is because they
are legitimatized by completely twisting the Laws to favor the right set of
people.

Case in point is Mr. Trump who has declared bankruptcy multiple times without
having any impact on his personal worth. This is just nuts.

~~~
EpicEng
>Case in point is Mr. Trump who has declared bankruptcy multiple times without
having any impact on his personal worth. This is just nuts

So... if that weren't possible, how do you think it would affect the rate at
which businesses are created? Let's say you want to start a business, but if
you hit hard times and need to fold, you are _personally_ liable for any debt?
Would you start that business, knowing that your financial life could easily
be destroyed for the next 30 years? If you _did_ decide to start that
business, do you think you'd want to grow at anything more than a snail's pace
(if at all)?

~~~
drieddust
If that is the case then why business owners should be compensated handsomely
when they succeed? while they reap the benefits of success ,failure should be
owned by society?

I am not saying personal financial position should be destroyed but if you are
a multimillionaire already why your failures should be outsourced to society?

And as far as growth is concerned, what's wrong with growing slowly? Cancer
too is growth, it's just uncontrolled.

Coming to Trump, he repeatedly failed doing the same type of business.

~~~
Fjolsvith
I would argue that being a multimillionaire doesn't actually count as failing.

~~~
dkersten
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-
updates/ge...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-
updates/general-election/real-time-fact-checking-and-analysis-of-the-first-
presidential-debate/fact-check-has-trump-declared-bankruptcy-four-or-six-
times/)

According to this Washington Post article, he filed for Chapter 11 a number of
times. You argue that being super rich doesn’t count as failing, quite from
the article _“Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy again in
2004, after accruing about $1.8 billion in debt.“_ , which sounds like a
failure to me. Trump seems to be good at wiping out other people’s money while
protecting his own.

~~~
Fjolsvith
Actually, you mis-read that. His companies filed for bankruptcy, not himself
personally. I don't count that as the guy failing.

~~~
Fjolsvith
Lets say that you own stock in a company that goes bankrupt. Sears, for
example. Does that qualify you as a failure? Besides, I would wager that
President Trump owned a lot more successful companies than failed companies.

~~~
drieddust
It not that simple. Excerpt from New York times sheds some light onto his
morality and what he actually did [1]. I have used him as an example only. My
point is that corporate world is filled with many such examples much more
sinister than Trump.

> The New York Times, which conducted an analysis of regulatory reviews, court
> records and security filings, found otherwise, however. It reported in 2016
> that Trump "put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the
> casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other
> payments."

"The burden of his failures," according to the newspaper, "fell on investors
and others who had bet on his business acumen."

[1] [https://www.thoughtco.com/donald-trump-business-
bankruptcies...](https://www.thoughtco.com/donald-trump-business-
bankruptcies-4152019)

~~~
Fjolsvith
Then he must be the biggest presidential failure in history. I write this as I
enjoy the nice tax cut he put in my pocket. (Does that count as a failure
too?)

------
AdamJacobMuller
> prove that the increased number of the spam calls I was getting were a
> result of the breach.

Damnit.

I have to admit to not caring so much about the Equifax breach. I, personally,
don't really care about that kind of data being public and I relentlessly
monitor my credit report for changes, even if someone _did_ abuse my data, I
would know quickly and clean it up before it happened.

But I've been getting a literally 100x-fold increase in spam calls in the past
few months. I have gone from one every few days to, I kid you not, 20+/day
sometimes. If this is even remotely related to the Equifax breach I
legitimately want to sue them just for that.

------
Meekro
I'm as glad as anyone else to see Equifax getting what's due to them, but is
anyone else bothered by the surreal quality to this story?

It sounds like the rules and procedures being applied were vastly different
than what Equifax's highly paid lawyer expected. Is their $1000-an-hour lawyer
just incompetent, or is the pro tem judge here allowed to make up the rules as
she goes along?

~~~
plorkyeran
Hiring a $1000/hour lawyer for your small claims case is like hiring an
airplane mechanic to work on your car. There's a pretty good chance that this
is the first time Equifax's lawyer had ever been involved in a small claims
case.

~~~
Meekro
Any lawyer worth his salt would know that each court has its own particular
rules of procedure. If your highly-paid lawyer comes into bankruptcy court and
starts trying to invoke procedural rules from juvenile court, that would be
pretty convincing evidence of incompetence.

So did this lawyer take on a small claims case without realizing that they
should probably read up on small claims rules? Or maybe the judge didn't know
the rules either, and just sided with the sympathetic plaintiff?

~~~
onli
Since the lawyer did not seem to be aware of basic procedures (wanting to have
things stricken from the record despite there not being a record) you can
assume he just did not read up on the rules.

~~~
dawnerd
And likely didn't even expect to win since they're paid hourly regardless.
Probably was just trying to stretch it out as much as they could. Easy money

~~~
gnicholas
> _And likely didn 't even expect to win since they're paid hourly regardless.
> Probably was just trying to stretch it out as much as they could. Easy
> money_

This loss is a huge embarrassment to the lawyer and his firm. The billings for
this case are negligible compared to what Equifax pays to their outside law
firm every year. But mostly, this is just embarrassing. He might lose the
client, and he'll definitely be mocked by colleagues for years.

------
paultannenbaum
For what it is worth to others thinking of doing the same thing, I too took
Equifax to small claims court in Santa Barbara.

They sent a lawyer from their legal team to the initial hearing. I presented a
lot of the similar arguments that were presented here, but the judge denied my
claim based on not being able to prove negligence on the part of Equifax.

~~~
prklmn
Did you talk about them being a negligent steward of your data, and not
patching a 2 month old bug? They admitted this
[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/09/massi...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/09/massive-equifax-breach-caused-by-failure-to-patch-two-
month-old-bug/)

~~~
g051051
Negligence would be if they knew about the bug but ignored it, which per a
later Bloomberg article isn't what happened. Instead, there was a process
failure so that they thought the bug was patched, when it wasn't.

------
BugsJustFindMe
It would be nice if the author (or someone) made available a mostly-automated
process for filing similar claims by people who aren't lawyers. The same
successful arguments should work for any of us.

~~~
chrischen
Isn’t the author’s company doing just that as a service?

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
I guess they were for some unknown period of time in the past, but not anymore
according to
[https://www.legalist.com/equifax/](https://www.legalist.com/equifax/)

------
iloveluce
Here is the HN discussion to Part 1
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16217241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16217241)

Pretty surprised how much Equifax spent trying to win this case. I'm sure
they're doing it to dissuade others from suing them as well but after reading
this I really want to sue myself. I wonder if they'll appeal the verdict
again.

~~~
danielvf
The second judgement is final. No appeal.

~~~
anarazel
IANAL.

It's not inconceivable they could make further trouble nevertheless:
[https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-
appeal/3d/1...](https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-
appeal/3d/102/164.html)

The relevant part appears to be:

"The Eloby court's dictum suggests that section 117.12 was designed to
preclude only appeal, motions for new trial, and motions to vacate judgment.
The court's initial issuance of the alternative writ further suggests that
section 117.12 was not read as curtailing the ability of appellate courts to
review important issues arising in small claim actions.

Following the lead of the Eloby court, we read section 117.12 as not
foreclosing appellate court review by extraordinary writ. Since statewide
precedents can only be created by appellate courts, jurisdiction to decide
appropriate small claims court issues must be retained by appellate courts in
order to secure uniformity in the operations of the small claims courts and
uniform interpretation of the statutes governing them. We do not believe that
the Legislature intended to make all actions of the superior courts in such
cases totally unreviewable or reviewable only on certification. (Code
Civ.Proc., s 911; Cal.Rules of Court, rule 61(b).) "

This seems a bit weird.

~~~
danielvf
Thanks!

------
bitmapbrother
Imagine having to explain to Equifax how your high powered legal team lost a
small claims court case to a guy with no law degree.

~~~
ipsum2
To be fair, he runs a legal startup (legalist) so he has more experience than
the average Joe.

------
advisedwang
I wonder how easy it is to collect the judgment against Equifax.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Collecting against companies is far more easier than collecting from
uncooperative private persons - assuming the company is "established" in some
way. Given that Equifax is a very large company, collecting is easy: once you
get your judgement, file for a Writ of Execution and have the sheriff in
whatever CA county Equifax has an office in to visit them in-person and demand
they cough up the money or they'll start literally seizing assets there-and-
then. Failing that, you can also easily get a bank levy against whatever bank
accounts Equifax has in your state - provided you can track-down their account
details and financial institution: something you can do with an Examination of
Assets hearing, which has an added bonus: if the company representative fails
to appear they get a bench-warrant for their arrest which becomes a criminal
matter.

I'm surprised at how so many small-claim case victors sell their judgement to
a collections firm for a fraction of its true value when collecting money is a
lot easier and straight-forward than people imagine. You only need to go to a
collections company if it isn't worth your time - not if the debtor isn't
cooperative.

------
darepublic
Nice, but this needs to be scaled up (many more people need to do this, and a
clear recipe provided)

~~~
sverhagen
Isn't there a class action to that effect?

~~~
jjeaff
Literally millions of individual cases would be much better. It would
overwhelm them and those suing would likely get way more money. Class actions
never amount to much for anybody except the attorneys.

------
bogomipz
What a great and inspiring piece.

I have a question - does this become part of caselaw then for this
jurisdiction? Is this now precedent for others who want to sue Equifax for
being victim of the same data breach?

~~~
gnicholas
Undoubtedly not. This would be a non-precedential decision. You could mention
it in another case but the judge would have no obligation to follow it. Also,
your facts are going to be different, which further complicates things.

~~~
bogomipz
Could you elaborate?

The author himself mention caselaw that he used as reference. If a resident
from the same court jurisdiction with the same circumstances(Equifax data
breach victim) why would the facts be different beside the identify of the
plaintiff?

~~~
gnicholas
There is binding precedent (which must be followed), persuasive precedent
(which a judge may choose to follow but need not), and non-precedential
opinions (which are not supposed to be cited).

Binding precedent typically comes from a court to which an appeal would lie.
So if the US Supreme Court were to decide (for example) that Uber drivers are
actually employees for the purpose of federal labor law and tax withholding,
then that precedent would be binding on all Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal,
and also all Federal District Courts.

This same precedent would be only persuasive authority if cited in a state
court proceeding regarding whether Uber drivers can claim state-mandated
benefits conferred to employees (because the test for "what constitutes an
employee" for the purpose of the state law could be different than the federal
definition.

But some opinions are designated as non-precedential or non-published. These
are still "published" in the sense that you can find them in legal research
databases, but they shouldn't typically be cited in future cases. I don't know
the rules for the jurisdiction where this case took place, but I would be
surprised if small claims cases decided by _pro tem_ judges (who are neither
appointed nor elected) were considered precedential.

Of course, you could always mention this case if you're fighting a similar
case in small claims court (where procedural rules are relaxed). But don't
expect a judge to follow the prior decision, even if your facts are pretty
close to his facts.

> _why would the facts be different beside the identify of the plaintiff?_

Because the number of phone calls and other facts would vary from person to
person. The legal issues could be the same, but the facts would differ in
every case.

Background: I used to be a corporate lawyer, but I did not specialize in
litigation.

------
furschtein
This is amazing.

