
Google faces $15 million lawsuit for releasing blogger information in model row - kqr2
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/6081473/Google-faces-15-million-lawsuit-for-releasing-blogger-information-in-model-row.html
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run4yourlives
Can a company actually be sued for following a court order? Is US culture
_that_ sue happy?

They refused to give up any information until a court ruled that they must, at
which point they complied as expected. Does the lawyer in question really
intend to make it the company's responsibility to determine which court orders
are unconstitutional and which are not?

Is that really the precedent he/she want's to set? My oh my.

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zngtk4
You can actually be sued for _anything_. Whether or not you can win is another
matter, and it's difficult to recover legal costs for a frivolous lawsuit. The
lawyer is probably just hoping for a settlement.

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run4yourlives
Is there not some office that at least validates the merits of the suit
though? Otherwise, the legal system can pretty much be used as a tool for
extortion no?

(I'm Canadian here, so excuse my ignorance)

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mikeryan
No.

The closest you'll get is that very few lawyers will take your case if it
completely sucks. And it can get thrown out pretty much off the bat from the
the judge

Criminal cases do have grand juries which weigh the merits of a case before
going to trial.

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run4yourlives
So theoretically, an organization with large enough pockets could literally
destroy a competing organization with lawsuits designed only to ensure the
victim expends large amounts of cash on legal fees, correct?

I'm wondering if this method of "business" has ever been attempted?

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PotatoEngineer
When the Golden Gate Bridge was being built, the ferry companies (who would be
put out of business by the bridge) tried to sue the bridge to death with
something like 2000 trivial lawsuits. While each of these was easily defeated,
the only thing that stopped the ferry companies was that the local populace
boycotted the ferries until they stopped the lawsuits.

So yes, it's been done before, is probably being done now, and will happen
again. You can counter-sue trivial lawsuits to make the plaintiff go away (and
stop filing suits against you), but it takes some work and laying out some
money to lawyers.

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run4yourlives
Thanks for the background. This whole thing strikes me as a horrible loophole
in the legal system. I'd imagine the same is true in most western countries.

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electromagnetic
Sadly it is the same in most western countries, however if you sue me because
I wore a pink hat (frivolous lawsuit) I have the right to counter-sue you
(which would be a non-frivolous lawsuit). Yours would be thrown-out and cost
you money and probably a lot to get a lawyer to take it on, mine however would
likely be taken on on a no-win-no-fee basis by basically any lawyer because it
would be so easy to win. So your suit would cost you money, and mine would
likely cost me nothing or make me money.

So yes the loophole is there, but the loophole itself is kind of self
destructive for anyone dumb enough to try it.

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run4yourlives
Yet the example you gave would have been successful had it not been for
outraged civilians mounting a boycott.

How many issues are being exploited that don't warrant such public outrage? My
guess is more than a few.

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dschobel
Do people really have an expectation of a right to privacy when posting things
to the biggest and most public of forums known to man?

Bizarre.

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wmf
Google allows you to mark some parts of your profile private, so that sounds
like an expectation of privacy to me.

