

"Small-claims flash mob" - Car owner takes legal fight away from lawyers - radley
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-autos-honda-smallclaims-20111227,0,959031.story

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grellas
In California, if a defendant loses in small claims court, there is an
automatic appeal right to have the case heard _de novo_ by a judge of the
Superior Court. "De novo" means the case is heard fresh and the small claims
proceeding has no bearing on it whatever - in essence, you get to go through
the same sort of expedited hearing procedure (no formal pleadings, no
discovery, no formal rules of evidence, etc.) but in front of a real judge.
The hearing is held, typically lasts no more than an hour, and (usually) an
immediate decision is rendered and that is where it ends. Thus, even after
this sort of appeal, a lay plaintiff can still have a potentially effective
remedy for getting a quick decision.

As I read this piece, however, I was most struck not so much by how the small
claims remedy is particularly effective (in reality, this is a highly variable
forum at best) but rather by what a joke the typical class action settlement
can be. While that vehicle has occasionally proven effective in high profile
cases, for the run-of-the-mill class action case you can often get a
plaintiff's firm that is pretty much gaming the system to get a fee windfall
for itself even as it puts a relatively low priority on the remedy it gets for
the class of victims supposedly being represented. That is why remedies rarely
take the form of significant cash payouts to members of the represented class
and why the first instinct you have whenever you get one of those class
notices is to simply throw it away rather than bothering to read all the fine
print that might lead to your getting a $10 recovery or some such thing.

It is interesting to see how enhanced connectivity in our modern era is
threatening to disrupt the cozy sorts of settlements so achieved through this
vehicle. Probably the biggest losers will be the plaintiffs' class-action
lawyers themselves, who might wind up having their back-room settlements more
easily rejected and be left actually having to work hard to get a real
recovery for the victims in lieu of taking a quick and inadequate deal that
benefits primarily the lawyers.

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quanticle
>The hearing is held, typically lasts no more than an hour, and (usually) an
immediate decision is rendered and that is where it ends. Thus, even after
this sort of appeal, a lay plaintiff can still have a potentially effective
remedy for getting a quick decision.

Doesn't that also apply to the defendant? If the plaintiff can use this
procedure, Honda can too. What stops Honda from appealing all of these
decisions and getting the vast majority of them thrown out?

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nostromo
Corporate lawyer cost (including travel) > a settlement maxed at $10k. I doubt
it would be worth it for Honda to appeal.

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ebaysucks
The problem with litigation, even if affordable in the first round, is that it
can be appealed and the judgment is only recognized and enforced in the
jurisdiction of the court.

Compare this with low cost arbitration: Internationally recognized, final,
binding and a lot of procedural freedom.

Disclosure: I am launching judge.me, a binding internet arbitration service
that charges $299 fixed price and offers awards that are recognized and
enforced by court systems in 146 countries.

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ars
Wow, way to take a good thing and make it out as a bad thing.

You _want_ the ability to appeal.

PS. It's cool that you are launching this, and if people want it more power to
them and you, but the ability to appeal is important.

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ebaysucks
It depends. The lady in this article wants to avoid the army of lawyers on the
other side, so a quick resolution for her small claims conflict makes sense.

I agree that public policy matters need the right to appeal.

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waqf
As I understand it, what usually happens to small-claims cases against large,
well-funded corporations is that you win the first round, then the corporation
appeals and suddenly you're in grown-up court and have to pay a lawyer.

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eli
Assuming the corporation is fueled by money, it will need to weigh the cost of
waging an appeal versus the expected savings in overturning the lawsuit (which
is still not guaranteed).

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waqf
Yes. I was thinking of the case where if you win, thousands of people will
file similar suits against the same company.

In such a case, the company has more at stake than you do. It's more likely
that it's not worth _your_ while to get a lawyer to fight the appeal.

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lukeschlather
That's the brilliant thing about the flash-mob approach. If the company has 50
cases to litigate, it may not matter if every individual is self-represented,
since the company is going to have a very hard time fielding enough lawyers.

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radley
...or 50 non-lawyers since it's small claims.

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ajays
Can we use Small Claims to fight other injustices? How about going after
companies that sell your email address?

Edit: for the downvoters: it is a genuine question.

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dangrossman
> companies that sell your email address

What monetary damages can you prove you suffered?

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ajays
Not monetary per se, but how about time wasted due to the spam? What if I
control my own domain, and have to spend time fighting this spam?

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dangrossman
We're talking about civil court here. Money is what you go to court to get.
What do you want the judge to do if you win? He's handling traffic tickets and
landlord disputes... then he gets to you. He's not going to try to make up
some equation of how much your time pressing the delete button on your e-mail
client is worth.

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electromagnetic
Depends where you are. Here in Ontario small claims court doesn't handle
traffic tickets or landlord disputes. They handle things like suing your
mechanic, or a business owner suing a deadbeat.

However, they still don't have the time to process your claim for damages
awarded for loss of time due to junk email. Sorry, but I can't sue for the
actual junk mail I get that actually causes physical expenses like garbage
disposal/recycling plus time. However a judge is going to be royally pissed if
I'm suing for the disposal costs of junk mail (probably a maximum of $5 a year
at the dump)

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jaylevitt
Great idea, but what happens when every major purchase includes a EULA that
requires binding arbitration, like so many contracts already do?

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greenyoda
If I walk into a car dealer, lay down my cash and refuse to sign their EULA,
would they really refuse to accept my money? Is an industry that's hard-hit by
the bad economy going to put additional impediments in the way of sales?

Also, requiring this kind of EULA would be bad publicity for companies since
it would emphasize to potential buyers that the seller is afraid of being sued
for defective products. Companies that don't require such an agreement would
be at a competitive advantage since they'd project an image of higher quality
and more respect for the customer.

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waqf
Many consumer contracts in the U.S. (for example those for my credit card and
my mobile phone) do require binding arbitration. Why doesn't your argument
apply to them?

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furyg3
One-time purchases are a bit different than ongoing contracts in this way.

At the moment it's pretty difficult to conceive of signing an EULA for those
new shoes or a washing machine.

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waqf
Why are ongoing contracts different?

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The_Fox
> Honda sold about 200,000 of the hybrids over a six-year period, and because
> of resales, as many as 500,000 people are eligible to file claims against
> Honda.

How could a second-hand buyer claim to have suffered an unexpected loss? Could
not Honda (assuming they would bother responding to the small claims action)
easily show that the fault was well known and second-hand buyers should have
known they were getting a 30-mpg hybrid? Or was this something that only
appeared after a number of years?

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illumin8
The hybrid's battery failed earlier than expected. If Honda advertised the
battery as lasting 10 years, and it failed after 5, a used buyer of a 3 year
old car might have no idea it was about to fail.

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tzs
I'm curious. What happens if you sue a small California law firm in small
claim court? The article says that in California small claims court, the
company must be represented by a non-attorney employee. If the law firm
consisted entirely of attorneys plus one secretary, would they really have to
send the secretary?

What if you sue a company and every employee is an attorney?

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pothibo
I love this Heather Peters. She's one clever lady that just hacked the
judiciary procedures in a novel way. Impressive

EDIT: I see many other claims that could go through the small claims, one
thing that does come to mind however, is it possible to go through small
claims when you buy online and you don't get what you want? (Avenger
controller for example)

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dedward
if there was fraud involved, of course. why not?

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icefox
While the "small-claims flash mob" is interesting, I have a problem with the
original problem. Buying a car isn't a small purchase (for most people) so you
would think they would have done some small amount of research or just read
the sticker on the car window. The article makes it out that every civic
hybrid every sold counts in the lawsuit. If the car has been out for _years_
pretending you don't know what the mpg that it will be getting is just
grabbing for money. Or was there details left out of the article?

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elemeno
I think you missed the part of the article where the said that the batteries
on some of the cars deteriorated at a faster rate than they should have done,
leading the cars to use their (gasoline) engines more - thus reducing the fuel
economy which was based on the car working as an effective hybrid.

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icefox
doh, saw the "Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times" at the bottom and thought
it was the end or the article, didn't see the "Page 2".

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padobson
I'm for doing away with all other forms of civil court all together. Let's
handle patents and copyrights and divorces this way too.

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rayiner
Divorces are already generally settled out of court.

As for other forms of civil court... I'm curious to hear the justification for
your claim.

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ajays
_Divorces are already generally settled out of court._

Not if they're contested.... and not if the state is not a "no fault" state. I
went through divorce in NYS; let me tell you, it is hell. No house, no kids,
and still the process went on for 18 months.

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rayiner
Wow. I didn't even realize there were still states without no-fault divorce.
Looks like just NYS.

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nvk
This is brilliant!

