

How to sue your employer and win - tallyh00
http://unposto.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/how-to-sue-your-employer-and-win/

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mikeryan
Just wanted to give a bit of feedback on the attorney situation (I am not a
lawyer - my wife is an employment and labor attorney).

Lawyers working on a contingency basis on what is likely a fairly small matter
are going to put as little time into it as they can. You'd be surprised (or
maybe not) how little there is in a case like this, a few letters and memos
that they likely bust out in their free time. Unless your damages are
significant expect a few hiccups in the road.

Also your state bar is usually a good resource to start when looking for
attorneys (here's CA's). Also with the glut of attorneys out there (my wife,
sister, cousin and the best man at my wedding are all attorneys) are usually
great places to start when looking for recommendations. For example I had a
friend with a small business who was dealing with a lawsuit who went to my
wife's firm for help (through my wife) they were too expensive but were more
then willing to recommend a smaller firm - and the smaller firm was more then
happy to help (and kicked ass).

[http://www.calbar.ca.gov/state/calbar/calbar_generic.jsp?cid...](http://www.calbar.ca.gov/state/calbar/calbar_generic.jsp?cid=10581&id=2165)

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skmurphy
The opportunity cost of pursuing this is huge. Cut your losses at 100 hours
and spend your time looking for new clients.

Spend $5 and buy a used copy of "The Check is Not In the Mail"
[http://www.amazon.com/Check-Not-Mail-Without-
Customers/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Check-Not-Mail-Without-
Customers/dp/0962483354) it will give you a number of suggestions for how to
structure an engagement to avoid some of the problems you faced here.

The real warning sign on this was the inability of the company to set a date
for a partial payment, telling you to "be patient" instead.

~~~
praptak
> The opportunity cost of pursuing this is huge. Cut your losses at 100 hours
> and spend your time looking for new clients.

The strategy of cutting losses and not retaliating might seem rational and it
is - in the same sense as overgrazing in the tragedy of the commons is. If
everybody chooses this strategy, then it becomes rational to screw anyone for
99 hours pay (and switch to another sucker.)

~~~
skmurphy
He can go public and warn folks if after three written interactions they
acknowledge that he delivered the work but refuse to pay or give a timeline
for payment. Has the same effect as spending a lot more time on a client that
will never be a reference.

Also, read the book, there are a number of things you can do to manage your
"credit policy." Essentially you are loaning the customer N hours of work: if
you look at it that way you may engage differently.

Finally, life is short and getting screwed out of 100 billable hours is not
the worst thing that will happen to you even in a two or three year period.

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teej
I feel sorry for OP. It really sucks to be waiting on the receiving end of an
invoice with no hope in sight of getting your hard-earned money. It really
sucks to be in that position.

I don't know the specifics of this case, but I have encountered some of the
same red flags that the author found. I worked as a remote contractor for a
company, was interviewed over Skype by the CTO, had most of my interaction
with the technical manager over Skype. I worked mostly by myself outside the
scope of the other developers. Best of all, the codebase was mostly written by
offshored developers.

This all sounds like a recipe for disaster, but instead it was an amazing
experience. The tech manager was incredibly competent and great at managing
umpteen developers in 4 countries. The codebase was reasonable to work with
and I was able to move really quickly to get things done.

Maybe I got lucky, or maybe these red flags don't have any bearing. I only
have anecdotes, so I don't know the answer.

~~~
tallyh00
I agree, the 'red flags' I mentioned probably have very little predictive
value.

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tibbon
While many people hiring contractors won't go for this- it's a good cause to
ask for 50% upfront and for the remainder payment to be held in escrow. It
doesn't hurt to ask at least. Of course it is hard to tell what your total
number of billed hours will be, but always ask for 50% deposit of whatever
your estimate of the job is.

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hga
Note that if you're an employee instead of a contractor like in this case,
your state very possibly has a unit that hounds companies that don't pay your
final paycheck(s).

I and a number of coworkers had to do this in Virginia when a couple of
investors (worth $600 million between them) revealed they were devils rather
than angels. The process was pain free compared to the "sue them" route
tallyho00 had to follow (the state employee(s) we dealt with were experienced
and had heard it all before), and in theory it was backed up by their
(in)action being an misdemeanor.

Kudos to tallh00 for cutting them off promptly and pursuing them, we need a
more feedback like that in the system.

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asmithmd1
The OP seems to be confused about his relationship with the company he sued.
He uses the phrase: "if you want to sue your company" and "my company" to
refer to his customer. They were not his employer, it was in no way his
company - they were a customer who hired him in bad faith when they had no
money to pay him.

~~~
tallyh00
[http://unposto.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/how-to-sue-your-
empl...](http://unposto.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/how-to-sue-your-employer-and-
win/#comment-9)

------
daeken
I'm really hoping that my own experience isn't going to be this bad. I'm owed
close to $20k from a client who's so far failed to pay, and I'm working on
taking them to arbitration (as per the contract) while looking for other work.
Luckily, I brought it up to my startup's lawyer and he offered to take it on,
so at least that part will be simple. I'm really hoping that arbitration will
be as quick as I've been told it is, but as OP found out, nothing is ever that
easy.

I feel for anyone in a similar position; it always sucks to be out a decent
chunk of money, waiting for some third party to decide you really do deserve
it. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting my money in escrow from
now on...

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izak30
So far, I've had a policy of never being owed more than I could collect in
small claims court.

Two reasons: If it doesn't happen, I have two options a) drop it, it's only
$3000 here, or b) Take them to court w/o a lawyer, and very small court costs.

Is this moderately viable?

~~~
tallyh00
If you charge a reasonable rate, not really, unless you always ask for payment
before you complete work. Let's say you charge 100$/hr. That means you are
going to demand payment before you complete a full week of work. Say you
charge $50/hr. Now you are demanding payment (in hand/check cashed) before two
full weeks of work. Good luck finding a company/client who will pay you on
that schedule.

~~~
izak30
Yeah, most of my consulting is really low-quantity in the hours arena, as it's
not my main income stream. Anything more than a week f/t I'm really careful
with.

I meant more viable from a legal standpoint I think.

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angelbob
What's odd to me is that the OP sued them, won, is offended by what they
did... But won't reveal any of the company names, or executive names.

That seems like it would be the most effective way to keep them from doing
this again.

~~~
tallyh00
OP here...

Trust me, I thought about doing this. I even thought of this as a strategy to
get paid before I ended up suing them. But considering this wasn't a huge
amount of money, I figured the potential damage to my reputation by making the
situation a public affair could end up costing me a lot more in the future.

~~~
praptak
> I figured the potential damage to my reputation by making the situation a
> public affair could end up costing me a lot more in the future.

Hmmm... What exactly would the damage to your reputation be? Hey, let's not
hire this guy, he might sue if we screw him!

~~~
tallyh00
how about, "hrm... here are two almost equivalent candidates, oh wait that one
sued his last company and ruined their rep"

or... what if the HR department of some big company doesn't hire people who
have sued their employers?

I'm just making things up but I have a feeling there is some potential
situation where it would cost me.

Also what do I gain from it? Vengeance is one, not really a good reason.
Helping out the probably not so huge number of other people who might get
conned by them in the future is the other.

That reason is pretty decent, but weighed against the personal cost to me, not
so much. Also you need to factor in if these future employees would even find
my warning. I did a little SEO testing with this already and it wouldn't be
that easy to create something easily discoverable.

~~~
holdenk
While I'm loath to quote xkcd, <http://xkcd.com/137/>

For people like text: Essentially not doing something because someone,
somewhere, who might at some point give you money might be offended is a bad
idea.

~~~
tallyh00
You need to weigh both sides, if there was something great on the other side,
then I would agree with you. In this case, I don't gain all that much for
going public with it.

