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When Do You Really Need a Lawyer?
"Clearly, once I've been served with legal papers, a lawyer is necessary. But I'm guessing that there are situations where having a lawyer before it gets to that point would be helpful. I'm interested in some general guidelines for when I should pick up the phone and call a lawyer. I'm especially interested in tales of 'I waited to long and got burned' as well as 'I got a lawyer so early it was smooth sailing'. Like most people, I make a decent living, but I cannot afford high legal bills for very long.
For those who are interested, the CEO in question decided to simply report the incident to the FBI. My guess is that the Feds logged the complaint for their statistics and then dropped the matter. However, the brush with someone with enough money and power to drain me financially has left me distinctly shaken..."
Save all your correspondence however. In fact, you might want to post them online as well. As far as I know it's perfectly legal (at least, you see it all the time), and maybe this CEO will be humiliated enough to think twice before ignorantly accusing people of things.
I'd LOVE to know who this person is, by the way, so I can be sure not to ever do business with his or her company.
Unless the CEO's lawyer is a true hothead, it will never get past the first consultation. The CEO will pay his lawyer's consultation fee and go away angry. Most lawsuits begin with a lawyer sending a letter to the putative defendant, usually a request for compensation and a request for any insurance information you have. Give the lawyer no information, but contact him, and calmly discuss your case with him You can hire a lawyer if you have the money but it is in your best interest to entertain the lawyer's contentions seriously and to state your case clearly: that he won't collect, and that there is a long road to go before he can prove you were the authorof Klez. Most lawyers won't push a case if they can't get a quick, big payoff right from the top. Another circumstance is how much you are worth. If you are a wealthy man and have holdings such as stocks, bonds and real estate, you could be in trouble regardless of your guilt because there is very little to stop the lawyer from getting even a nuisnace payoff. BTW, IANAL, but I have learned from business lawsuits, that discussions will save a signifigant portion of a lawyer's claim if you deal with him reasonably.
Dawn of the Dead
Make up your mind. Either he should get a lawyer for every situation or he should go with your legal self-help reference. Personally I would wait until I was served with legal papers.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
(Emphasis added by me.)
Let me first say that I'm just going to stick with traffic courts for this comment, just to make things clear. Now, you explicitly call out "if you can afford [a lawyer]". What most people don't realize is that they can afford a lawyer, especially for traffic tickets. Ignoring the cost of the fine itself (anywhere between $70 and $500, depending on what you were doing), you are almost guaranteed an insurance hike in the case of a ticket. If a traffic lawyer costs $350 (at least, that's what my lawyer generally costs, with it being a bit higher for tickets out of her county), you've just saved close to $600 in insurance fees. It's very easy for a traffic lawyer to get your ticket dismissed or otherwise win the case. All they really have to do is drag out the process by asking for a discovery, which is usually not done in a traffic case but is allowed and must be honored by the court because a traffic ticket is considered a criminal offense and discovery is a right of the defendant in a criminal case. By doing that, the case will drag past the point where it's profitable for the court to continue trying it, and will likely just drop the charges (your lawyer will need to present some sort of plausible case for the charges to be dropped, so the judge can save face, but any good lawyer can do that in his or her sleep). Since traffic tickets are nothing but income for the issuing government, the simple act of fighting the ticket cuts into their profits. The governments prey on those that just blindly pay their tickets and go on their way. Don't you already pay enough in taxes?
The point, then, is that you can afford a lawyer, and should hire one. Sure, it's more expensive than representing yourself, but it's cheaper than paying the insurance increase, and there's a nearly-100% chance the lawyer will win your case (unless you picked a particularly inept lawyer).
NOT UNLESS YOU TELL THE LAWYER THE CONVERSATION IS WITHOUT Predjudice .
Otherwise anything you can and will be used against you.
However in a case of this type the lawyer is almost certain to be more resonable than his client. If you could provide the lawyer with a link to one of the Virus sites that describes this behavior of Klez the lawyer might even get the CEO to back off and appologise.
Incidentally what sort of CEO are we talking about? Like CEO of bogswater technology net revenue $300K per year can probably be blown off without as much worry as the CEO of an F500 company. The downside is that the CEO of bogswater Inc. is much more likely to be a complete and utter prick.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
It is easily demonstrable that the Klez virus was not written by you and did not come from you. You are safe on that front.
If you have received a letter specifically and clearly accusing you of the things you mentioned, then congratulations, because you have a valid and clear-cut libel case on your hands.
Send him a cheerful letter in return that explains the nature of the virus, and attach pages upon pages of URLs and other documentation to/from leading anti-virus software makers on the subject. Inform him that if he pursues, you'll pursue.
Because of my work with technology and with most people not understanding what it can and can't do I amd glad I have a Prepaid Legal Plan http://www.jtgrant.net that lets me talk to a lawyer when I have questions as part of my monthly fee of 26 dollars...I had an incounter with the FBI a few years back due to fueding ISPs...I really did not know what I should say and what I should not say or what they could legally ask me...being able to talk to a lawyer is one thing you really should be able to do...no matter how small the issue is you should talk to a lawyer to make sure you know your rights...I am sure that CEO has lawyers he has talked to able this to make sure he is in his legal rights, anyone that is successful knows to use lawyers...you should to...
If I am tech support, Who the fuck is going to help me... http://www.ibtechsolutions.com
Get a lawyer who understands the lack of merit in your opponents case.
Have him take you up on spec.
It will be VERY easy to conclusively demonstrate that you are not the author of the virus, and that Klez proliferates by spoofing sender addresses.
Take your sweet time in playing the trump card, make this expensive, long and time-consuming for him.
You can probably counter-sue for him pressing a nuisance suit. This is what will be salt on the meat for your lawyer to get involved. The minimum will be a suit to recover expenses.
Make sure that you have your lawyer agree in writing that if you are not successful in pressing suit, his fees are waived. Incentivises him, and removes your financial exposure. Hell, if you have a good laywer, he could spell this whole scenario out to the plaintiff lawyer, and you walk out of the room with a check and no appearance in court!
When you are done, you will have used this fellow's tools of abuse against him, and he might think twice before committing this sort of institutional violence again.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
However, if they did file a complaint with the FBI, you could request the complaint under FOIA. Whatever the FBI sends you I would assume to be public record unless specifically stated otherwise.
The Finnish system rules. Consider: If your grounds for filing suit are so poor or so frivolous that you do not have a reasonable expectation of prevailing, the 'loser pays all' bit will certainly stay your hand. On the other hand, if you are certain you are a) in the right and b) likely to prevail, then you also expect the loser to absorb the cost. On the gripping hand, thes system would surely go far to unclog our overburdered USian court system by causing many, many nuisance suits to simply vanish before they were ever filed.
:-) Betcha that'll cut down the BS flow in court!
An interesting modification --- make the losing lawyer pay
Best,
Thumper
Does this include forwarding an email message?
First things first. Stay home one afternoon, write down some of those number of the TV lawyers. Why? Most of them have free consultation. Tell them your story and see what happens...now, onto the non-redundant part. ;)
:)
Are you absolutely sure that the CEO did all of these things? I used to work at a company where the CEO was probably the *BIGGEST* asshole. Harassing, egotistical, narcissistic, self-righteous and most importantly a VERY big bullshitter. He would threaten and claim to have done or to do XYZ (i.e., fire people, etc) only to find out later that it never happened.
From your story, it appears (imo) that your boss is the same sort of person. If so, take a sigh of relief and then ask yourself if you really want to work for someone like that. Now, you will probably do 1 of 2 things. Either milk this for everything it's worth or shrug it off. I tolerated being with that company for longer than I should have. Eventually I changed industries while initially having to take less $$, I'm much happier with the people work with.
side note - what state is this in? I believe that we could all probably give more directed advice knowing this.
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
We also have the concept of compensatory damages in the US, thanks. And that's what most suits are over.
Punitive damages are only employed where the party seeking them can convince a jury that the tortfeasor (and other potential tortfeasors who will be basing their future decisions on the outcome of this case) has acted so wrongfully that they need to be taught a lesson.
I mean, imagine going up against a well-funded toxic waste dumper. If you can only sue him for actual damages that may not be enough to discourage him from dumping _more_ waste. He can afford it, after all.
As for the McDonalds' case, I STRONGLY suggest you actually look into the details of it; you're clearly just acting on what you've heard from some guy -- not exactly an accurate source.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Skadet wrote:
"Finland: A files suit against B. A is richer than B, and drowns them in legal fees so they'll settle/lose/whatever. B loses and pays A + B's legal expenses. "
For one thing I doubt the strategy of drowning people in legal fees works in Finland -- US Courts are known for enforcing the letter of the law. A lengthy, expensive, legalistic argument over the interpretation of the 4th word of Section IIX, Subsection II, Clause 3, of a contract won't fly in most other systems because it won't matter. The Courts will try to figure out the spirit of the agreement rather then the letter.
Long legalistic arguments are what tend to make US Litigation so damned expensive. After all you need a team of lawyers (at $300 per hour per lawyer) to even understand what the other side is saying in such an argument.
The only other method to force someone to pay his lawyer is to constantly make motions. Even under US Law, making motions for motions sake is frowned upon. Because American Courts tend to focus on the letter of the law they tend to look at motions individually -- if there's a sensible reason for a motion to have been made they'll tend to let it slide. In other countrys the Courts would typically say "Fuck you" much more quickly.
Also, if you settle you haven't technically lost. Therefore you wouldn't be made responsible for legal fees.
Werdna wrote:
"Where a losing side pays a winner's expenses, it makes it difficult for poor folk to get competent counsel when they are plaintiffs. The contingency fee, with all its serious problems, is in fact, the only way many people of even moderate means can get justice. Without the contingency fee, only rich folks tend to be able to be plaintiffs"
You could implement a contingency fee with this system. Just add it to the penalty -- ie: a 33% Contingency raises a $1 million judgement to $1,333,333.
A few months ago I was playing around on the sendmail port, sending messages from god@heaven.net and devil@hell.com to my coworkers sitting beside me. All the messages I sent went thru instantaneously - we all used the same mail server. Just for kicks, I decided to send one from president@whitehouse.gov.
It took four hours to deliver. The message did not have to leave our local network. Just like the others I sent.
I was a touch spooked out when I sent my 'presidential email' and it did not arrive when it was supposed to. I sent my God/Devil messages and they still went thru instantly, but my presidetial message was out in limbo....I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I would like a better technical explanation other than "Echlon".
Best solution:
Go talk to the fellow and clear up the misunderstanding. It'll save time, money and heartache. If your CEO is human, then I'm sure you can work it out without unpleasantness.
However, if the fellow happens to be one of those psychopathic CEOs which seem to be popping up everywhere these days, and whom through some sort of mental disorder and total lack of compassion decides he just wants to make you miserable, then it's okay to use a crow bar on his skull. (I certainly wouldn't tell).
If the crowbar solution is too un-nerving for you, (which I can understand), then it's best to get tactical; Let buddy know up front that he's made an error, show him the stats on how the virus works and that anybody with a software degree could prove it to a court. He'll understand. Subtly raise fears that when he is proven to be mistaken he'll look like a moron in front of everybody, the company will lose stock value, and he will probably lose his position due to a failure in confidence from shareholders and board members.
Psychopaths can be manipulated just like anybody else, it's just that their buttons are hidden in weird positions. Psychos can lie better than anybody, and they have no sense of shame, so if they are proven wrong, they don't feel stupid. This means that they can tell huge lies without sweating a bit because they fear nothing if it goes wrong. However, psychopaths DO have massive concerns about being walked away from. They are very, very posessive; to reject them when they have decided to control you is the worst torture you can inflict on a psycho. This is often the point where they will start using crowbars. And they don't get squeamish!
So then buddy, (if he really is a loonytoon), will smell the prospect of his company ditching him and he'll get very worried. Then all you do is offer him an out; tell him that it's very easy to be fooled by such a virus, that 'hackers' specifically design their viruses to get past the very greatest of minds, (who don't have time for all that nerdy software niggling which great minds like Buddy's don't have time to bother with), and that it is in fact, you who has been made a victim. He won't care about your welfare, of course, but if you can suggest ever so subtly that he can win points with you and everybody by hurling his anger at the real criminal, then you're in the clear.
That might be how I'd handle it, depending on the details, anyway.
-Fantastic Lad
IMAL, and I don't see a lot to sweat here. All I see is a blowhard who's upset that the world isn't perfect. He even knew it wasn't much of a case when he threatened both criminal and civil actions: (which is a distinct no-no in many jurisdictions - it's considered to unfairly use the threat of criminal prosecution to influence civil litigation). Second, what are the level of his damages, i.e. what's he going to collect? lost time? nope, not here. An injunction to stop you from issuing more viruses? nope. his expenses? nope: that's one nice aspect of the 'American' system: the winner has to pay his own expenses. That places a distinct transaction cost on the plaintiff and stops a lot of small-dollar suits in its tracks. I hear a lot of "It's not the money, it's the principle of the matter," until they find out they have to pay something to defend their principles. As for the general question of when you need a lawyer, the first question in my mind is: are you planning on doing something e.g. talk, write, do, or are you planning to react to someone else? If you're the actor, then consult counsel before you act. If you're the reactor, then it's probably best is simply wait until they act. There's more, but it's hard to give a set of rules until we know the facts of the situation. As for this case, you needn't give it another thought until the blowhard actually gets off his duff and pays someone. And given the paucity of damages here, that someone will in all liklihood tell him to forget it.