How To Take a Big Vendor To Small Claims and Win

snydeq writes "Gripe Line's Christina Tynan-Wood offers good news for those harboring grievances about faulty software or unfair licensing practices: it is in fact possible to take a big vendor to small claims court and win. But, as one woman's fight against Adobe demonstrates, detailed evidence and a deep understanding of the laws in question are essential to obtaining justice against big vendor lawyers. 'Evidence is the key factor,' explains one legal expert. 'Often the evidence people present does not show what they think it does. And they fail to make themselves aware of the rules of evidence so they can introduce any evidence they do have in court. These companies will have attorneys and those attorneys will use the rules of civil procedure to take advantage of your lack of knowledge.' Moreover, they will spare little expense no matter the magnitude of claims brought against them. 'The lawyer for Adobe tried an "end-user is stupid" argument,' explains the woman who took on Adobe over a software license she never had the privilege of agreeing to. 'But he gave that up when he learned I wasn't a lame-brain home computer user. I have a software engineering background and worked for Sun Microsystems and Fidelity Investments tech group.'"

Comments

Re:My understanding

[flyingfsck]

However, there are various laws that may override that which you have 'accepted' - the constitution, the sale of goods act, contract law... That is why you need a lawyer. You need someone who knows the big picture.

Bad article

[Mr. Freeman]

This article is completely horrible. There's absolutely NO description about how EXACTLY this person won against adobe. All the advice given is "be prepared" and "research the law". Well no fucking shit, of you should read up on the law and be prepared when going to court. That's the entire fucking point.

What tactics did she use? What the fuck is an "end user is stupid argument"? What piece of the law did she use to win? What did she argue made the license null and void?

This article doesn't give me any hope about winning lawsuits against big tech companies at all. It's actually quite discouraging. There's no real information in the article which leads me to believe that perhaps this was actually a fluke and this person won due to something stupid. (i.e. the lawyer didn't show up to court because he mismarked his calendar.)