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Chatbot Lets You Sue Equifax For Up To $25,000 Without a Lawyer (theverge.com)
Shannon Liao reports via The Verge: If you're one of the millions affected by the Equifax breach, a chatbot can now help you sue Equifax in small claims court, potentially letting you avoid hiring a lawyer for advice. Even if you want to be part of the class action lawsuit against Equifax, you can still sue Equifax for negligence in small claims court using the DoNotPay bot and demand maximum damages. Maximum damages range between $2,500 in states like Rhode Island and Kentucky to $25,000 in Tennessee. The bot, which launched in all 50 states in July, is mainly known for helping with parking tickets. But with this new update, its creator, Joshua Browder, who was one of the 143 million affected by the breach, is tackling a much bigger target, with larger aspirations to match. He says, "I hope that my product will replace lawyers, and, with enough success, bankrupt Equifax."
Not that the bot helps you do anything you can't already do yourself, which is filling out a bunch of forms -- you still have to serve them yourself. Unfortunately, the chatbot can't show up in court a few weeks later to argue your case for you either. To add to the headache, small claims court rules differ from state to state. For instance, in California, a person needs to demand payment from Equifax or explain why they haven't demanded payment before filing the form.
Not that the bot helps you do anything you can't already do yourself, which is filling out a bunch of forms -- you still have to serve them yourself. Unfortunately, the chatbot can't show up in court a few weeks later to argue your case for you either. To add to the headache, small claims court rules differ from state to state. For instance, in California, a person needs to demand payment from Equifax or explain why they haven't demanded payment before filing the form.
Don't do it, you might be able to sue them for the price of a house if their lack of care costs you your mortgage payments.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
This shows how easy some legal steps are, but also how hard they are too. How do you get legal advice whether you should use this chatbot or sue for far more money some other way, perhaps after your data is actually used illicitly?
Over here, we call most lawyers 'solicitors'. I'm sure some have a wild, edge-of-your-seat lives, but many do 'conveyancing', which is a paper pushing exercise to do with house buying and selling. It's a job that could, and should be completely automated into non-existence, and one that a 'chat bot' could easily achieve - were it not for the insistence of various parties to post documents to each other.
My point is... a lot of legal processes are really quite simple, and only look complicated because those that execute those procedures continue to make them look more complex than they are. 'Chat bots' or other electronic solutions show just how simple those processes are, but as I say, can't really do so well at the 'advice' part of the legal profession.
"AI" is replacing lawyers. If this doesn't make our planet a better place I don't know what does.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Why are there maximums on damages? I can see maximums on punitive awards, or a "statutory damages", but if someone can show they are harmed more than the maximum, why would the award be limited to an amount less than that?
If even 1% of people impacted sue and are awarded $2000 then Equifax is on the hook for $2.8 billion. Equifax will probably declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy which allows them (under court supervision) to restructure their debt obligations. These small claims will get prioritized after going business costs, existing debt instruments, any class action lawsuits (because they have real lawyers with lots of money), etc. At best you get pennies on the dollar... most likely you'll get nothing... not even the satisfaction of seeing them go under. Your efforts are better spent on getting your representatives in Congress to do something about this sh*t (and the first step is to get people to stop using an SSN as a national identification number because it was never intended for that).
There's two issues with your postulation.
First, as JBMcB implied, automation fails at the margin. Worse still, neither it nor you will know it's failing until way too late.
Second, it is (mostly) not true that things are made needlessly complex to keep lawyers making money. All those little twists and turns represent an effort to prevent repeating something that went wrong in the past.
Now, the law is very slow to catch up with changes that might have eliminated the risk of those things going wrong again, and lawyers and lawmakers ought to review and streamline procedures to account for that. Sometimes they do, but it's usually way later than they could have, and sometimes not at all.
I assume that you cannot sue in small claims court if Equifax says your data/credit report/personal information wasn't affected in the hack?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
In the US of A anyone can sue anybody at any time for anything. Is the ridiculous chatbot going to win the litigation for me? Let's be serious.
"you still have to serve them yourself"
In almost every single circumstance, someone unrelated to the suit must do the serving of the paperwork.
Come on, if you're going to put in legal things, be fucking correct about them, Slashdot.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That take cases like that aren't thinking any harder than a generic piece of dumbware. That is a very, very different thing from going to court. 99% of the time, quick-fix lawyers know your case is unlikely, they don't care. They get paid either way (yes, even if you lose, you still have to pay the lawyer, just without the settlement money to do so) especially if somehow they 'win'. There is zero risk to them. This is one problem with software based on the understanding of people too young to have any. They may be acting out if ignorance, but they mislead people just the same, because they are too young to know any better. Maturity is more than paying bills, reciting facts you know, considering a spouse, and having your own car. In fact, all of those things are inconsequential.
Per Equifax, my personal information may have been compromised.
It's interesting, and probably with a though towards the legal system, that Equifax's message is "we believe that your personal information may have been impacted by this incident.
Believe and May. Interesting choice of words.
They won't say anything with certainty, so one is left with nothing better than wondering.
In MO, small claims court can be up to $5,000. I think I might do this (my wife as well, depending on my experience).
BlameBillCosby.com
A friend got a summary judgment in small claims court against Dell years ago, but actually getting them to pay turned out to be incredibly difficult. They simply ignored legal documents that were mailed to them, and while the would likely piss off a real judge, the small claims court judge just kind of shrugged about it. He tried to file a seizing of assets to cover the debt - got a sheriff to look into seizing the computers and whatnot at a kiosk in a mall. Legally apparently Dell doesn't own that stuff, some franchisee does. He would need some mechanism to seize assets at Dell headquarters, and that wasn't happening. AFAIK, he never collected, and the judgment stands (and continues to accrue interest).
Seems like their site was just as prone to hacking as Equifax's was. :)