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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.
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.
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?
To sue someone on a small claim court, you need to 1) have damages that can be quantify to an amount of money (not imaginary amount) and 2) can prove that the damages are done by their action (not circumstantial evidence or very likely to lose). If you are sure you have both, then go for it; otherwise, don't waste your time.