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Roku’s Ultimatum: Surrender Jury Trial Rights or Lose Access to Your TVs
(programming.dev)
Did your Roku TV decide to strong arm you into giving up your rights or lose your FULLY FUNCTIONING WORKING TV? Because mine did.
It doesn't matter if you only use it as a dumb panel for an Apple TV, Fire stick, or just to play your gaming console. You either agree or get bent.
Yup.
Because here's the thing, lawyers are super expensive and these corporations have in house lawyers for handling anyone that wants to sue. They'll happily argue the validity of the EULA because they know just getting through the pretrial phase will cost you tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Corporations have weaponized this fact at every chance they get.
It's the exact same reason why companies in California and other states make employees sign noncompetes, even though they are explicitly unenforceable. It's so the company can financially punish you even if you are in the right.
This is what I like to call "bullying". I don't think anyone should be able to hire private lawyers. All lawyers, no matter how rich you are or if you're a corporation, should be public and randomly assigned dictated by a random number generator and a publicly viewable algorithm IMO.
The US has the right to a fair and speedy trial in its constitution. Current litigation is niether.
The only argument i have gotten against this is "But what if I get a shitty lawyer? I should be able to pay what I want for the quality of lawyer I desire."
It doesn't seem like a strong argument to me but to those who use it as a reply it seems rock solid?
The other route that could work is public civil defenders. It requires the government to properly fund and staff, but having a legal firm sponsored by the state willing and ready to take up cases would mean that the private entities can still get their lawyers but they can't steam roll over someone that doesn't make $500k a year.
Of course, there could be corruption issues. I wouldn't want the lawyer on my case being drinking buds with the lawyer on the opposing side.
This is a good compromise but frankly I think all lawyers should be government employees assigned by the court with 3rd party independent oversight.
Its not perfect but it is better than 'if you are rich you will likely win or just drive your opposition into poverty'.
Can't you request a new lawyer if you feel yours isn't representing you well? Or appeal based on that?
I never said they were MY arguments
This doesn't make sense to me. If it's unenforceable, what happens if you just ignore any demands from the suing company?
Welcome to the US system of justice it’s shitty all over and built for the rich to tap dance around.
That's why I advocate heavily for the environmental and economic benefits of consuming the wealthy.
Makes me wonder what eating a cow that has eaten delicacies its whole life would taste like
Chewy and bitter especially close to the skin, and gamey depending on diet. The more meat, the more gamey. I wonder what vegetarians taste like.
Chicken
People like to say that but human flesh is a lot oilier and has a different texture.
It was a joke.
They call it Long Pig for a reason
I mean that may have been right during the era of Moby Dick but with our modern diets, none of the human flesh I've tried has even been close to palatable.
If a company takes you to court, you can't just decide to ignore them. Either you/your representative turns up on the designated court dates and presents a case, or you'll most likely lose by default.
If it was possible to make a court case go away just by ignoring it then everyone would just do that.
If an EULA is not a binding contract, what standing do they have to bring forth a case?
An EULA is nominally a binding contract, in the sense that it is presented as such. No court has ever ruled and given precedent to the effect that EULAs are universally non-binding (because companies have always settled out of court for cases where it looks like they're going to lose).
It is well understood that the arguments against EULAs being binding are solid ones, and that the reason why so many cases settle is because companies are not confident of winning cases on the strength of EULA terms, but you still need to go through the rigmarole of attending court and presenting your defence case. That's how court cases work.
Edit: And perhaps more to the point of the OP, if you want to sue a company over some defect or service failure, it'll be them who introduce the EULA as a defence, and it'll be for you/your lawyers to argue against it. Which adds complexity and time to what might otherwise have been a straightforward claim, even if you win.
Fuck every paragraph of our legal code then, this isn't justice, this is just another layer of protection for the owner class.
You get sanctioned and maybe even thrown in jail.
You HAVE to participate and pray that the judge in the case is willing to listen to you arguments for dismissal. If you don't do that much a judge is free to issue punishments for not participating. Sanctioning can be as bad as fines but could further be things like "Ok, you've failed to participate so we are going to assume you are guilty" (Which, btw, is what happened to Alex Jones. He did not participate in discovery in any of his cases and so got a default judgements in multiple cases).
If the judge decides that there is any sort of merit (and the standard for that is really low. Cases almost never get dismissed) you enter the most expensive part of trial, pretrial and discovery. This is where both sides get to see each others documents on the case and lawyers spend countless hours filing pretrial motions with the court. This is something that can literally last years and even decades, especially in civil matters which take a back seat on the docket to criminal cases. Generally speaking, this is why people and companies tend to settle. It's a cost saving measure because making you way all the way to trial can easily dwarf the cost of settlement.
This also, btw, is why patent trolls are so effective. They'll often ask for an amount low enough that most companies will just pay the fees yet high enough to keep them in business. Even if the patents themselves are potentially invalid.
Yes, it doesn't make sense. In fact, a big issue is that we don't have any sort of public civil defenders (we absolutely should). So for most individuals lawyers are prohibitively expensive. You basically have to either be rich, be lucky enough to have a case that aligns with a charitable legal organization's goals, or luck out on a legal firm deciding to take your case pro bono for their own reasons.
So let me get this straight, some rich fuck could sue me because he doesn't like my haircut and if I don't pony up cash to get a lawyer the judge will just assume the rich fuck is right?
Burn every inch of this corrupt as fuck system down.
You don't have to get a lawyer, but you do have to respond to the lawsuit. That is, participation is not optional.
Now, there is protection from the "bad haircut" lawsuits. It's called "Vexatious litigation". If someone sues you for a bad haircut, and they've sued others for it as well, you can ultimately seek sanctions (including covering your legal fees) against them and their lawyers. That's why you don't generally see bad haircut lawsuits.
Further, if the lawsuit is so bad that it's "bad haircut" level, it's possible to get sanctions against the lawyer that filed it for wasting the courts time.
But again, participation isn't optional here. You HAVE to respond to a lawsuit, you can't just shut your eyes and hope it goes away.
Still seems like a massive waste of time and money that anyone with means can just apply to anyone they feel like.
I mean IANAL but in a rational world there would be a minimum of grievance requirement before being able to file such a lawsuit.
We need tort reform but the average person just doesn't seem to care until it affects them personally, and doesn't have the context to understand it.
There is, that's what the discovery phase of the lawsuit is for. That's what the dismissal phase of the lawsuit is for. The issue isn't that these things don't exist, it's that these things are the most expensive parts of trial.
Imagine the reverse case where you find out someone has started a campaign to keep you from getting hired anywhere. You know they are doing this because someone tips you off on this happening.
You do not have enough evidence to prove that this is happening in court at the moment of the lawsuit but you are damn sure that the person you are suing has a trail of documents proving your allegation and if they don't the third parties that didn't hire you likely do.
If you find enough evidence you can get the person to settle before trial. If you don't find any evidence you can either go to trial and lose or simply drop the lawsuit.
The unfortunate thing is gathering minimal evidence, which really is the job of lawyers beyond just knowing the law, is a time consuming task for someone (Usually multiple someones) that is pretty expensive.
Now, to the actual real problem. It's actually 2 fold.
Gigantic lawfirms gobble up basically all lawyers that have any sort of talent. This drys up the pool of lawyers available to represent people and consequently drives up prices, for everyone. These lawfirms can keep increasing their prices because their rich clients will pay for it and the smaller lawfirms that would represent your case can similarly raise prices because there is no competition.
These gigantic lawfirms and big companies when they sue take a TON of time and resources from the court. You can expect 100 or 1000 issues being filed by one of these lawsuits just at the very beginning. They apply a "Well, there's a 90% chance you'll win without these motions, but there's a 95% chance you'll win with them. So we'll file whatever we can to make sure every single avenue is explored. Oh, and we bill you for the hours we spent with our law ghouls scouring legal books in the dungeon."
These 2 issues mean the courts are constantly flooded, any lawsuit (especially against someone with the resources) takes a long time to resolve, the cost will be astronomical on both sides because the legal team on the other side needs to respond to every court filing, and finally the number of available lawyers will go up because there is little competition forcing them to have lower prices.
The reform we need, if anything, is some sort of penalization on these giant firms for wasting time. Perhaps applying sanctions to the other side if it's found that they spent 90% of their filings for stuff they never used.