Have You Ever Gotten Sued?

[Owen]

Personally, I haven't but have come close. What about you? :)

[turboguy]

I have been sued twice. One went to trial and one was settled out of court.

The one that went to court involved a traffic accident. It was my birthday and I had taken my mother out for dinner. I dropped her off, went to the next corner to make a left. It was dark. I started to turn left and saw 3 people in the crosswalk so I stopped short of the crosswalk but 3 feet or so. One 80 year old man had been looking backwards talking to his friend as he crossed the street. He turned around, saw my headlights, stepped backward but stepped on his coat and fell, breaking his hip. The jury decided we were both 50-50 responsible and he got 60 grand.

The second was a product liability suit when I first started my business and the insurance I had didn't cover it although I had thought it would. A contractor in MA had hired a 19 year old off the books, paying him cash in other words. He climbed up on top of the machine we manufacture although he was told not to. When he tried to climb down his feet slipped out from under him and he slid down. He went to the hospital and the xrays showed everything to be fine. That night he was playing hockey and took a nasty hit. He then claimed he had a damaged neck and sued me. Legally they were claiming we should have had warnings not to climb on the machine although it is something most people would have no reason to do. We finally settled out of court for $ 35,000.00.

[Freelancier]

Once for violating a faulty employment agreement. I won the first round, getting rid of the faulty constructs in the agreement, leaving them not much to sue me on. After that, the judge got us together to figure out how to resolve the case so it would stop taking up everyone's time, so we did. No money changed hands and I agreed not to do what I wasn't doing anyway and we went on our merry ways. Otherwise, I try to avoid going to court.

One thing I learned watching others: don't do consulting work for lawyers unless you want to get sued the first time something goes wrong. To the person who only has a hammer, everything is a nail.

[Harold Mansfield]

One thing I learned watching others: don't do consulting work for lawyers unless you want to get sued the first time something goes wrong. To the person who only has a hammer, everything is a nail.

I couldn't agree with you more. I'm sure all lawyers aren't creeps who use litigation as a threat not to pay you, or just don't pay you and dare you to sue them...but there's enough of them out that it makes doing business with them as an industry very risky. $200 jobs. $2k jobs. It doesn't matter. They never want to pay.

The only times I've been screwed out of money, it was a lawyer. Every time I was made to wait weeks or even months for a simple payment, it was a lawyer. The only time I've ever had a charge back against me, it was a lawyer...and he lied his ass off to Pay Pal and his credit card company and still won even though I provided evidence in his own words (his own emails) that he was lying. That dude was an unethical piece of work. He literally committed credit card fraud right in front of my face and got away with it. Never again.

I've provided services for 5 different lawyers over 7 years thinking the last were just coincidence or bad luck, and each time they made me regret it no matter how many ways I tried to make sure that there would be no problems. Even when I went far over and above what they paid for just to see if I could have one successful transaction with a lawyer, it doesn't work. It must just be a natural reflex to find something to fight about and screw people over. I really don't get it.

Looking back I have to wonder why some of the practices who were apparently pretty big, contacted little old me in Las Vegas NV instead of dealing with larger design firms that were right there in their town.

Of course there are great lawyers who are ethical and just good people to deal with. We have one or two on this forum that are very nice and helpful to anyone with legal questions and have been for years.

Other than them, I can't take the risk anymore. It's just one of those industries that I avoid at all costs because I know the odds of it being more trouble than it's worth are very high.

Of course I'll hire a lawyer when needed, but I just can't do any web work for them as an industry. It's too risky and too much trouble. I can't out contract a lawyer or waste time trying. It's not worth any amount of money.

[turboguy]

When I think about it I was sued a couple of more times. One was Yellow Freight. We had used a freight broker who arranged shipping at a discount and when the merchandise was shipped we paid the broker. It was about 6 grand and covered several shipments. The broker never paid Yellow so when they tried to sue the broker and didn't get paid they tried to sue us. They also added 7 grand in late fees and tried to sue us for 13 grand. I showed up at the hearing with my lawyer and the paid freight bill. Yellow had the terminal manager show up with a photo copy of a newspaper article that more or less said that in a case like that a freight company had the right to come after the shipper or whoever received the merchandise. The judge asked if it could be settled. We offered a settlement of 5 grand. The guy from Yellow called his office and they turned down the offer. The judge then ruled for us and we paid nothing. Yellow then went after the people who received the shipment but didn't get anywhere with that except to create worry for our customers. Yellow ended up getting nothing.

The other one that I had forgotten was one where merchandise did not do what they promised and we withheld payment. In the first hearing I showed up they didn't and I won. They appealed and they showed up and I didn't and they won. We paid it in full and moved on.

I do agree that lawyers are not people to go out of your way to provide services for.

[Owen]

Jesus... lol

Well since you're all considering out of court a lawsuit, I was sued by a company for patent infringement back when I was doing the 3D printing. It was settled out of court, and the terms state I'm not allowed to say the company name, talk bad about them to media, discontinue operations of my company, and they'd pay my attorney fees. Most of that came in because they found out I was only 15 :)