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Law Prof Characterizes Yahoo Suit as Extortion

Posted by Zonk on Fri May 12, 2006 12:34 PM
from the one-person's-opinion dept.
The Courts Yahoo!
netbuzz writes "Fair comment or libel? A law prof/blogger calls those behind the class-action suit against Yahoo 'extortionists.' The targeted lawyers, who include spyware/adware expert Ben Edelman, are not amused." From the article: "Goldman, who according to his blog 'holds leadership positions in the American Bar Association and the Computer Law Association,' addresses the merits of the suit in a generally academic fashion before winding up for the big finish: 'I think these lawsuits are nothing more than a shakedown for cash,' he concludes. 'Even unmeritorious class action lawsuits are expensive to defend, so the plaintiffs' lawyers can exploit those defense costs for their personal largesse. They can make this argument to defendants: settle with me for a fraction of your total expected defense costs, and we're both better off (defendants save some defense costs, plaintiffs' lawyers grab some personal loot).'"

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  • I'm sure the various Bar Associations will backdate his disbarment.

  • Yahoo! is run by yahoos? (Score:4, Informative)

    by fragmentate (908035) * on Friday May 12 2006, @12:37PM (#15319334) Homepage Journal
    I don't think of Yahoo! as a technology company having worked with their "development team". They're a second-rate hack, at best. We have submitted YSS feeds [slashdot.org] to them and had them rejected with various problems. We would then wait 2 hours, and resubmit the feed, unchanged...

    The feed is then accepted.

    We also manage keyword buys. We'll submit a list of keywords, for example, "baby jump suits" -- to have it rejected (without notifying us -- we have to discover it after-the-fact). The word that actually goes in is "baby jump suit". The next time we submit, "baby jump suits" goes in... Clearly subjective, depending on which hack approved the submission.

    One can deduce that their approval process is manual. That means they probably have a bunch of $10/hr. hacks doing the grunt work. It's inconsistant.

    I digress...

    My point is that if you have people instead of systems, algorithms, and/or applications to do the tedious work, you have:

    • Human error.
    • Human cheating.
    • Disinterest.

    I don't think Yahoo! the corporate entity is aware of these goings-on. But given the clear inconsistancies that make Yahoo! difficult to work with, I think they're accountable nonetheless.

    At the same time, if someone on a boat isn't helping keep it affloat, you don't sink the boat. So, in spite of Yahoo! needing to be slapped -- I'd rather see them slapped with a dose of "hey your products suck" than a bunch of lawsuits by money-grubbing lawyers.

    • No doubt there is some component of incompetence involved, but it's more than that. For example, Overture has a long history of "melting pot" ad placement, even before they Yahoo acquisition. Their advertisers are told about the good neighborhoods where th
      • 2. Lack of interest; indifference.

        There you go. Hack. If your grasp on the english language was as good as your grasp on weak attacks, you would have noticed the difference between "disinterested" (an adjective) and "disinterest" (a noun). At least p

  • yahoos (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by gEvil (beta) (945888)
    No kidding. All those damned yahoos in suits are extortionists...

  • The Horror (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Umbral Blot (737704) on Friday May 12 2006, @12:40PM (#15319369) Homepage
    Lawsuits filed solely to make money, banish the thought. Who would do such a despicable thing? Seriously though, I am glad someone is speaking out about this practice in the yahoo case, but really something should be done within the legal system to fix the problem as a whole, not just this symptom. One possible solution would be to have lawyers on both sides be paid a fixed rate by the state, which would fix some inequalities, although admittedly individual people might still be motivated by money to sue.

    • Class-action fix (Score:5, Insightful)

      by overshoot (39700) on Friday May 12 2006, @12:48PM (#15319476)
      One possible solution would be to have lawyers on both sides be paid a fixed rate by the state, which would fix some inequalities, although admittedly individual people might still be motivated by money to sue.
      If you want to see some real panic in the class-action racket, try this:

      Counsel for the plaintiffs in a class-action suit may not receive any more than is actually distributed to the plaintiffs.

      That's the classic scam: the defendents settle for $100 million, the plaintiffs' law firm get $95 million of it, $5 million is offered to the plaintiff class if they respond to request 20 pages of paperwork to apply for their $0.75 payout; a total of $120 thousand is actually distributed to the plaintiff class members and "their" lawyers pocket the balance.

      Suggest it to your Congresscritters. The ABA and Trial Lawyers' Association will hate it, but if it ever sees daylight nobody will dare vote against it because (unlike a lot of tort reform) it doesn't take a dime from plaintiffs -- the ones they ABA and TLA use to justify their normal way of doing business.

      [ Parent ]
    • I've often thought that lawyers are at the top of human food chain (at least in the US,) since no one is immune to lawsuits. To even defend oneself against such, one needs a lawyer. Regardless of merit or outcome, lawyers win, always.
      • You're not the only one to notice this. It's not even a new phenomenon.

        Charles Dickens wrote a book that's arguably a gigantic illustration of that point: people fight, but the lawyers always win. (I'm talking about Bleak House here, and for those who have
    • The system's out-of-control expenses runs on near-limitless "lawyering".

      So, put a limit on the lawyering. We can even make it voluntary, to wit: there can be two levels of suit.

      Simple Level: State the facts during your filing and let judge/jury de

  • Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Coleco (41062) on Friday May 12 2006, @12:42PM (#15319390)
    Oh I though that's how lawsuits worked. Always.

  • Justice (Score:3, Insightful)

    by McGiraf (196030) on Friday May 12 2006, @12:45PM (#15319435) Homepage
    It's seem that justice is no more a thing to keep society to a certain standard and give everybody a nice and predictable place to live. It's just a bussiness now, like fast food and diaper manufacturing.
    • >It's seem that justice is no more a thing to keep society to a certain standard and give everybody a nice and predictable place to live.

      Which is not nothing. Ponder Rwanda or Zimbabwe as examples of what happens when you lose the approximation of justi

  • "The legal issue would likely be whether the statements were actual imputations of a crime, or were 'rhetorical hyperbole,' essentially a statement of opinion, not of fact. The former could be considered libelous, while the latter could not."

    Of course

    • He made sure he could claim this as opinion. "I think these lawsuits are...." "I see this lawsuit as..." "I see that process as..." These are fairly obvious opinion statements, not statements of fact. If they were meant as statements of fact, he would not
    • When NetworkWorld's McNamara asks an opinion from an attorney, the guy quickly digs up two libel verdicts (1903, 1940) and one dismissal (1999).

      The legal issue would likely be whether the statements were actual imputations of a crime, or were 'rhetorical h
      • Speech is just that, speech.

        And if your speech is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theatre, or calling someone "monkey butt" on TV, you can bet your speech will be met with a citation in the former case and a slander suit in the latter. Just because we

        • Calling someone "monkey butt" isn't slander; it's simply an insult. You can insult someone all day long without defaming them. Accusing someone of extortion, though, could be libel.

  • link to the blog post in question (Score:3, Informative)

    by DrSbaitso (93553) on Friday May 12 2006, @12:46PM (#15319453)
    for some reason, it's not in the headline.

    Technology & Marketing Law Blog [ericgoldman.org]

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by gid13 (620803)
    "Even unmeritorious class action lawsuits are expensive to defend"
    Assuming for a second that the quoted individual isn't full of it, why are any unmeritorious lawsuits expensive to defend? Don't courts do things like order one party to pay the other's lega

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

      by overshoot (39700) on Friday May 12 2006, @12:57PM (#15319569)
      Assuming for a second that the quoted individual isn't full of it, why are any unmeritorious lawsuits expensive to defend? Don't courts do things like order one party to pay the other's legal fees in cases like that?
      He's not, they are, and the court's don't.

      The main reason is that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure #10 is basically a dead letter.

      • "Professional courtesy" means that other lawyers won't accuse an abuser of being abusive because the rest of the legal community will retaliate. Nobody likes a snitch.
      • The Court won't because it just means more work, and they're too busy as it is. Besides, the Court of Appeals will probably reverse anyway.
      • For a suit to be legally frivolous requires that a whole bunch of lawyers decide that there was no conceivable way that there was the slightest shred of argument to support it. Gimme a break! These are lawyers -- their training, their whole point in existence, is finding something to argue about.
      [ Parent ]

    • Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dfl (808355)
      Though rare, courts do order the loser to pay fees when the suit is deemed frivilous. A famous (but extreme) case forced Mattel to pay $1.8M to an artist whose lawyer argued the whole case for free. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/2004-06-2 9-bar [usatoday.com]

  • Loser pays should be the way (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vodkamattvt (819309) on Friday May 12 2006, @12:53PM (#15319537) Homepage
    This is another reason why we need reform in litigation, especially in a litigation prone society such as the US. Loser pays attorney fees for the winner, problem solved.

    Yes, I am aware there are problems with this also (loser can't pay, etc). But it is definately a start.

    • I agree. There needs to be some protection for the little guy (like he shouldn't have to pay for the defendents [i]team[/i] of lawyers when a [i]team[/i] was clearly not necessary), but overall a loser pays system would do a lot of good for our legal syst
    • Agreed.

      I'd limit it to his own attorney costs to avoid people engaging frivolent huge lawyer armies.

      E.g. :
      - I engage one 50k lawyer
      - the other engages a team of 10 100k lawyers
      - I loose
      - I pay 50k for my lawyer and 50k for the other lawyers
      - the other 950k

      • That's WAAAY too complicated. Sounds like somethng a lawyer would dream up ...

        Shakespeare said it best:

        The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

        -- Shakespeare, King Henry VI

        Here's a bunch more lawyer quotes http://www.power-of-attorney [power-of-attorneys.com]

        • The problem with this approach is that it favours the more articulate participant. When you explain the situation, you will put a spin on it that paints you in a positive light. When the other party presents the situation, they will do the same. If one
          • Judges are smart enough to sort through the smarmy eloquence and get to the truth. Lawyers actually interfere with this process by tapdancing around the truth. Just look at the crapflood from SCO and their lawyers. Does anyone believe Darl could have laste
  • They can make this argument to defendants: settle with me for a fraction of your total expected defense.

    This is otherwise known as the Michael Jackson defense.

  • "Fair comment or libel?" (Score:2, Informative)

    by Jeian (409916)
    Fair comment or libel?

    I think in order to be libellous, it has to be untrue.
  • I wonder if he's heard of the RIAA or MPAA?

    "They can make this argument to defendants: settle with me for a fraction of your total expected defense costs, and we're both better off (defendants save some defense costs, plaintiffs' lawyers grab some personal

  • Largesse? (Score:2, Funny)

    by mooncaine (778422)
    "Even unmeritorious class action lawsuits are expensive to defend, so the plaintiffs' lawyers can exploit those defense costs for their personal largesse."

    That sentence doesn't make sense. What do you think is meant by "for their personal largesse"? Larges
    • So any aggressive arguement is by default flawed?

      I think your own "Aw Shucks" G Dubya-syle thinking could have a devastating effect.
        • What I'm saying is just because you make your arguement in a somewhat aggressive fashion, it doesn't mean your argument is automatically flawed.

          Also, here [findlaw.com] is a link to an article discussing a Supreme Court desision pretty much on point where Justice Sca
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