Girl's Facebook Post Costs Her Dad $80,000 387
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "BBC reports that when Dana Snay learned her father had been awarded an $80,000 cash settlement in an age-discrimination lawsuit against his former employer, she couldn't resist bragging about it on Facebook. 'Mama and Papa Snay won the case against Gulliver,' the teen posted to her 1,200 Facebook friends. 'Gulliver is now officially paying for my vacation to Europe this summer. SUCK IT.' Trouble was her father had signed a confidentiality agreement so the school refused to pay a dime and a Florida appeals court has found in the school's favor. 'Snay violated the agreement by doing exactly what he had promised not to do,' wrote Judge Linda Ann Wells. 'His daughter then did precisely what the confidentiality agreement was designed to prevent.' Snay's father said in depositions that he and his wife knew they had to say something to their daughter because she suffered 'psychological scars' from issues during her enrollment at the school and was aware that they were in mediation with Gulliver attorneys. Attorneys say it's unlikely confiding in Dana Snay would have jeopardized the settlement — it was the facebook post that did them in. 'Remember when all you had to worry about was your daughter posting naked selfies of herself on Facebook?' writes Elie Mystal at Above the Law. 'Now, things are worse.'"
So why is this here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So why is this here? (Score:5, Funny)
I guess because the girl in question used technology to enable her to screwup in a really big way.
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That's true of almost anyone who screwed themselves up recently. So?
Slashdot is an inclusive community. If you are a fuck up, if you know of a fuck up and if technology is involved.
We'll be there.
Eventually, anyway.
Re:So why is this here? (Score:5, Funny)
> Eventually, anyway.
And then probably twice.
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Re:So why is this here? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because we hates teh Fazeboook @ Slashd0t.
Re:So why is this here? (Score:5, Informative)
So why is this here?
Two words: Hugh Pickens. Remember the article about the "magical" ctrl-shift-t combo ("It's like ctrl-z for the internet!")? Hugh Pickens. Organic chemistry is hard? Hugh Pickens. The Christian Science Monitor is warns Congress not to cut food stamps? You guessed right, that's a Hugh Pickens. The guy is fucking clickbait/comment-bait. He's a scourge on slashdot, and they keep printing his inane copy-paste submissions. That's how I see it.
Re:So why is this here? (Score:4, Informative)
It's here as a reminder that Facebook is a REALLY dumb idea and that people should realize it's not private.
Re:So why is this here? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's here as a reminder that Facebook is a REALLY dumb idea and that people should realize it's not private.
Facebook doesn't make stupid posts, people make stupid posts.
Are kitchen knives a really dumb idea after you cut off your finger while making dinner?
Re:So why is this here? (Score:4, Informative)
OK... then.... her daughter violated the terms of their settlement. Time to proceed with the lawsuit, then, since there is no longer a settlement.
Unlikely. A settlement is a form of contract. "We pay you $80,000. You give up the right to sue us. You also promise to keep silent about this agreement, and return the money if you don't". Neither side's lawyers would allow a settlement agreement where either side could effectively just pull out.
Re:So why is this here? (Score:4, Informative)
Can they still do that? After all, they were the ones who broke the deal.
It depends on the specific details of the confidentiality agreement; for it to be a legally binding contract there must be agreement and consideration (U.S. Law prevails in this case, as it took place in Miami, FL).
The normal mechanism here is that there is an exchange of "$1 and other valuable considerations", and that the settlement is considered and "additional consideration", and if the agreement is a negotiated agreement, which is typically the case, then the jude dismisses the original case with prejudice, which means it can not be legally re-raised, as (A) the separate consideration keeps the contract valid, and so (B) the dismissal with prejudice remains valid, even if the disclosure voided part of the contract, due to implied severability of contract terms.
Typically, a good lawyer on your side would prevent this type of estoppel, and you'd be able to reopen the case, but if the father in the case was very happy with the settlement amount, it might have been signed with that type of clause present, and the case could not be reasserted. A good lawyer on their side might "sweeten the pot" on the settlement to get the clause into place over your lawyers objections, if they could get you to fall for it.
So to answer your implied statement, it's likely that there is still a settlement, but it's probably $1, and it's probably already been paid, so there is no basis for reasserting the original case claims. Otherwise, this would likely not have hit the news.
Re:So why is this here? (Score:5, Funny)
The dad had signed the agreement - he wasn't supposed to tell his daughter. Her spouting it on Facebook proves that he did.
Re: So why is this here? (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article.
Man flaps mouth, man loses money.
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Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:3)
Not news at all. However the penalty for this stupid thing is a bit harsh compared to the infraction. Maybe the parents should have explained a bit more to her what this entails and what the effects of telling anybody could be...
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Re:Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. "We screwed up. We should've known better, but we decided to do it anyway. Here's our penalty money." "Oh, you screwed up. Your daughter didn't play by our rules. We take it all back...for teh win!"
They screwed up by divulging legally privileged information to a child, who has not yet reached the maturity to appropriately respect the confidentiality requirement.
Re:Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then they screwed up already by signing the agreement. I don't think it's realistic to have this kind of stuff happening in your family and then not telling you teenage kid the end result. I mean, after a year of mom and dad being nervous and stressed about the thing you will - not say a word to your kid? WTF kind of parenting is that? So they should not have taken an agreement that had that kind of a clause in the first place.
Re:Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:4, Funny)
A teenage girl... maturity...
Parse Error: There is a problem parsing the sentence.
Re:Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:4, Insightful)
The human brain doesn't fully develop until 25. We don't even hold teenagers responsible for their actions until they're 17-18.
Exactly. And so this (her actions) are her parent's responsibility. And so the fact that the information they agreed to keep private was out in public is the fault of the parents, and they are suffering exactly the consequences that they agreed to suffer for doing that exact thing.
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The human brain doesn't fully develop until 25
Fully developed also does not need to be the universal one size fits all standard for deciding is someone is responsible for their actions or not.
Its not like this girl was six, she is 19 now. So would have been in her middle to late teens the entire time this was going on. I agree with other posters who have pointed out it would have been impossible for her parents to not let her in on at least the basics. They can't reasonably have hidden the existence a major legal dispute from their daughter they l
Re:Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of retards are people raising? I got to hear lots of interesting things when I was young, and I always understood that I wasn't supposed to talk about it to anyone, even if my parents were present.
Because we don't allow people to grow up today.
Whereas quite a few years back, people were married really early, and raising children not long after they hit puberty. Both my Grandparents were married in their early teens. I was 21, and my better half 17 when we were married in the mid 70's. Today, 30 is considered a little early by many.
Now, people in their late 20's are considered not fully mature. We've artificially extended childhood until then.. One thing is for certain, children will remain children as long as you allow them. This college age girl had the mental maturity that a 12 year old would have had at one time.
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Re:Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:4, Insightful)
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She isn't the one who broke the contract - her father is, by telling her. Moral of the story, if your children can't be trusted to exercise responsibility like an adult, don't put them in a situation where you will be screwed if they act like a child.
It's not like keeping your mouth shut is terribly hard - kids usually figure out how to do it on their own about the time they start managing to successfully steal from the cookie jar. I can only assume that either the girl had really poor impulse control, or
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Reading the exact wording, it's quite possible that the daughter just guessed, and that isn't a breach of the agreement, is it? Perhaps there was more detail in other posts not in TFA, but she didn't
Re:Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then they screwed up already by signing the agreement. I don't think it's realistic to have this kind of stuff happening in your family and then not telling you teenage kid the end result. I mean, after a year of mom and dad being nervous and stressed about the thing you will - not say a word to your kid? WTF kind of parenting is that? So they should not have taken an agreement that had that kind of a clause in the first place.
Telling her wasn't the problem. Her telling everyone via Facebook is the problem.
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I mean, after a year of mom and dad being nervous and stressed about the thing you will - not say a word to your kid? WTF kind of parenting is that?
You say it in a biased way, assuming a level of stress displayed to the child was a necessary part of what happened. But it wasn't necessarily like that.
Good parenting? Good parenting is not sharing your financial affairs good or bad with your children. I never had, and never needed to have any details of my parents financial affairs, even the big ones like house and car buying, whether or not they inherited anything, and whilst I was aware when there were legal issues regarding accidents, I never knew the
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Who's the batch of asshats who are reaming her dad out like this anyway? Sounds like it's time to shine a Slash dotlight on 'em.
Nonsense. The school negotiated in good faith and came to an acceptable settlement--quite favorable to the plaintiff, when you consider that he didn't have to prove that they had done anything wrong. It's not their fault that the Snays immediately violated the terms of the settlement.
Re:Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree completely. Exclusive contracts and confidentiality clauses should be illegal. In fact, I'd go a step further and make any contract unenforceable in court unless it is published. Just provide a government service where anybody can publish a contract and anybody can peruse the contracts which are there. It would cost very little to operate or use in the modern age of computers.
and then we will need some kind of basic income (Score:2)
and then we will need some kind of basic income for all the people who get push out of work.
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what about min wage laws and other laws so you can't do stuff like.
Make your workers bear the costs of business. Hell with out them it can be like the old company store days and other stuff like forcing your workers to buy / rent uniforms at high cost. Forcing workers to rent there desk. Forcing them to rent the route, Forcing them to pay for any errors, unsold products, other overhead and so on.
Having a unsafe work places and where some gets hurt fire them and not pay them the costs to get better and so on
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Your facts seem to be less than accurate. [econlib.org] For example, in the UK, the minimum wage for 16-17 year olds was set in 2004 and started increasing in 2006. Mysteriously, the unemployment rate for 16-17 year olds in the UK started heading up right at the same time until it almost doubled. Probably just a coincidence, right?
Increases in the minimum wage cause unemployment among those who are less valuable to an employer than the minimum wage. They work the same way as every other law setting a price floor. Price f
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I'm not sure it's really all that harsh. It sounds like this "little" girl (who might be inferred to be over 18 now, God help us all) is a real piece of work. Now, if the settlement included rescinding the $60,000 award to plaintiff's attorneys, which would then cost Mr. Snay real money out of his pocket, that would be a much tougher pill to swallow. As it is, they won't be receiving any money, which is much different than, say, sharing mp3 files and being given a bill for 5-6 figures.
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I'm not sure it's really all that harsh.Now, if the settlement included rescinding the $60,000 award to plaintiff's attorneys, which would then cost Mr. Snay real money out of his pocket, that would be a much tougher pill to swallow.
He will have to pay the attorneys' fees for the appeals, regardless of whether he ultimately wins.
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If he's stupid enough to lose even more money by appealing such a clear-cut decision then I suspect age was the least of the reasons he was let go in the first place.
To be fair, the fact that the circuit court ruled in his favor on the NDA violation issue suggests that it wasn't that clear-cut.
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Not that I'm against underaged drinking, have engaged in that myself decades ago, but she is obviously the kind of kid who has no issue posting incriminating evidence of her crimes. That is at least a little insight into who she is. Plus, Busch Light? That should grant further insight:
http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/0... [everyjoe.com]
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Well,
in a sane country, with a sane legal system, parents are not 'responsible' (only liable) for actions of their ten year old children.
In other words: in europe the 'culprit' had to pay, there is no violation of the settlement, as the parents (the father?) did nothing wrong. And I'm pretty sure a clause like "we settle for this, and you keep it secret" is void anyway in europe.
A settlement is part of the "ruling", the court rules "because the parties settled to this (insert settlement) the case is dismiss
"Other valuable consideration" loophole (Score:2)
because the parties settled to this (insert settlement) the case is dismissed
...where "this" refers to one dollar and other valuable consideration [slashdot.org].
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Still questioning how a 'don't tell anyone' clause can be legal.
Non-disclose clauses in other settings, like employment contracts, are pretty commonplace. Legal settlements are much more hairy ethically, but they don't override law enforcement or (some) subpoenas.
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Re:Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:5, Interesting)
What penalty? They agreed to a settlement, and signed a contract. The loudmouth twat breached the contract, and lost the payment the contract called for. The offer was $80K if the plaintiff would STFU. Plaintiff didn't STFU, plaintiff doesn't get the money.
Personally, I think "confidentiality for settlement" should be illegal anyways --- it's used by large companies to pressure individuals to keep quiet, OR as an excuse to deny payment for wrongs committed.
BUT confidentiality is standard language, AND the daughter IF SHE WERE MATURE enough to have this divulged to her, should have known to ask for permission before sharing this kind of information.
Re:Teenages^hCourts will do stupid things? (Score:3)
Re: Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:3)
They can be settled. But there should be no secrets. How else would we know if coercion occurs?
Re: Teenagers will do stupid things? (Score:3)
Individuals vs gov or corps are not engaged in an equal contest and don't have the ability to refuse NDA terms as a practical matter - or such terms would NEVER be accepted. You have no pity for the weak vs the strong, yet you rage against the few who try to help the weak
Parents will do stupid things (Score:5, Insightful)
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Secret Strategy. (Score:2)
that is exactly where the laws of probability are greatest for containment.
Please understand the person you tell may be no better at keeping it than you were.
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Look at the bright side. It's an 80,000 dollar lesson in how to keep your mouth shut. I'd hope she would now know to not tell things just because you can. I know my parents used to caution me to not tell things about our business.
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Yes, this is a worthless story that was just posted here solely as fodder for people to come and complaint about anything Facebook-related.
Re:Honestly, it seems justified. (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's the problem. Confidentiality agreements should be illegal in the context of a legal case. If you don't want people to know you are a scumbag company, don't be a scumbag company. Paying people off to keep the secret seems phenomenally immoral.
Re:Honestly, it seems justified. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Honestly, it seems justified. (Score:4, Insightful)
And there's the problem. Confidentiality agreements should be illegal in the context of a legal case. If you don't want people to know you are a scumbag company, don't be a scumbag company. Paying people off to keep the secret seems phenomenally immoral.
Why? What's the alternative? One alternative is that the father would have shut up and got nothing. The other alternative is that he would have gone to court, at possibly enormous cost, with no certainty about winning or losing, possibly ending up with a huge bill and no payment, or ending up with a huge bill and a possibly small payout, the company ending up with a huge bill and possible a payout, and the lawyers with lots of money in their pocket.
Remember that we don't know if the company has actually done anything wrong, or if they have done anything that was provably wrong, or anything that was wrong enough to convince a jury that they should pay out money. "Scumbag company" is an unproven assumption that you are making, nothing more.
Re:Honestly, it seems justified. (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't seem to quite understand how the world works. This particular company may not be a scumbag company (though my understanding is that it is in fact one such organization.) This single case is immaterial. The fact is that many, many scumbag companies use the confidentiality "trick" to continue to exibit behaviours that, in many cases, lead to further deaths, disfigurements, etc. So you ask me, what's the alternative? That's easy. Make it illegal to keep secret the details of settlement agreements. Really. Seriously? You couldn't figure that out?
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You don't seem to quite understand how the world works.
I don't think you do. A civil settlement is compromise, often in many parts. Neither side gets everything they want. A confidentiality agreement is one of those potential parts. If you remove that option, the parties will simply compromise in other ways. Most likely, it means a company would offer a smaller settlement, and be more willing to go to trial.
Also, you seem to assume that anyone suing a company is in the right, and every company in the wrong. Not so.
Re:Honestly, it seems justified. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, there's a third path. It's to negotiate a non-confidentiality clause into the settlement.
Basically the wronged party brings suit to the wronger. The two get together and hammer out a settlement (this is normal - most lawsuits are settled rather than go through the courts). One party wants confidentiality and they offer something for it. The other party is free to negotiate terms that don't include it, but then they need to give something up.
Heck, perhaps they tried for it - and got a point where it was $20K if you don't want confidentiality, $80k if you do. Yes, it's a give-and-take, and for most people, that pound of flesh that's bigger is what they want.
$60k to keep my mouth shut? Where's that dotted line?!
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Settlements are sometimes used that way, but I don't see what the problem is. Especially when you're talking about large companies with various branches and regions. It gives them a chance to avoid court expenses, compensate the wronged party, and not disrupt their stock or other business dealings as a result. That doesn't mean they are a "scumbag company" that was just trying to bribe someone into shutting up. And even if they were, go bitch to the person who took the settlement.
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but its not her contract.
keep your teen in the loop (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why it's important to communicate with your kid. These things are not difficult to foresee. Kids (and a lot of adults) tend to believe against all reason that Facebook and it's ilk are their own private playground where nothing goes past their own circle of friends. But Facebook is just the tool here -- an attractive nuisance, if you will. It's so easy to acquire the momentary satisfaction of revealing information to your circle of friends. But it's really part of a larger problem, that of knowing when to keep your mouth shut in any medium. Adults presume at their peril that kids have this kind of insight.
So if, in this case, the adult told the kid "this is what a confidentiality agreement means, and doing this or that will violate it" and the kid did it anyway, she now owes the family about a century of allowance. But if the adult did not adequately explain this, it's really the adult's fault, because this is a natural thing for kids to want to do.
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Parent: "Do not, under ANY circumstance, tell anyone about this. It is confidential. We have to pay the money back if you say anything."
Child: "Understood"
Parent: "You told people"
Child: "No, I just posted on FaceBook that Gulliver was paying for our vacation. I didn't say how much or why or any of that stuff you said was confidential. I didn't actually *tell* anyone. The only people on my FaceBook are my friends, family, every guy I thought was cute once, and the pages for Love Pink and weed dispensar
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I can see that this has some logic to it.
If however we take it a bit further, it means that parents who leave guns available to kids who are not responsible to wield them are guilty of murder should something bad happen.
Some people get the warm fuzzies over confidentiality agreements. I can see them in some cases such as trade secrets, but protecting the guilty isn't something that keeps me awake at night.
Mama and Papa Snay? (Score:2)
Are we sure those aren't her grandparents?
Or is he her stepfather? 'Cause if I were her stepfather, she'd be sleeping at her bio-father's house tonight...
serves them right (Score:2)
While I don't agree that the settlement should have been confidential in the first place, a contract is a contract and he broke the damn rules.
I hope the lawyers eat their fill out of what he DID keep, and then he loses in the final appeal and gets left hung out to dry.
We hate it when big corporations weasel out of their promises, so I don't really think it's kosher to let Joe Sixpack have a free pass doing the same thing.
And honestly, I oppose confidentiality clauses on principle. This 80 grand was nothin
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I wonder if this move, and the ensuing bad publicity, will ultimately cause more than $80,000 of damages.
Since he violated the settlement agreement, the school may be free to sue him for the damages.
The daughter may have flipped their fate from "extra vacation"; to, "being forced to give up their house", to cover the legal costs from the school's successful lawsuit against them over breach of contract.
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I'm sure of it. I, like most people, had never heard of Gulliver Preparatory School before this fiasco. Now their name is all over the news (as are their age discrimination issues), solely because they rescinded the settlement - the fact that the girl blabbed on Facebook was inconsequential since no one outside her circle of friends knew or cared about the issue. The school had every right to take the money back, and I don't fault them for that, but I don't think they thought their cunning plan all the w
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Re:Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami Florida. (Score:4, Informative)
They paid $10K in back wages, and $60K in legal expenses, which he gets to keep. It was the $80K in punitive damages that were forfeited by the blabbermouthing.
Contracts (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest screwup here is that the father has admitted to breaking the contract by saying "we needed to tell her something", when all he needed to do was say nothing and get the schools lawyers to prove that he told his daughter about the settlement; instead of her daughter finding out by eavesdropping on a conversation, reading a letter or bank statement.
But yes, it's more of a law story than a tech story, but I can see the Your Rights Online angle. Just.
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Or they could have told her to keep her God damned trap shut for once in her life.
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Or they could have told her to keep her God damned trap shut for once in her life.
The parents are to blame. They revealed a secret they were contracted to keep. Their daughter is still growing up (faster at this point, I'll bet), but they're supposed to be setting an example.
But... (Score:5, Interesting)
...Eric Schmidt told us there should be no reason to have any secrets.
Why'd he sign the agreement? (Score:2)
Gulliver obviously settled because they weren't sure about their chances to win the lawsuit, so why should he accept their terms of non-disclosure and not just see it through? It feels like he gave away a winning hand. If someone's done you wrong you'd want to tell people about it. IANAL so maybe I'm missing something.
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Yes. The law part. Are you really saying 'Because they settled they must've been in the wrong so it's OK to break the agreement they settled on'? Do you realise how even more fucked up the world would be if everyone operated like that?
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Gulliver obviously settled because they weren't sure about their chances to win the lawsuit, so why should he accept their terms of non-disclosure and not just see it through? It feels like he gave away a winning hand. If someone's done you wrong you'd want to tell people about it. IANAL so maybe I'm missing something.
Of course you are missing something. The guy probably _wanted_ people to know, but even more wanted to get some money. The settlement would have given him money, but no publicity. Alternative was going to court. Possibly _very_ expensive. No guarantee that you win. No guarantee that you win more than your lawyers cost. Definitely no guarantee that you win $80,000 more than your lawyers cost.
If your lawyer told you "we can go to court and it costs us $100,000 and them $100,000; if the other side is nasty
Confidentiality agreements suck (Score:2)
And this is a big part of why.
Father should sue now. (Score:3, Interesting)
Since the original agreement was not to sue and not to say something, and that got broken, nothing to keep him from taking them to court and suing over the original thing. Might even work to their favor. "Well your honor, they were going to pay us off, but then didn't when word of it got leaked out via facebook."
As for the daughter, she's 19, time for her to leave the nest and earn her own living.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
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is it legal to forbid someone to speak about something with his relatives?
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The daughter didn't breach anything, she just got his dad busted for telling HER about it.
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She didn't, so he violated the agreement the second he told his daughter. Which, when dealing with a normal adult - you say "we won, we got our judgement, and we agreed that we would not talk about it, so we'll use the money to find a job and life goes on." And a normal adult would celebrate in private and never say anything unless asked, or would be cagey about the results (they came to an agreement, and my dad is looking for another position). No harm, no foul - it's like doing 68 in a 65mph zone.
But thi
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The father was bound by it, and breached it by telling her daughter. That alone would be cause to refuse payment. His daughter being a blabbermouth just got him caught for it.