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I fought Equifax's lawyers in court and won: Part 2

333 points| evashang | 8 years ago |medium.com | reply

68 comments

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[+] hyperbole|8 years ago|reply
Equifax is yet another form of financial corruption. The charge/fee incurred in freezing your credit is so close to a shakedown - this is absurd. Credit ratings of the population are a product they sell to financial firms and then they charge (read shakedown) that population for pausing the sale of that data so you the consumer can prevent irreparable credit harm. Then when they screw up and allow a leak of your data which will eventually cause irreparable harm they have the audacity to bully those they've screwed over.
[+] losteric|8 years ago|reply
It's even more ridiculous: The bank lets criminals walk out the door with money in our name.

Equifax demands money to avoid punishing us when banks are defrauded through their own incompetence.

This is worse, because Equifax aided the criminals, but we were always getting screwed over.

[+] nwatson|8 years ago|reply
Fortunately some states like North Carolina force credit bureaus to let consumers freeze credit reports for no fees. I froze our family credit with the big three and it didn't take long (one bureau required me too register an online account) and now am finalizing Innovis freeze too.
[+] AdamJacobMuller|8 years ago|reply
> prove that the increased number of the spam calls I was getting were a result of the breach.

Damnit.

I have to admit to not caring so much about the Equifax breach. I, personally, don't really care about that kind of data being public and I relentlessly monitor my credit report for changes, even if someone did abuse my data, I would know quickly and clean it up before it happened.

But I've been getting a literally 100x-fold increase in spam calls in the past few months. I have gone from one every few days to, I kid you not, 20+/day sometimes. If this is even remotely related to the Equifax breach I legitimately want to sue them just for that.

[+] Meekro|8 years ago|reply
I'm as glad as anyone else to see Equifax getting what's due to them, but is anyone else bothered by the surreal quality to this story?

It sounds like the rules and procedures being applied were vastly different than what Equifax's highly paid lawyer expected. Is their $1000-an-hour lawyer just incompetent, or is the pro tem judge here allowed to make up the rules as she goes along?

[+] avinium|8 years ago|reply
> Is their $1000-an-hour lawyer just incompetent, or is the pro tem judge here allowed to make up the rules as she goes along?

Neither. It's just typical corporate lawyer arrogance in trying to bully and bluff someone into submission.

It really only works on complete amateurs. Given this guy is running a company whose sole purpose is to finance claims against Equifax, he knows how to deal with them.

All in all,I'd say this is a win for the US legal system. It shows you don't have to be a well-funded professional litigator to get access to justice.

[+] anarazel|8 years ago|reply
> It sounds like the rules and procedures being applied were vastly different than what Equifax's highly paid lawyer expected. Is their $1000-an-hour lawyer just incompetent, or is the pro tem judge here allowed to make up the rules as she goes along?

It might also just be an attempt at psychological warfare. For an amateur to be confronted with stuff like this got to be very stressful. Therefore reducing likelihood of the plaintiff making a good case.

But it might just end up pissing off the judge.

[+] plorkyeran|8 years ago|reply
Hiring a $1000/hour lawyer for your small claims case is like hiring an airplane mechanic to work on your car. There's a pretty good chance that this is the first time Equifax's lawyer had ever been involved in a small claims case.
[+] wl|8 years ago|reply
My experience is that big law lawyers tend to have very narrow areas of expertise. There's not much call for big law lawyers appealing an $8,000 small claims judgement, so you probably shouldn't expect much.
[+] helipad|8 years ago|reply
Is it possible the pro-tem judge wouldn't have known the intricacies of small claims court?

Perhaps the attorney thought they could befuddle both the author and the judge.

[+] paultopia|8 years ago|reply
Chances are that the King and Spaulding lawyer has never set foot in a small claims court (or an appeal from small claims court under same rule).
[+] manigandham|8 years ago|reply
It's definitely not incompetence. Lawyers at that level know what they're doing. This is just a strategy to rattle the opposition (and the judge). It usually works unless you're prepared or in higher courts with more formality and experience in the room.
[+] paultannenbaum|8 years ago|reply
For what it is worth to others thinking of doing the same thing, I too took Equifax to small claims court in Santa Barbara.

They sent a lawyer from their legal team to the initial hearing. I presented a lot of the similar arguments that were presented here, but the judge denied my claim based on not being able to prove negligence on the part of Equifax.

[+] BugsJustFindMe|8 years ago|reply
It would be nice if the author (or someone) made available a mostly-automated process for filing similar claims by people who aren't lawyers. The same successful arguments should work for any of us.
[+] IncRnd|8 years ago|reply
> It would be nice if the author (or someone) made available a mostly-automated process for filing similar claims by people who aren't lawyers. The same successful arguments should work for any of us.

That's not correct. Outcomes will vary per jurisdiction, judge, and the actual case circumstances.

[+] chrischen|8 years ago|reply
Isn’t the author’s company doing just that as a service?
[+] iloveluce|8 years ago|reply
Here is the HN discussion to Part 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16217241

Pretty surprised how much Equifax spent trying to win this case. I'm sure they're doing it to dissuade others from suing them as well but after reading this I really want to sue myself. I wonder if they'll appeal the verdict again.

[+] g051051|8 years ago|reply
They probably don't care about the cost, it's the precedent they're trying to block or overturn. And I don't see how even the appeal can stand against further appeals (or whatever they do next to protest what they consider an invalid ruling).
[+] danielvf|8 years ago|reply
The second judgement is final. No appeal.
[+] ficklepickle|8 years ago|reply
These scummy corps do it all the time. A critical illness insurance co. tried to not pay my mom because they had their own technical definition of a heart attack. She sold herself the policy, and didn't even know this. In fact, it was subsequently ruled illegal and new policies couldn't use this definition. But they flew in lawyers to her small town, so she had to go to small claims court while recovering from a heart attack. All to try and avoid paying about 20k. She settled for most of it, in the end.
[+] bitmapbrother|8 years ago|reply
Imagine having to explain to Equifax how your high powered legal team lost a small claims court case to a guy with no law degree.
[+] ipsum2|8 years ago|reply
To be fair, he runs a legal startup (legalist) so he has more experience than the average Joe.
[+] IncRnd|8 years ago|reply
Equifax already knows they were in the wrong and are just trying to stop the liability. The big wig lawyer vs yokel scenario doesn't really fit here.
[+] advisedwang|8 years ago|reply
I wonder how easy it is to collect the judgment against Equifax.
[+] DaiPlusPlus|8 years ago|reply
Collecting against companies is far more easier than collecting from uncooperative private persons - assuming the company is "established" in some way. Given that Equifax is a very large company, collecting is easy: once you get your judgement, file for a Writ of Execution and have the sheriff in whatever CA county Equifax has an office in to visit them in-person and demand they cough up the money or they'll start literally seizing assets there-and-then. Failing that, you can also easily get a bank levy against whatever bank accounts Equifax has in your state - provided you can track-down their account details and financial institution: something you can do with an Examination of Assets hearing, which has an added bonus: if the company representative fails to appear they get a bench-warrant for their arrest which becomes a criminal matter.

I'm surprised at how so many small-claim case victors sell their judgement to a collections firm for a fraction of its true value when collecting money is a lot easier and straight-forward than people imagine. You only need to go to a collections company if it isn't worth your time - not if the debtor isn't cooperative.

[+] darepublic|8 years ago|reply
Nice, but this needs to be scaled up (many more people need to do this, and a clear recipe provided)
[+] sverhagen|8 years ago|reply
Isn't there a class action to that effect?
[+] bogomipz|8 years ago|reply
What a great and inspiring piece.

I have a question - does this become part of caselaw then for this jurisdiction? Is this now precedent for others who want to sue Equifax for being victim of the same data breach?

[+] gnicholas|8 years ago|reply
Undoubtedly not. This would be a non-precedential decision. You could mention it in another case but the judge would have no obligation to follow it. Also, your facts are going to be different, which further complicates things.