Class action lawsuit filed totals $2.2 trillion

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-09-15 06:00pm

Steve Kirsch, who founded Infoseek and now works as a venture capitalist, has filed a $2.2 trillion (yes, trillion) class action lawsuit against Fax.com, though the case has yet to gain class action certification.

Article

The article isn't about the lawsuit, it just mentions it, but still... jesus, isn't that roughly equivalent to the total U.S. Federal budget? That's just mind-boggling. Why go for such a ludicrous amount anyway? It would be utterly impossible for any company or person to pay such an amount.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2003-09-15 06:04pm

As a plaitiff you balloon up your damages to as far as you can legally, projecting it out to oftentimes ridiculous levels and then it is up to the defense council to chip away at the those numbers. Essentially it puts the plaintiff in an initial strong barganing position when it comes time to discuss setllement.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-09-15 06:05pm

I recall a class action lawsuit against Microsoft being proposed a while ago totaling in the ten trillions.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-09-15 09:42pm

The most recent US federal budget was around 2.4 trillion as I recall.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-15 10:32pm

Stravo's obviously right about the negotiation aspect of such idiotically large damage claims, but I personally think that any lawsuit whose damage claims cannot be realistically tied to actual verifiable damages should be simply thrown out of court on that basis alone.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-09-15 11:27pm

Darth Wong wrote:Stravo's obviously right about the negotiation aspect of such idiotically large damage claims, but I personally think that any lawsuit whose damage claims cannot be realistically tied to actual verifiable damages should be simply thrown out of court on that basis alone.

$2.2 trillion comes to over a billion unsolicited faxes at $1500 per fax, the maximum allowable damage award under the law that bans unsolicited commercial faxes. Obviously, they have to be suing for other things, like lost productivity and a whomping punitive damage settlement on top of it. This number doesn't seem remotely realistic or even legally allowable, but tort law was never my specialty.

All that being said, my sympathies for Fax.com are severely limited. It's obvious they've been flaunting the law and from the article, it seems they plan on defying court orders as well (they're attempting to dissolve themselves and spread their business around several companies to avoid action, and they've destroyed documents in direct defiance of a court order telling them to preserve them).

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-09-15 11:58pm

RedImperator wrote:
All that being said, my sympathies for Fax.com are severely limited.

Mine as well, spam faxe's are using up your paper and your ink, its theft.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-16 12:17am

Oh, I agree that fax.com's owners should be ass-raped in prison, but that's the point; they should go to prison. Chasing them for some small obtainable portion of their ill-gotten gains is hardly appropriate.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-09-16 12:19am

They probably thought they could get away with this shit on administrative convenience (too expensive to bother trying to recover tiny losses). Good thing they were wrong.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-09-16 12:20am

Darth Wong wrote:Oh, I agree that fax.com's owners should be ass-raped in prison, but that's the point; they should go to prison. Chasing them for some small obtainable portion of their ill-gotten gains is hardly appropriate.

They can't be sent to jail, sadly, unless it's for contempt of court. They didn't actually commit fraud, only stole the time and resources of their victims. In this case, I think it's totally approppriate to punish them by taking away their money, which was obtained legally from companies seeking their marketing services.