8 ms·

You don’t have to file any court documents to inform somebody that you believe they have wronged you, and that you believe you are entitled to compensation for

You don’t have to file any court documents to inform somebody that you believe they have wronged you, and that you believe you are entitled to compensation for the resulting damages. The civil court system is there to handle things if you can’t work it out among yourselves.

pmiller2 7y ago
If you haven’t filed any documents, you haven’t sued anyone, either. I find it really hard to believe that every single case of an engineer suing over post-interview feedback has settled out of court, too.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Definitely. The fact that there are no known cases at least demonstrates the risk is very low. Much less risky than the kinds of things people do all the time in interviews.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    It could just as likely demonstrate that very few companies provide feedback to rejected candidates, or at least that when companies do, that they legally vet the feedback first (which would make you question the value and candidness of it). I have personally never heard of anybody giving or receiving it myself. So I’m not surprised that you would fail to find cases of disputes originating over it.
    - wpietri 7y ago
      I give it whenever asked. Last I was interviewed, I got it at about half the places I talked to. It's a very natural thing for people to ask about. And answering questions is also pretty natural. The notion that it happens approximately never strikes me as something that needs a lot more evidence than your personal experience.
      - AmericanChopper 7y ago
        The entire premise of the OP is that candidates are “rarely told why they got the outcome that they did”. The author claims to have a survey supporting this, but they didn’t publish any of those details. I did a bit of googling and found this[0] article citing a report that claims: * 69.7% of rejected candidates receive no feedback * Of those that did, 77.3% said the feedback wasn’t useful That leaves 6.8% of rejected candidates receiving useful feedback, which sounds quite plausible to me. In reality “risk of getting sued” is over simplified. If you want to give feedback to candidates, you can choose between two options. Just do it (and risk getting sued), or have your feedback legally vetted. The number of people receiving useful feedback is so small that it’s entirely plausible that those cases mostly represent the employers who choose to accept such an expense when rejecting candidates. The author makes no attempt to explain why they think such risk aversive behaviour is not the cause of the lack of lawsuits, instead jumping to the conclusion that the aversion is unnecessary. The other half of the headline claim (regardless of any debate about its technical accuracy) is spurious at best. Any plaintiff would know that the threat of filing a discrimination case is leverage in a settlement negotiation. Without knowing how many settlements of that nature take place, it’s not possible to draw such a conclusion. Finally, the authors methodology is questionable. A survey (especially one that doesn’t report its sample, or methodology) is not sufficient to draw the conclusion “never”. Putting aside the matter of out of court settlements, you’d need to perform a rather extensive study of case law to draw such a conclusion. Certainly something more than “had a quick look, didn’t find anything”. [0] https://www.thebalancecareers.com/must-employers-tell-applicants-why-they-weren-t-hired-1919151 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/must-employers-tell-applic...
        wpietri 7y ago
        I don't understand how you reconcile "It could just as likely demonstrate that very few companies provide feedback to rejected candidates" and "69.7% of rejected candidates receive no feedback". It doesn't have to be useful feedback for somebody to sue over it. But even if it were, I still don't see how your point makes sense. Let's say there are a million software developers in the US. Let's assume they change jobs every 3 years and do 3 interviews when they do change. That's 68,000 things that people could sue over. Even if one in a thousand actually reaches the lawsuit stage, that's over a thousand lawsuits over the last 20 years. I agree "never" is too strong, but I think this search puts a plausible upper bound on the rate of lawsuits.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  That’s getting a little bit nit-picky over the definition of “sue”. In this context the risk people are talking about is that a candidate will make some sort of legal claim against them. Whether that claim ends up in court really only changes the potential impact of that risk. Especially considering most HR related legal complaints end up with an out of court settlement (even a lot of the frivolous ones), because the cost of litigation (including potential reputations damages) usually outweighs the cost settlement. There’s no legal definition of “sue”. You can’t go to court and file “suing documents”. If you define “sue” as to make a legal claim against somebody, then it’s immaterial whether they do that via a letter from a lawyer, or by serving them documents to appear in court.
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    There is a legal definition of "sue" and it does mean just that, to file a civil claim in court. You may receive a nasty letter from a lawyer threatening to sue you unless you fulfil their demands, but that's kind of the point, they're threatening to sue you but at this moment you haven't been sued yet and won't be until (and unless) they actually do file a claim; and it might as well be just empty threats asserting that they could do that with no actual intention to follow up (lawyers do that), so it's an important difference between threatening to sue (which can be done frivolously) and actually suing. https://lmgtfy.com/?q=legal+definition+of+sue&s=d https://lmgtfy.com/?q=legal+definition+of+sue&s=d https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/sue https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/sue - "To initiate a lawsuit or continue a legal proceeding" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sue https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sue - "to seek justice or right from (a person) by legal process" (all the letters and negotiations up and until a suit has been filed is not the legal process); "to take legal proceedings in court".
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    Using the commonly understood definition of a word is not nitpicking.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      So you think the phrase “I’m worried I’ll get sued” would commonly be understood to mean “I’m worried that formal legal proceedings will be initiated against me, but I’m not at all worried that legal proceedings might be threatened in an attempt to leverage me into a settlement”? If somebody hired lawyers to negotiate with another party to pay them damages, under threat of a lawsuit, I’d say that would commonly be described as “suing” or “getting sued”. If an employer says “I don’t provide feedback to candidates for risk of getting sued over it”, they are absolutely referring to the risk associated with providing that candidate said feedback. Which includes both lawsuits and out of court settlements. So regardless of what you think the common usage is, that’s certainly how it’s used in this situation. Otherwise you could just tell said employers “you never have to worry about getting sued, because you can just pay the settlement lol...”.

pmiller2 7y ago

If you haven’t filed any documents, you haven’t sued anyone, either. I find it really hard to believe that every single case of an engineer suing over post-interview feedback has settled out of court, too.

wpietri 7y ago
Definitely. The fact that there are no known cases at least demonstrates the risk is very low. Much less risky than the kinds of things people do all the time in interviews.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  It could just as likely demonstrate that very few companies provide feedback to rejected candidates, or at least that when companies do, that they legally vet the feedback first (which would make you question the value and candidness of it). I have personally never heard of anybody giving or receiving it myself. So I’m not surprised that you would fail to find cases of disputes originating over it.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    I give it whenever asked. Last I was interviewed, I got it at about half the places I talked to. It's a very natural thing for people to ask about. And answering questions is also pretty natural. The notion that it happens approximately never strikes me as something that needs a lot more evidence than your personal experience.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      The entire premise of the OP is that candidates are “rarely told why they got the outcome that they did”. The author claims to have a survey supporting this, but they didn’t publish any of those details. I did a bit of googling and found this[0] article citing a report that claims: * 69.7% of rejected candidates receive no feedback * Of those that did, 77.3% said the feedback wasn’t useful That leaves 6.8% of rejected candidates receiving useful feedback, which sounds quite plausible to me. In reality “risk of getting sued” is over simplified. If you want to give feedback to candidates, you can choose between two options. Just do it (and risk getting sued), or have your feedback legally vetted. The number of people receiving useful feedback is so small that it’s entirely plausible that those cases mostly represent the employers who choose to accept such an expense when rejecting candidates. The author makes no attempt to explain why they think such risk aversive behaviour is not the cause of the lack of lawsuits, instead jumping to the conclusion that the aversion is unnecessary. The other half of the headline claim (regardless of any debate about its technical accuracy) is spurious at best. Any plaintiff would know that the threat of filing a discrimination case is leverage in a settlement negotiation. Without knowing how many settlements of that nature take place, it’s not possible to draw such a conclusion. Finally, the authors methodology is questionable. A survey (especially one that doesn’t report its sample, or methodology) is not sufficient to draw the conclusion “never”. Putting aside the matter of out of court settlements, you’d need to perform a rather extensive study of case law to draw such a conclusion. Certainly something more than “had a quick look, didn’t find anything”. [0] https://www.thebalancecareers.com/must-employers-tell-applicants-why-they-weren-t-hired-1919151 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/must-employers-tell-applic...
      - wpietri 7y ago
        I don't understand how you reconcile "It could just as likely demonstrate that very few companies provide feedback to rejected candidates" and "69.7% of rejected candidates receive no feedback". It doesn't have to be useful feedback for somebody to sue over it. But even if it were, I still don't see how your point makes sense. Let's say there are a million software developers in the US. Let's assume they change jobs every 3 years and do 3 interviews when they do change. That's 68,000 things that people could sue over. Even if one in a thousand actually reaches the lawsuit stage, that's over a thousand lawsuits over the last 20 years. I agree "never" is too strong, but I think this search puts a plausible upper bound on the rate of lawsuits.
AmericanChopper 7y ago
That’s getting a little bit nit-picky over the definition of “sue”. In this context the risk people are talking about is that a candidate will make some sort of legal claim against them. Whether that claim ends up in court really only changes the potential impact of that risk. Especially considering most HR related legal complaints end up with an out of court settlement (even a lot of the frivolous ones), because the cost of litigation (including potential reputations damages) usually outweighs the cost settlement. There’s no legal definition of “sue”. You can’t go to court and file “suing documents”. If you define “sue” as to make a legal claim against somebody, then it’s immaterial whether they do that via a letter from a lawyer, or by serving them documents to appear in court.
- PeterisP 7y ago
  There is a legal definition of "sue" and it does mean just that, to file a civil claim in court. You may receive a nasty letter from a lawyer threatening to sue you unless you fulfil their demands, but that's kind of the point, they're threatening to sue you but at this moment you haven't been sued yet and won't be until (and unless) they actually do file a claim; and it might as well be just empty threats asserting that they could do that with no actual intention to follow up (lawyers do that), so it's an important difference between threatening to sue (which can be done frivolously) and actually suing. https://lmgtfy.com/?q=legal+definition+of+sue&s=d https://lmgtfy.com/?q=legal+definition+of+sue&s=d https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/sue https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/sue - "To initiate a lawsuit or continue a legal proceeding" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sue https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sue - "to seek justice or right from (a person) by legal process" (all the letters and negotiations up and until a suit has been filed is not the legal process); "to take legal proceedings in court".
- pmiller2 7y ago
  Using the commonly understood definition of a word is not nitpicking.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    So you think the phrase “I’m worried I’ll get sued” would commonly be understood to mean “I’m worried that formal legal proceedings will be initiated against me, but I’m not at all worried that legal proceedings might be threatened in an attempt to leverage me into a settlement”? If somebody hired lawyers to negotiate with another party to pay them damages, under threat of a lawsuit, I’d say that would commonly be described as “suing” or “getting sued”. If an employer says “I don’t provide feedback to candidates for risk of getting sued over it”, they are absolutely referring to the risk associated with providing that candidate said feedback. Which includes both lawsuits and out of court settlements. So regardless of what you think the common usage is, that’s certainly how it’s used in this situation. Otherwise you could just tell said employers “you never have to worry about getting sued, because you can just pay the settlement lol...”.