6 ms·

Bigger v. Facebook, Inc.

121 points by hhs 6y ago

BelleOfTheBall 6y ago
It's sad to see the law moving further and further in favor of corporations either way, though I'm very much not a lawyer and, even after reading all this, can't tell if this is as bad as it sounds.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- xxpor 6y ago
  This is more or less the entire purpose of the Federalist Society's existence.
  - rmrfstar 6y ago
    Yup. FedSoc is the political arm of the law and economics movement.
- henryfjordan 6y ago
  It's not super bad. A FB worker was suing for overtime money. She had the right under the FLSA to force FB to notify her coworkers that they might want to join her suit. FB argued that half of her coworkers were covered by arbitration agreements and they shouldn't have to give that half notice of the lawsuit. The appeals court agreed, ever so slightly eroding the rights of workers.
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    >"ever so slightly eroding the rights of workers" >"it's not super bad" I disagree, but maybe there is a crowd out there that agrees workers shouldn't have rights?
    - FriendlyNormie 6y ago
      Be careful, antisemitic remarks are not allowed on HN.
  - thelittleone 6y ago
    "slightly eroding the rights of workers". Seems bad enough to me. How often are the rights of mega corporations slightly eroded? And how do those erosions hold under the weight of appeals by megacorps lawyer hordes and lobbyists?
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The rights of mega corporations get eroded very frequently. I think even anti-corporate activists will admit to that. Their concern, generally, is that corporate rights should be not eroded through gradual tiny reforms but blown away completely.
      - thelittleone 6y ago
        Fair point. Intuitively though it seems the net of mega corps erosion of rights vs accretion of rights is firmly in their favor.
      - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        The rights of mega corporations to exploit particular things is eroded frequently by regulation, however the size and power of mega corporations are such that they can devote considerable effort to finding new things to exploit that have not been effectively regulated yet. They can of course also devote resources to stop regulation of their favorite areas of exploitability.
        vimax 6y ago
        Also, the large corporations have the lobbying money to influence regulation. Once their behavior is egregious enough to warrant regulation, they able to twist it to be a barrier to entry for new players further entrenching their own position.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  >It's sad to see the law moving further and further in favor of corporations either way Are they? Or are companies just becoming more careful when it comes to the letter of the law?
  - xxpor 6y ago
    The law is changing to accommodate them to make whatever they're doing the letter of the law.
    - missedthecue 6y ago
      can you give me a contemporary example?
      - rmrfstar 6y ago
        The recent trend is about atomizing plaintiffs. Not many people have the financial resources to bring a case on their own, and lawyers tend not to bring contingency fee cases for a single plaintiff without multi-million dollar damages. Here are some recent cases: AT&T Mobility v. Conception (2011): Class actions are not an exception to the FAA. That means companies get to fight 1000 little guys individually instead of fighting them as a group. American Express v. Italian Colors (2013): You have to arbitrate on your own even if the harm is so small that individual arbitration is not economically viable. In other words, you can’t sue unless you have >=$100k for a lawyer or multi-million dollar damages. Epic Systems Corp v. Lewis (2018): You have to arbitrate on your own even if the harm was interference with your right to concerted activity. In other words, if you are harmed while trying to organize as a group you have to defend yourself on your own. Arbitration is a Kangaroo court. Large companies are repeat players, and "the little guy" plays once. It is ugly, undemocratic, and wrong. Even the Federal government is trying to force people into arbitration [1]. [1] https://www.citizen.org/article/forced-arbitration-wall-of-shame/ https://www.citizen.org/article/forced-arbitration-wall-of-s...
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
traverseda 6y ago
As an aside I really like their website. If it rendered the citations cleanly without javascript it would be perfect.
- willio58 6y ago
  This would be difficult with pure css because the citations can be expanded, which in turn pushes any colliding citations slightly further down.
  - traverseda 6y ago
    On firefox I'm not seeing them get pushed down, I'm seeing them get covered. I suspect the citation implementation isn't very polished. Looks good though.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  The citations don’t appear at all for me on mobile safari in private mode.
- __alias 6y ago
  I found it hideous. Trying to highlight paragraphs doesn't work either strangely it ends up selecting other page content which makes copying a pain
stock_toaster 6y ago
Strange that arbitration is even legal in employment agreements, due to the general inequality of bargaining power, especially so with mega corps.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  That's why it isn't legal anymore in California.
  - Hupriene 6y ago
    It's sad that people are so utterly resigned to having an ineffective federal legislature that the possibility of restricting the use of binding arbitration by means of the passage of new laws is not even considered.
    - rmrfstar 6y ago
      > ineffective federal legislature That is a myth. Congress is very effective. It just doesn't act in your interest. See [1] pdf page 10. [1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
      - tenuousemphasis 6y ago
        Given their conclusion, how do you fix a system like this? Start over from scratch? What does that look like? edit... Maybe it's the American Anti Corruption Act? https://anticorruptionact.org https://anticorruptionact.org >What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover,because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
drawkbox 6y ago
> Seventh Circuit Holds that Arbitration-Bound Employees Cannot Be Given Notice of Collective Action Proceeding Under the Fair Labor Standards Act. When SCOTUS upheld arbitration agreements [1][2] it was obvious they were going to use this to strip away other worker rights. If it isn't evident before it is now. This essentially says since the employee signed an arbitration agreement and the other employees also did, this waives their rights to be informed of any type of employee action that might benefit them as a group (here it was overtime pay). Pretty soon they'll use this precedent to strip away more and more, probably even the first attack on California's innovation and economic key in rebuking non-competes. Part of the reason California's economy is so good in terms of tech and leading edge innovation is that they do not abide by non-competes. I wonder how long it will take them to go after this using this idea that signing arbitration agreements, which should be illegal, removes other protections like not upholding non-competes in Cali. It always blows me away how in all out war, battle after battle, companies are with the mere idea of unions. It looks like a superpower invading a small island nation repeatedly with little to no defenses. Unions are mostly ineffectual today and most people have been propagandized away from them, but even the hint of a group forming is attacked by rabid corporate lawyers even decades after unions have faded. It tells me that they are greatly fearful of unions. They have nothing to worry about, when arbitration agreements were added to contracts in the early 2000s at my workplace I scoffed at it, everyone looked at me funny. I do not like litigious people, but giving up your entire right to the legal system? Not smart. Here we can see why, now they are using it as a wedge to take more rights that were fought for. Giving up rights so easy that were hard to attain is short-sighted, naive and way too comfortable. > Over the past decade, the Supreme Court has steadily weakened the ability of parties bound by arbitration agreements to band together and sue. Given the rise of arbitration clauses in employment contracts, this trend has harmed workers since it is rarely economically feasible for workers to individually sue for, say, fifteen minutes of unpaid overtime a day, violations of statutes protecting laborers — like the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) — have become harder to redress. This will continue and continue. The one-sided and overpowered war rages on against worker rights and freedoms. Ultimately this harms competition and business in general, yes it may be better for the current company, but not the market in general or quality of life. California's non-compete stance that they are illegal is a good example, the market has benefitted many companies and product innovations, other rights are the same. It is short-term and monopolistic/oligopolistic to think that long term this helps the market. We aren't too far off from being WorryFree(tm) [3] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-upholds-workplace-arbitration-contracts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-up... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-divided-supreme-court-upholds-forced-arbitration-agreements-a-win-for-businesses https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-divided-supreme-cour... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorry-to-bother-you-really-happen-partial-spoilers/#2e8cd7d61f0a https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorr...
jamesliudotcc 6y ago
Here is the case as handed down by the 7th Circuit. http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2020/D01-24/C:19-1944:J:Kanne:aut:T:fnOp:N:2464184:S:0 http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Disp... I would mostly ignore the Harvard Law Review's recent cases section. It is written by second year law students with barely any supervision. Circuit Court judges write in plainer, better English than law students. Also, I know link rot is a thing, but seriously, all of the opinions are available copyright free and probably as PDFs provided by the courts who issue them. The workers who do have valid arbitration agreements aren't prevented from suing by this case, that was already clearly the law before. That is not in dispute. This case holds that in case some employees are prevented from suing by their arbitration agreements, Facebook can skip giving them notice if it can show the court the actual signed arbitration agreements. That is all.

121 points by hhs 6y ago

It's sad to see the law moving further and further in favor of corporations either way, though I'm very much not a lawyer and, even after reading all this, can't tell if this is as bad as it sounds.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xxpor 6y ago
This is more or less the entire purpose of the Federalist Society's existence.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  Yup. FedSoc is the political arm of the law and economics movement.
henryfjordan 6y ago
It's not super bad. A FB worker was suing for overtime money. She had the right under the FLSA to force FB to notify her coworkers that they might want to join her suit. FB argued that half of her coworkers were covered by arbitration agreements and they shouldn't have to give that half notice of the lawsuit. The appeals court agreed, ever so slightly eroding the rights of workers.
- Avicebron 6y ago
  >"ever so slightly eroding the rights of workers" >"it's not super bad" I disagree, but maybe there is a crowd out there that agrees workers shouldn't have rights?
  - FriendlyNormie 6y ago
    Be careful, antisemitic remarks are not allowed on HN.
- thelittleone 6y ago
  "slightly eroding the rights of workers". Seems bad enough to me. How often are the rights of mega corporations slightly eroded? And how do those erosions hold under the weight of appeals by megacorps lawyer hordes and lobbyists?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The rights of mega corporations get eroded very frequently. I think even anti-corporate activists will admit to that. Their concern, generally, is that corporate rights should be not eroded through gradual tiny reforms but blown away completely.
    - thelittleone 6y ago
      Fair point. Intuitively though it seems the net of mega corps erosion of rights vs accretion of rights is firmly in their favor.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      The rights of mega corporations to exploit particular things is eroded frequently by regulation, however the size and power of mega corporations are such that they can devote considerable effort to finding new things to exploit that have not been effectively regulated yet. They can of course also devote resources to stop regulation of their favorite areas of exploitability.
      - vimax 6y ago
        Also, the large corporations have the lobbying money to influence regulation. Once their behavior is egregious enough to warrant regulation, they able to twist it to be a barrier to entry for new players further entrenching their own position.
missedthecue 6y ago
>It's sad to see the law moving further and further in favor of corporations either way Are they? Or are companies just becoming more careful when it comes to the letter of the law?
- xxpor 6y ago
  The law is changing to accommodate them to make whatever they're doing the letter of the law.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    can you give me a contemporary example?
    - rmrfstar 6y ago
      The recent trend is about atomizing plaintiffs. Not many people have the financial resources to bring a case on their own, and lawyers tend not to bring contingency fee cases for a single plaintiff without multi-million dollar damages. Here are some recent cases: AT&T Mobility v. Conception (2011): Class actions are not an exception to the FAA. That means companies get to fight 1000 little guys individually instead of fighting them as a group. American Express v. Italian Colors (2013): You have to arbitrate on your own even if the harm is so small that individual arbitration is not economically viable. In other words, you can’t sue unless you have >=$100k for a lawyer or multi-million dollar damages. Epic Systems Corp v. Lewis (2018): You have to arbitrate on your own even if the harm was interference with your right to concerted activity. In other words, if you are harmed while trying to organize as a group you have to defend yourself on your own. Arbitration is a Kangaroo court. Large companies are repeat players, and "the little guy" plays once. It is ugly, undemocratic, and wrong. Even the Federal government is trying to force people into arbitration [1]. [1] https://www.citizen.org/article/forced-arbitration-wall-of-shame/ https://www.citizen.org/article/forced-arbitration-wall-of-s...
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

traverseda 6y ago

As an aside I really like their website. If it rendered the citations cleanly without javascript it would be perfect.

willio58 6y ago
This would be difficult with pure css because the citations can be expanded, which in turn pushes any colliding citations slightly further down.
- traverseda 6y ago
  On firefox I'm not seeing them get pushed down, I'm seeing them get covered. I suspect the citation implementation isn't very polished. Looks good though.
cgriswald 6y ago
The citations don’t appear at all for me on mobile safari in private mode.
__alias 6y ago
I found it hideous. Trying to highlight paragraphs doesn't work either strangely it ends up selecting other page content which makes copying a pain

stock_toaster 6y ago

Strange that arbitration is even legal in employment agreements, due to the general inequality of bargaining power, especially so with mega corps.

pmiller2 6y ago
That's why it isn't legal anymore in California.
- Hupriene 6y ago
  It's sad that people are so utterly resigned to having an ineffective federal legislature that the possibility of restricting the use of binding arbitration by means of the passage of new laws is not even considered.
  - rmrfstar 6y ago
    > ineffective federal legislature That is a myth. Congress is very effective. It just doesn't act in your interest. See [1] pdf page 10. [1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
    - tenuousemphasis 6y ago
      Given their conclusion, how do you fix a system like this? Start over from scratch? What does that look like? edit... Maybe it's the American Anti Corruption Act? https://anticorruptionact.org https://anticorruptionact.org >What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover,because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

drawkbox 6y ago

> Seventh Circuit Holds that Arbitration-Bound Employees Cannot Be Given Notice of Collective Action Proceeding Under the Fair Labor Standards Act. When SCOTUS upheld arbitration agreements [1][2] it was obvious they were going to use this to strip away other worker rights. If it isn't evident before it is now. This essentially says since the employee signed an arbitration agreement and the other employees also did, this waives their rights to be informed of any type of employee action that might benefit them as a group (here it was overtime pay). Pretty soon they'll use this precedent to strip away more and more, probably even the first attack on California's innovation and economic key in rebuking non-competes. Part of the reason California's economy is so good in terms of tech and leading edge innovation is that they do not abide by non-competes. I wonder how long it will take them to go after this using this idea that signing arbitration agreements, which should be illegal, removes other protections like not upholding non-competes in Cali. It always blows me away how in all out war, battle after battle, companies are with the mere idea of unions. It looks like a superpower invading a small island nation repeatedly with little to no defenses. Unions are mostly ineffectual today and most people have been propagandized away from them, but even the hint of a group forming is attacked by rabid corporate lawyers even decades after unions have faded. It tells me that they are greatly fearful of unions. They have nothing to worry about, when arbitration agreements were added to contracts in the early 2000s at my workplace I scoffed at it, everyone looked at me funny. I do not like litigious people, but giving up your entire right to the legal system? Not smart. Here we can see why, now they are using it as a wedge to take more rights that were fought for. Giving up rights so easy that were hard to attain is short-sighted, naive and way too comfortable. > Over the past decade, the Supreme Court has steadily weakened the ability of parties bound by arbitration agreements to band together and sue. Given the rise of arbitration clauses in employment contracts, this trend has harmed workers since it is rarely economically feasible for workers to individually sue for, say, fifteen minutes of unpaid overtime a day, violations of statutes protecting laborers — like the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) — have become harder to redress. This will continue and continue. The one-sided and overpowered war rages on against worker rights and freedoms. Ultimately this harms competition and business in general, yes it may be better for the current company, but not the market in general or quality of life. California's non-compete stance that they are illegal is a good example, the market has benefitted many companies and product innovations, other rights are the same. It is short-term and monopolistic/oligopolistic to think that long term this helps the market. We aren't too far off from being WorryFree(tm) [3] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-upholds-workplace-arbitration-contracts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-up... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-divided-supreme-court-upholds-forced-arbitration-agreements-a-win-for-businesses https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-divided-supreme-cour... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorry-to-bother-you-really-happen-partial-spoilers/#2e8cd7d61f0a https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorr...

jamesliudotcc 6y ago

Here is the case as handed down by the 7th Circuit. http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2020/D01-24/C:19-1944:J:Kanne:aut:T:fnOp:N:2464184:S:0 http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Disp... I would mostly ignore the Harvard Law Review's recent cases section. It is written by second year law students with barely any supervision. Circuit Court judges write in plainer, better English than law students. Also, I know link rot is a thing, but seriously, all of the opinions are available copyright free and probably as PDFs provided by the courts who issue them. The workers who do have valid arbitration agreements aren't prevented from suing by this case, that was already clearly the law before. That is not in dispute. This case holds that in case some employees are prevented from suing by their arbitration agreements, Facebook can skip giving them notice if it can show the court the actual signed arbitration agreements. That is all.