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Man overcharged 20 rupees for India train ticket wins 22-year legal battle

315 points by nigerian1981 4y ago

wahern 4y ago
A law professor who consulted around the world on transactional banking law with litigants and even courts recounted a sardonic bit of legal advice from India: Always pick a lawyer with a son. (Because the case will outlive the first lawyer, and better that it's passed on to someone with familiarity.)
carabiner 4y ago
He has truly done the needful.
adharmad 4y ago
"Equally surprising was that Indian Railways, the country’s largest employer, chose to continue fighting the case." There needs to be some sort of common sense oversight in the Raliways (and most probably in other Indian government organizations also). Also I wonder on what grounds the Railways was fighting on? The prices of the tickets are well known and widely published, and even though they do change over time, a lawyer like Chaturvedi would have kept all documentation.
88 4y ago
De minimis non curat lex
robaye 4y ago
It helps he’s a lawyer. I don’t know if it would be worth fighting for that amount over 22 years and paying a lawyer at the same time.
akudha 4y ago
This case is extra special, as anyone who has ever dealt with any Indian bureaucracy can attest to. I went to my university for some paperwork (years after I had gotten my degree) - I was treated like a leper and openly asked for a bribe. This man is a hero! As he says, it is not about the money
foobazzy 4y ago
Reminds of the time I had an argument over the phone with a guy from a UPI app (PhonePe). There was a hack going around on dormant accounts. I had one account with them which was (maybe?) used only a few times. I called customer care and asked if they could delete my account. They said, and I quote, "due to RBI regulations, we can't". Naturally, I asked "which regulation document? do you have a number?". The other person did not have an answer and escalated my call. They said they would get back to me and in the meantime, I read all the regulations there were. The regulations clearly stated that issuers shall give an option to close the account at any time. There was no such option in the app. I pressed again to close the account to prevent misuse and/or fraud. The person on the other end of the call asked me (beratingly) to logout and delete the app. Because it was the same as deleting the account. I argued that it is not the same thing. To which his tone was more or less like, [my words, this is how it sounded] "you blithering idiot, you blasphemous imbecile, do you know how miniscule you are in the grand scheme of things. I am God here and you should bow down to my superiority and accept my solution" I wonder if I should have sued.
- noisy_boy 4y ago
  Simply filing a complaint with the office of the ombudsman[0] would have sufficed. My friend made a complaint regarding misbehavior by a banking official and the branch manager called in a few days grovelling apologies. [0]: https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/Complaints.aspx https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/Complaints.aspx
- InnerGargoyle 4y ago
  you should have at least complained to consumer forum. and for insult case, in court, am sure you will get your revenge by 2042.. :D
renewiltord 4y ago
It's worth noting that in the Indian judicial system a large number of judges are related to previous judges. There is a system where the previous judges appoint subsequent ones, which results in widespread nepotism. The length of the battle comes from an overcrowded judicial system which has many reasons like this to be overcrowded via constraint of supply. Supply constraint mechanisms are a way for labour to extract value from society. It happens with the AMA here and the judiciary there.
seanhandley 4y ago
If ever I saw a story of the Sunk Cost Fallacy in action, this is it. You have to value your time and energy. 22 years of hearings for such a small amount of money really isn't worth it. There was a time in my life when I would probably have fought this on principle, but I value my time a lot more now.
NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
The needful hath been done.
jmclnx 4y ago
I admire what he did, we should have more people in the world like him.
echan00 4y ago
The real winners are the lawyers of the train company
davidg109 4y ago
Love this story. The sheer level of stubbornness by some companies and and then the energy they spend fighting back, when they are clearly in the wrong, is mind-blowing. I’ve had my own battles, and it’s this kind of story that reminds me sometimes the energy is worth it.
politelemon 4y ago
I love little cases/stories like this. I think many of us have some things that we will doggedly pursue, which in the greater scheme of things may be small... but it becomes a matter of principal mixed with amusement. In London our transport network is managed by TFL. Their website lets you search for routes, and in the route options you can go for the fastest route, or choose this option: "Routes with the least changes". Every year on the same date, I would contact them and ask them to change that to "Routes with the fewest changes" and they would respond with something to the effect of "thanks for the feedback, passed it on, go away now". I think I did this for over 10 years until one day it did get changed on their site. They did accompany it with a greater set of changes, that made the results more convoluted with pointless waypoints that clutter the results, but that's a new matter to pursue.
- dt123 4y ago
  > but it becomes a matter of principal mixed ... principle
- dahart 4y ago
  > They did accompany it with a greater set of changes Doesn’t your wording here clarify why using ‘fewer’ might actually be incorrect from their point of view? You’re referring to changes that are qualitatively larger, just like TFL may have been trying to communicate changes that are qualitatively smaller, routes with less noticeable changes to a smaller number of riders, or even a smaller number of rider-trips, without having to include an explanatory paragraph. The number of changes might be irrelevant to most people, and it’s a good thing if TFL is trying to tell you whether statistically you should expect to notice changes based on your usage, and not whether the potentially somewhat meaningless total number of changes is lower. ‘Least’ is a word that allows subjective interpretation, while ‘fewer’ is not. Saying ‘fewer changes’ implies something more specific than saying ‘least changes’, and in making it more specific it may literally communicate the wrong thing.
  - riverdweller 4y ago
    Fewest is the correct word. There is no subjectivity about it. They could have said (albeit hideously): "The routes with the least change". In this case, change is an uncountable noun. But they didn't. They said "The routes with the least changeS", which uses the plural of the countable noun "change". So quantifier "fewest" is correct. The quantifier "least" is not.
Aeolun 4y ago
Absolutely not a hill worth dying on, but I can’t help but be impressed with the tenacity.
- Kankuro 4y ago
  Or he was just trapped in the sunk cost fallacy ("I spent so much time that I cannot stop now even if it is not worth")
- teddyh 4y ago
  All progress depends on the unreasonable man.
  - lbriner 4y ago
    But what progress here? Someone who worked for us 20 years+ ago charged you too much. Sorry, it wouldn't happen now.
    - xeromal 4y ago
      The rail company probably lost a lot more money that they anticipated so maybe they're be more careful about pricing.
    - balderdash 4y ago
      If that was the case, why didn’t the railway concede the case and move on.
- Tepix 4y ago
  Just imagine how great that must have felt!
shmde 4y ago
My granddad had to fight a case for more than 30 years because the tenant wouldn't leave. 30 fucking years just to get back a house which he bought. The only mistake he made was buying the house with the tenants still inside. They even went onto to take the deal outside the court where we would pay 1/4 of the house price to make them leave the house. Indian legal battles stretch for so long that many times people die without hearing a judgement for the case but my granddad was lucky enough to get the house back a few years before he died.
- Tepix 4y ago
  Is there a way (money?) to speed things up?
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    You can pay clerks to move your file around but the judiciary is so overloaded and understaffed that unless yours is a high priority or high profile case, it will just need to wait its turn. Which can be months in between hearings.
    - Anunayj 4y ago
      bribe* clerks. and if you can bribe them to move the date forward, you can probably bribe them to move the date backward.
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  > The only mistake he made was buying the house with the tenants still inside. I'm not sure how strong tenant protection is in India, but here in the Netherlands, it's well-understood that purchasing a property is not a valid reason to evict its tenants. Rental properties are sold and purchased with the understanding that they are investments, and that the property owners will not be able to live there (unless the tenants voluntarily leave).
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  My FIL has a similar story of a piece of land that was stolen by someone. He filed the case in 2011. No progress yet. Real estate is the riskiest asset class in India
boomboomsubban 4y ago
I wonder how quickly he would have dropped the case if he had any more dire need of the court system over the past twenty years.
manholio 4y ago
This is not a story about tenacity or an overloaded court system. It's a story about deliberate bad governance to keep corruption money flowing in an impoverished country. The political leadership could easily find solutions to stop such abuses of the public legal system, and direct resources to high priority cases with large public impact. By deliberately allowing such cases to bog down the justice system and waste limited public resources, they ensure rule of law cannot operate effectively. It's a typical story.
- cm42 4y ago
  Ever since we tossed out Divine Right, our overlords have had to resort to increasingly-inscrutable systems to do the needful, and inscrutable systems are effectively the same as "no system" in this regard. I tire of hearing excuses like "our judges can't adjudicate simple matters in fewer than three generations [because they are busy and have A Hard Job]", or "we can't have healthcare because the sous chef du jour did not include it on the menu, and we must respect the venerable and time-honored tradition of the sous chef du jour in designing the menu" Just once, I'd rather hear them say "Obama of Nantucket relayed a vision in which 12 great dragons appeared, all pissed about the price of oil, the upcoming NATO summit, the Franklin County Republican primaries, and the wearing of pocket squares with striped suits. On healthcare, saith the Orange Dragon: put an onion in your sock and go to MedExpress if you get sick, and you'll probably be fine." Even if nothing substantive changed, at least the comments sections and over-the-shoulder graphics on the news would be cooler, anyway.
- obscur 4y ago
  Interesting perspective, where did you read about this?
spaceman_2020 4y ago
I have immense respect for people like this. They fight tiny battles and when they win, they benefit everyone.
- lbriner 4y ago
  Does it really benefit anyone? Massive organisations like the Indian railways don't blink at a fine of $160 and they certainly aren't going to change anything. Presumably most people don't get over-charged so there isn't necessarily anything they can improve anyway.
  - noisy_boy 4y ago
    If there is any chance that this very public news has caused even an iota of embarrassment to the publicity-sensitive government and maybe a review of similar useless cases underway, it is well worth it.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    And there is a clear cost to society, as 100 hearings isn't exactly cheap.
    - akudha 4y ago
      Measuring everything is terms of money is wrong and extremely bad attitude. Rules and laws exist for a reason. You can’t put a price on upholding the law
      - boomboomsubban 4y ago
        >You can’t put a price on upholding the law So you'd be fine paying say 99% of your income to hire someone to follow you around and cite you for speeding or jaywalking or any other infraction you commit? Obviously this is hyperbole, but every society places a price on upholding the law, and a hundred hearings over a quarter is a huge waste of that budget. The only benefit anyone gets is a small smug feeling that for once things went right.
balderdash 4y ago
I feel like he should also get lawyers fees
- lom 4y ago
  He represented himself
  - balderdash 4y ago
    he is a lawyer, he spent time on this case, theoretically at the expense of other work, why shouldn't he be paid his normal hourly rate?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    His time isn't free, so a person could reasonably make the argument still. Granted, I'm not sure how that would look exactly.
    - epgui 4y ago
      Idk about India, but in other common law countries, courts often don’t even award basic costs to self-represented applicants, as a matter of policy. I never really understood the rationale.
linux_devil 4y ago
Me and my friends often debate as most of the cases follow certain pattern, it should be easier to categories the majority of the cases and if not fully but partially automate the process. Most of the paper work(judiciary / non judiciary) involves similar template , SSH/SSA , agreements etc. It need not be this complex. Most of the manual work involved in the process should be automated
poisonborz 4y ago
>> The case highlights India’s overloaded court system, where around 40m cases are clogging up the system. Legal cases have been known to take 10-15 years to reach a conclusion. Most interesting tidbit for me. Is this really true?
- linux_devil 4y ago
  Yes it is true, and this is just one small example which managed to get some news . Cases drag for years and years , there are hearings etc. Unless something gets in the news or fast tracked , legal battles seems never ending in most of the cases.
- pseudostem 4y ago
  Absolutely, a more interesting tidbit is this - Telecom companies cannot take small subscribers to court in India. You don't pay your bills, they can send legal notices, but not much beyond that. We have ~1B+ subscribers. Even if a small percentage goes into dispute, our judicial system will completely collapse.
- drexlspivey 4y ago
  A lot of countries are like this, the main reason justice is swift in the US is the out-of-court settlement scheme where 95%-99% of the cases don’t reach trial.
- tecoholic 4y ago
  I am not sure about the 40m cases. But the 10-15 years is true. The civil cases in the country can drag on for a generation or more. I have personally witnessed one such case where the plaintiff has died of old age.
- mfrye0 4y ago
  Yes. One of my friends is a lawyer in India. He shared a story with me of a particular lawyer that ends up being paid millions of dollars per hour, because he's able to leverage his connections to help corporate clients jump to the front of the line.
- fillskills 4y ago
dmos62 4y ago
> Equally surprising was that Indian Railways, the country’s largest employer, chose to continue fighting the case. If you think it's crazy for this lone lawyer to have gone through this crusade, keep in mind that Indian Railways fought in a 100 hearings for ~25 cents, and their lawyers don't work for free. How bonkers is that?
- ssizn 4y ago
  It’s a public company. They don’t give a shit about wasting money.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    I know nothing about the Indian legal system other than it draws a lot from the British one, but generally in cases like this the seemingly obtuse behavior is to prevent a precedential decision that others might refer to. If they are suddenly on hook for refunds in a way they weren't before, there's a loss of potential future revenue and the additional cost of refund issuance bureaucracy. In a country the size of india even a 0.1% overcharge rate could add up to significant money. I can see why they would want to limit customers to disputing prices at the time of ticket issue. It's not hard to find examples of private companies litigating over matters that seem superficially petty.
    - crossroadsguy 4y ago
      > I know nothing about the Indian legal system It’s a joke. Always has been, from the colonial times.
- bongoman37 4y ago
- csomar 4y ago
  Not that bonkers really. I think the manager or responsible party is legally required to exhaust all options before refunding. It’s not about the money but about covering his bases.
jonatron 4y ago
I'm currently over 2 months and 4 emails into a battle to get a tiny amount of compensation for a train delay in the UK. Similar situation, it's not about the money, it's the principle.
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
i am a legal practitioner operating in these courts and let me be the party pooper, cases like these are the reason why the judiciary is fucked shit. courts in india have like 100 year backlog or something crazy amount. reason? i get the whole "principle" thing but get in line. because of "principled people" like this man, inmates incarcerated for 10+ years without a trial are being delayed because once admitted, each case has to be completed to the full and these shall i say "worthless petty cases" are one of the causes of delay. want to know how much delay? apparently the case, over 22 years had over 100 hearing. that means, the 100 times the court was in session, some other case got pushed back, just a tiny bit but over 100 times, that counts to a lot. now, i am not saying people should not fight for "principle" but when you are being pompous assholes for fighting over pennies while innocent men and women are being subjected to horrendous conditions in indian jails or thousands of victims of sexual crimes or other more serious issue, these principled people are causing the delay. why dont you do arbitration whereby you go outside the traditional court system and fight your battles however long you like. why are they holding up courts?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- em-bee 4y ago
  fair point. but why does it take 100 hearings to resolve a case like this?
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    legal incompetence, bureaucracy, case load of judges, yada yada. the judge looks at his calender, thinks "hmm, how about 3 months from now". on that date, either of the lawyers says "judge, i need more time for an affidavit, why dont you give me 4 more months"...... on and on.. oh, btw, the next time the court does hear your case, its a different judge so you have to explain it once again and then the judge goes "next hearing date 4 months"....
    - ryandrake 4y ago
pseudolus 4y ago
Periodically stories emerge about cases in Indian courts that have been pending for centuries. [0]. Such cases, not only in India, have also been the fodder for literature, including Charles Dicken's "Bleak House" set against the backdrop of the interminable fictional probate case "Jarndyce v Jarndyce" which is implied to have lasted for generations. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-21446272 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-21446272
- mherdeg 4y ago
  A piece of Internet culture I miss dearly is the FatWallet Finance forums, which had an ongoing thread called "kinship proceedings: what can go wrong": https://web.archive.org/web/20171009102701/https://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/305858 https://web.archive.org/web/20171009102701/https://www.fatwa... When Rakuten finally shuttered the forums I think the thread was about 13 years old; it was about a minor estate (mid 7 figures??) from someone who died inestate being divided up among an extended family, complicated by a random multi-year pause in the proceedings while no lawyers did anything to advance the case, and by the periodic appearance of purported long-lost relatives. I have no idea what happened there and I'll always wonder. I do see that one of the bureaucrats from the thread was in the news ( https://nypost.com/2013/06/29/administrators-mishandled-more-than-2-2m-for-estates-of-people-who-died-in-brooklyn-audit-shows/ https://nypost.com/2013/06/29/administrators-mishandled-more... ).

315 points by nigerian1981 4y ago

A law professor who consulted around the world on transactional banking law with litigants and even courts recounted a sardonic bit of legal advice from India: Always pick a lawyer with a son. (Because the case will outlive the first lawyer, and better that it's passed on to someone with familiarity.)

carabiner 4y ago

He has truly done the needful.

adharmad 4y ago

"Equally surprising was that Indian Railways, the country’s largest employer, chose to continue fighting the case." There needs to be some sort of common sense oversight in the Raliways (and most probably in other Indian government organizations also). Also I wonder on what grounds the Railways was fighting on? The prices of the tickets are well known and widely published, and even though they do change over time, a lawyer like Chaturvedi would have kept all documentation.

88 4y ago

De minimis non curat lex

robaye 4y ago

It helps he’s a lawyer. I don’t know if it would be worth fighting for that amount over 22 years and paying a lawyer at the same time.

akudha 4y ago

This case is extra special, as anyone who has ever dealt with any Indian bureaucracy can attest to. I went to my university for some paperwork (years after I had gotten my degree) - I was treated like a leper and openly asked for a bribe. This man is a hero! As he says, it is not about the money

foobazzy 4y ago

Reminds of the time I had an argument over the phone with a guy from a UPI app (PhonePe). There was a hack going around on dormant accounts. I had one account with them which was (maybe?) used only a few times. I called customer care and asked if they could delete my account. They said, and I quote, "due to RBI regulations, we can't". Naturally, I asked "which regulation document? do you have a number?". The other person did not have an answer and escalated my call. They said they would get back to me and in the meantime, I read all the regulations there were. The regulations clearly stated that issuers shall give an option to close the account at any time. There was no such option in the app. I pressed again to close the account to prevent misuse and/or fraud. The person on the other end of the call asked me (beratingly) to logout and delete the app. Because it was the same as deleting the account. I argued that it is not the same thing. To which his tone was more or less like, [my words, this is how it sounded] "you blithering idiot, you blasphemous imbecile, do you know how miniscule you are in the grand scheme of things. I am God here and you should bow down to my superiority and accept my solution" I wonder if I should have sued.

noisy_boy 4y ago
Simply filing a complaint with the office of the ombudsman[0] would have sufficed. My friend made a complaint regarding misbehavior by a banking official and the branch manager called in a few days grovelling apologies. [0]: https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/Complaints.aspx https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/Complaints.aspx
InnerGargoyle 4y ago
you should have at least complained to consumer forum. and for insult case, in court, am sure you will get your revenge by 2042.. :D

renewiltord 4y ago

It's worth noting that in the Indian judicial system a large number of judges are related to previous judges. There is a system where the previous judges appoint subsequent ones, which results in widespread nepotism. The length of the battle comes from an overcrowded judicial system which has many reasons like this to be overcrowded via constraint of supply. Supply constraint mechanisms are a way for labour to extract value from society. It happens with the AMA here and the judiciary there.

seanhandley 4y ago

If ever I saw a story of the Sunk Cost Fallacy in action, this is it. You have to value your time and energy. 22 years of hearings for such a small amount of money really isn't worth it. There was a time in my life when I would probably have fought this on principle, but I value my time a lot more now.

NaturalPhallacy 4y ago

The needful hath been done.

jmclnx 4y ago

I admire what he did, we should have more people in the world like him.

echan00 4y ago

The real winners are the lawyers of the train company

davidg109 4y ago

Love this story. The sheer level of stubbornness by some companies and and then the energy they spend fighting back, when they are clearly in the wrong, is mind-blowing. I’ve had my own battles, and it’s this kind of story that reminds me sometimes the energy is worth it.

politelemon 4y ago

I love little cases/stories like this. I think many of us have some things that we will doggedly pursue, which in the greater scheme of things may be small... but it becomes a matter of principal mixed with amusement. In London our transport network is managed by TFL. Their website lets you search for routes, and in the route options you can go for the fastest route, or choose this option: "Routes with the least changes". Every year on the same date, I would contact them and ask them to change that to "Routes with the fewest changes" and they would respond with something to the effect of "thanks for the feedback, passed it on, go away now". I think I did this for over 10 years until one day it did get changed on their site. They did accompany it with a greater set of changes, that made the results more convoluted with pointless waypoints that clutter the results, but that's a new matter to pursue.

dt123 4y ago
> but it becomes a matter of principal mixed ... principle
dahart 4y ago
> They did accompany it with a greater set of changes Doesn’t your wording here clarify why using ‘fewer’ might actually be incorrect from their point of view? You’re referring to changes that are qualitatively larger, just like TFL may have been trying to communicate changes that are qualitatively smaller, routes with less noticeable changes to a smaller number of riders, or even a smaller number of rider-trips, without having to include an explanatory paragraph. The number of changes might be irrelevant to most people, and it’s a good thing if TFL is trying to tell you whether statistically you should expect to notice changes based on your usage, and not whether the potentially somewhat meaningless total number of changes is lower. ‘Least’ is a word that allows subjective interpretation, while ‘fewer’ is not. Saying ‘fewer changes’ implies something more specific than saying ‘least changes’, and in making it more specific it may literally communicate the wrong thing.
- riverdweller 4y ago
  Fewest is the correct word. There is no subjectivity about it. They could have said (albeit hideously): "The routes with the least change". In this case, change is an uncountable noun. But they didn't. They said "The routes with the least changeS", which uses the plural of the countable noun "change". So quantifier "fewest" is correct. The quantifier "least" is not.

Aeolun 4y ago

Absolutely not a hill worth dying on, but I can’t help but be impressed with the tenacity.

Kankuro 4y ago
Or he was just trapped in the sunk cost fallacy ("I spent so much time that I cannot stop now even if it is not worth")
teddyh 4y ago
All progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- lbriner 4y ago
  But what progress here? Someone who worked for us 20 years+ ago charged you too much. Sorry, it wouldn't happen now.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    The rail company probably lost a lot more money that they anticipated so maybe they're be more careful about pricing.
  - balderdash 4y ago
    If that was the case, why didn’t the railway concede the case and move on.
Tepix 4y ago
Just imagine how great that must have felt!

shmde 4y ago

My granddad had to fight a case for more than 30 years because the tenant wouldn't leave. 30 fucking years just to get back a house which he bought. The only mistake he made was buying the house with the tenants still inside. They even went onto to take the deal outside the court where we would pay 1/4 of the house price to make them leave the house. Indian legal battles stretch for so long that many times people die without hearing a judgement for the case but my granddad was lucky enough to get the house back a few years before he died.

Tepix 4y ago
Is there a way (money?) to speed things up?
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  You can pay clerks to move your file around but the judiciary is so overloaded and understaffed that unless yours is a high priority or high profile case, it will just need to wait its turn. Which can be months in between hearings.
  - Anunayj 4y ago
    bribe* clerks. and if you can bribe them to move the date forward, you can probably bribe them to move the date backward.
Tijdreiziger 4y ago
> The only mistake he made was buying the house with the tenants still inside. I'm not sure how strong tenant protection is in India, but here in the Netherlands, it's well-understood that purchasing a property is not a valid reason to evict its tenants. Rental properties are sold and purchased with the understanding that they are investments, and that the property owners will not be able to live there (unless the tenants voluntarily leave).
spaceman_2020 4y ago
My FIL has a similar story of a piece of land that was stolen by someone. He filed the case in 2011. No progress yet. Real estate is the riskiest asset class in India

boomboomsubban 4y ago

I wonder how quickly he would have dropped the case if he had any more dire need of the court system over the past twenty years.

manholio 4y ago

This is not a story about tenacity or an overloaded court system. It's a story about deliberate bad governance to keep corruption money flowing in an impoverished country. The political leadership could easily find solutions to stop such abuses of the public legal system, and direct resources to high priority cases with large public impact. By deliberately allowing such cases to bog down the justice system and waste limited public resources, they ensure rule of law cannot operate effectively. It's a typical story.

cm42 4y ago
Ever since we tossed out Divine Right, our overlords have had to resort to increasingly-inscrutable systems to do the needful, and inscrutable systems are effectively the same as "no system" in this regard. I tire of hearing excuses like "our judges can't adjudicate simple matters in fewer than three generations [because they are busy and have A Hard Job]", or "we can't have healthcare because the sous chef du jour did not include it on the menu, and we must respect the venerable and time-honored tradition of the sous chef du jour in designing the menu" Just once, I'd rather hear them say "Obama of Nantucket relayed a vision in which 12 great dragons appeared, all pissed about the price of oil, the upcoming NATO summit, the Franklin County Republican primaries, and the wearing of pocket squares with striped suits. On healthcare, saith the Orange Dragon: put an onion in your sock and go to MedExpress if you get sick, and you'll probably be fine." Even if nothing substantive changed, at least the comments sections and over-the-shoulder graphics on the news would be cooler, anyway.
obscur 4y ago
Interesting perspective, where did you read about this?

spaceman_2020 4y ago

I have immense respect for people like this. They fight tiny battles and when they win, they benefit everyone.

lbriner 4y ago
Does it really benefit anyone? Massive organisations like the Indian railways don't blink at a fine of $160 and they certainly aren't going to change anything. Presumably most people don't get over-charged so there isn't necessarily anything they can improve anyway.
- noisy_boy 4y ago
  If there is any chance that this very public news has caused even an iota of embarrassment to the publicity-sensitive government and maybe a review of similar useless cases underway, it is well worth it.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  And there is a clear cost to society, as 100 hearings isn't exactly cheap.
  - akudha 4y ago
    Measuring everything is terms of money is wrong and extremely bad attitude. Rules and laws exist for a reason. You can’t put a price on upholding the law
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      >You can’t put a price on upholding the law So you'd be fine paying say 99% of your income to hire someone to follow you around and cite you for speeding or jaywalking or any other infraction you commit? Obviously this is hyperbole, but every society places a price on upholding the law, and a hundred hearings over a quarter is a huge waste of that budget. The only benefit anyone gets is a small smug feeling that for once things went right.

balderdash 4y ago

I feel like he should also get lawyers fees

lom 4y ago
He represented himself
- balderdash 4y ago
  he is a lawyer, he spent time on this case, theoretically at the expense of other work, why shouldn't he be paid his normal hourly rate?
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  His time isn't free, so a person could reasonably make the argument still. Granted, I'm not sure how that would look exactly.
  - epgui 4y ago
    Idk about India, but in other common law countries, courts often don’t even award basic costs to self-represented applicants, as a matter of policy. I never really understood the rationale.

linux_devil 4y ago

Me and my friends often debate as most of the cases follow certain pattern, it should be easier to categories the majority of the cases and if not fully but partially automate the process. Most of the paper work(judiciary / non judiciary) involves similar template , SSH/SSA , agreements etc. It need not be this complex. Most of the manual work involved in the process should be automated

poisonborz 4y ago

>> The case highlights India’s overloaded court system, where around 40m cases are clogging up the system. Legal cases have been known to take 10-15 years to reach a conclusion. Most interesting tidbit for me. Is this really true?

linux_devil 4y ago
Yes it is true, and this is just one small example which managed to get some news . Cases drag for years and years , there are hearings etc. Unless something gets in the news or fast tracked , legal battles seems never ending in most of the cases.
pseudostem 4y ago
Absolutely, a more interesting tidbit is this - Telecom companies cannot take small subscribers to court in India. You don't pay your bills, they can send legal notices, but not much beyond that. We have ~1B+ subscribers. Even if a small percentage goes into dispute, our judicial system will completely collapse.
drexlspivey 4y ago
A lot of countries are like this, the main reason justice is swift in the US is the out-of-court settlement scheme where 95%-99% of the cases don’t reach trial.
tecoholic 4y ago
I am not sure about the 40m cases. But the 10-15 years is true. The civil cases in the country can drag on for a generation or more. I have personally witnessed one such case where the plaintiff has died of old age.
mfrye0 4y ago
Yes. One of my friends is a lawyer in India. He shared a story with me of a particular lawyer that ends up being paid millions of dollars per hour, because he's able to leverage his connections to help corporate clients jump to the front of the line.
fillskills 4y ago

dmos62 4y ago

> Equally surprising was that Indian Railways, the country’s largest employer, chose to continue fighting the case. If you think it's crazy for this lone lawyer to have gone through this crusade, keep in mind that Indian Railways fought in a 100 hearings for ~25 cents, and their lawyers don't work for free. How bonkers is that?

ssizn 4y ago
It’s a public company. They don’t give a shit about wasting money.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  I know nothing about the Indian legal system other than it draws a lot from the British one, but generally in cases like this the seemingly obtuse behavior is to prevent a precedential decision that others might refer to. If they are suddenly on hook for refunds in a way they weren't before, there's a loss of potential future revenue and the additional cost of refund issuance bureaucracy. In a country the size of india even a 0.1% overcharge rate could add up to significant money. I can see why they would want to limit customers to disputing prices at the time of ticket issue. It's not hard to find examples of private companies litigating over matters that seem superficially petty.
  - crossroadsguy 4y ago
    > I know nothing about the Indian legal system It’s a joke. Always has been, from the colonial times.
bongoman37 4y ago
csomar 4y ago
Not that bonkers really. I think the manager or responsible party is legally required to exhaust all options before refunding. It’s not about the money but about covering his bases.

jonatron 4y ago

I'm currently over 2 months and 4 emails into a battle to get a tiny amount of compensation for a train delay in the UK. Similar situation, it's not about the money, it's the principle.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago

i am a legal practitioner operating in these courts and let me be the party pooper, cases like these are the reason why the judiciary is fucked shit. courts in india have like 100 year backlog or something crazy amount. reason? i get the whole "principle" thing but get in line. because of "principled people" like this man, inmates incarcerated for 10+ years without a trial are being delayed because once admitted, each case has to be completed to the full and these shall i say "worthless petty cases" are one of the causes of delay. want to know how much delay? apparently the case, over 22 years had over 100 hearing. that means, the 100 times the court was in session, some other case got pushed back, just a tiny bit but over 100 times, that counts to a lot. now, i am not saying people should not fight for "principle" but when you are being pompous assholes for fighting over pennies while innocent men and women are being subjected to horrendous conditions in indian jails or thousands of victims of sexual crimes or other more serious issue, these principled people are causing the delay. why dont you do arbitration whereby you go outside the traditional court system and fight your battles however long you like. why are they holding up courts?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
em-bee 4y ago
fair point. but why does it take 100 hearings to resolve a case like this?
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  legal incompetence, bureaucracy, case load of judges, yada yada. the judge looks at his calender, thinks "hmm, how about 3 months from now". on that date, either of the lawyers says "judge, i need more time for an affidavit, why dont you give me 4 more months"...... on and on.. oh, btw, the next time the court does hear your case, its a different judge so you have to explain it once again and then the judge goes "next hearing date 4 months"....
  - ryandrake 4y ago

pseudolus 4y ago

Periodically stories emerge about cases in Indian courts that have been pending for centuries. [0]. Such cases, not only in India, have also been the fodder for literature, including Charles Dicken's "Bleak House" set against the backdrop of the interminable fictional probate case "Jarndyce v Jarndyce" which is implied to have lasted for generations. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-21446272 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-21446272

mherdeg 4y ago
A piece of Internet culture I miss dearly is the FatWallet Finance forums, which had an ongoing thread called "kinship proceedings: what can go wrong": https://web.archive.org/web/20171009102701/https://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/305858 https://web.archive.org/web/20171009102701/https://www.fatwa... When Rakuten finally shuttered the forums I think the thread was about 13 years old; it was about a minor estate (mid 7 figures??) from someone who died inestate being divided up among an extended family, complicated by a random multi-year pause in the proceedings while no lawyers did anything to advance the case, and by the periodic appearance of purported long-lost relatives. I have no idea what happened there and I'll always wonder. I do see that one of the bureaucrats from the thread was in the news ( https://nypost.com/2013/06/29/administrators-mishandled-more-than-2-2m-for-estates-of-people-who-died-in-brooklyn-audit-shows/ https://nypost.com/2013/06/29/administrators-mishandled-more... ).