I once worked for a company that got sued by my predecessor, and won. However they spent so much in legal fees, that the lawsuit nearly bankrupted them. The c

I once worked for a company that got sued by my predecessor, and won. However they spent so much in legal fees, that the lawsuit nearly bankrupted them. The code that my predecessor wrote worked very poorly, so they got bad press reviews, lots of product returns and so on. I was hired specifically because I said I was really good at debugging. After that, the company owner had a specific policy of not providing references. He gave a very neutral answer: "Our policy is not to provide references." However he was completely cool about verifying employment. His concern of course was that my predecessor would sue him again, were the company owner to give that guy a bad reference. Ironically, that same company owner is one of my own references. He's always happy to say good things about me.