[lazyconfab]

Unless you have a large pot of money to spend on litigation (or the amount of the contract falls inside the limit for small claims), all contracts amount to trust. The cost of fighting a legal battle is enormous, and mid-sized to large businesses can fight battles of attrition in court.

[hga]

Indeed, unless substantial amounts of money from a client who can pay are involved (think Brian Reid (!) who was let go from Google 9 days before their IPO because he was too old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scientist... ), contracts only serve to memorialize decision and promises, they help avoid "but I thought you meant X" retrospective flaky human memory.

[Hydraulix989]

Settled out of court for undisclosed terms? Sounds like Reid really made out well then?

[hga]

That's my impression.

The optics were horrible, it sounds like he had a fairly strong case, and for those of us who knew of him starting from his works like Scribe way way back when, well, we're inclined to believe his story.

All we know is that Google made an offer he and his lawyer chose not to refuse, but as long as they thought they were going to win in court before a jury and all that, it had to have been generous, although I'd imagine it wasn't as generous as his original ability to to participate in the IPO and beyond.