[jimmywanger]

> That's a completely self-imposed cost. A company with a process like that has no business whining about the cost of bad hires.

That's the consequence of deep pockets, unfortunately. If you're a young startup without much in the way of assets you certain can hire quickly and fire quickly. You don't have any asserts to sue for.

However, if you're a Google or Facebook, suddenly the stakes rise. They can always find a way to make the firing seem unjustified if they're fired on short notice, from ethnicity, gender, "culture fit" (I didn't want to go out for drinks with them), or age.

And it only has to work once for the disgruntled employee, and then they don't have to work for a while. And you better believe that a lawyer will take the chance to sue a large tech company on a contingency basis.

[serge2k]

I will never understand the absurdity that is the US obsession with covering your ass. In Canada you take reasonable steps, but in the US it's just crazy.

[jimmywanger]

It has to do with our legal system. If you're a defendant, it's extremely hard to sue your plaintiff to recover legal fees, even if you win the suit.

That's why there are so many frivolous lawsuits in the US. If you can make a halfway reasonable claim that you're not being malicious in filing the suit, and your lawyer is working on a contingency basis, you really have no downside, whereas the guy you're suing has a huge downside.

It's about differing incentives.

[vonmoltke]

However, your lawyer is an idiot of it is taking a case on a contingency basis that it thinks it can't win.

[jimmywanger]

Well, it depends....

There are several variables involved here.

First, what's the possible payout. If the lawyer had a 10% chance to make 10 million, that would be fairly profitable. If he only had a 1% chance to make 10k, not so much.

Second, what else is the lawyer doing? There's a glut of lawyers in the United States right now. If he has his own practice and there's not much business, he might as well take the case. He wasn't getting paid for sure anyways, he might as well take a long shot.

Finally, and the part the makes the US a hotbed for frivolous lawsuits, is the question of whether or not large judgements will be enough of a deterrent for the defendant to settle, regardless of the merits of the case. Look at patent trolls suing amazon, and getting settlements of millions of dollars because they patented an online shopping cart.

Same thing like that, especially if you're a smaller business. The settlements are likely to be lower and the reward less, but they're more likely to pony up 5k to just make the problem go away without the courts getting involved.