[jacquesm]

You really need a good lawyer. No other options there. I'm not sure if he's still active here but you could contact George Grellas (who is both nice, exceptionally knowledgeable and approachable) and ask him what to do, he was quite active here on HN for a while, 2 minutes of googling will locate him. 5 minutes of his time will be worth more than all the (well intentioned) advice you're going to get here.

Without details nobody will be able to give you advice beyond 'get a lawyer' and I fully understand why you don't want to give out any more info here.

The one bit of info I can give you, once you have a lawyer, give him all the information that you can find on this, don't leave anything that you feel is not relevant, a late surprise in a thing like this can be costly.

Best of luck!

[genwin]

Let's be realistic. Beyond the initial consultation a good lawyer is incompatible with a student's budget. Sometimes life is grossly unfair and there's not much you can do about it. Throwaway may well end up owing the plaintiff. At least there's the option of bankruptcy to wipe out the debt.

[throwaway10283]

Thanks for the name! I'll look him up. And, obviously I didn't expect people to provide specific legal advice, but just in general how to handle these situations, and if anybody has actually been through it before.

[jacquesm]

Handling the situation is the easy part. Locate lawyer, give them all the relevant info, watch two lawyers exchange a bunch of letters and then hopefully it either goes away once the other party is convinced the case is baseless, or it will go to trial. Stop communicating directly with the plaintiff or their lawyers until you have a lawyer.

The best defence is to make sure they realize that you can't pluck feathers from a frog.

Any weaknesses you have should be offset by your contractual terms (assuming there was a contract).

Since you say you were employed they would have to work very hard to prove malice on your part, especially since they decided to keep you on as long as they did. Any damage they claim you caused should be easy to prove for them, hard to defend against by you if it is to stick, but without more specifics that's unknown.

For the record I have been the plaintiff in a case like this, where an employee decided to blackmail me and turn off a website overnight locking me out of the server. Needless to say that didn't end very well for said employee, not because I'm rich and he was weak but because he was a jerk that did something he never should have done: assume that blackmail is a viable option.

In the end that one was resolved out-of-court by the time the defendants lawyer had a chance to talk some sense into the defendant.

[wfunction]

> "Needless to say that didn't end very well for said employee"

Did you mean employer?

[mitchellhislop]

>"For the record I have been the plaintiff in a case like this, where an employee decided to blackmail me ..."

I bet he meant employee.

[wfunction]

Ah, my mistake, I misread the sentences; thanks.