The $100 valve-turning story never quite worked for me and I finally figured out why.
It's not that you're paying him $100 for the expertise to know which valve to turn, it's that there's no one standing next to him who could reliably for $50 or even for $99 know which valve to turn.
You're not paying for his expertise so much as for the scarcity of his expertise.
Do people still write software for discs outside of console games? I don’t think this comeback is very clever either way. Being paid $100 for a product worth $1000 in total sales is pretty reasonable. Being paid $50k to resolve a $2k seems to be a very unusual outcome. It just raises the stakes of the case by 25x.
It seems very unreasonable that a losing party could need to cover so much from their opponents end especially as they get no say in the total stakes.
If it was you paying $50k to your lawyer regardless of whether or not you won, sure, that’s just your choice. This is a $50k extra being thrown at your opponent and there’s no incentive to be reasonable about it because it sounds like your own client doesn’t get hit with it. Idk if it applies in this context but if it goes both ways then you’ve got a prisoners dilemma. Spending more on lawyers increases the probability of winning, but also increases the total pot of lawyer money. That’s so fucked up.
I would vote for you’re liable for at mode the amount you spent on lawyers personally. If they do 50k on a 2k issue and you don’t even get a lawyer, you may lose 2k but they lose 50k. Incentives to escalate lawyer fees sounds stupid as shit to society.
> Being paid $50k to resolve a $2k seems to be a very unusual outcome. It just raises the stakes of the case by 25x.
You are paying for protection of consumer rights, not to be lied to and not to be swindled. What are those rights worth to you?
As a company you always have a chance to come to amicable agreement with the customer before the lawyers got involved. Every time you tell a customer to piss off you take the risk that they might take you to court.
As explained elsewhere, the fees are contingent. You’re not paying the 50k at all, unless something unexpected happens, in which case you’re suddenly paying 50k which you were told wasn’t going to be your problem.
But it’s really bad that it’s ok for lawyers to basically encourage you to rack up contingent lawyer expenses. It’s just a toxic system.
So what's your solution so that large enough companies that they have lawyers on retainer don't just ignore any $10,000 or less liability, if you in fact think that a 5x multiplier in lawyers fees is excessive?
But that’s still shit. The lawyer is incentivized to charge as much as he can because the person hiring him isn’t the one who pays it. That’s fucked up.
