On Fri, 30 Jan 1998, Nathan J. Mehl wrote:
> Oy. One of _them_.
A not-so-rare breed I take it? Is it genetic?
> First and foremost, I strongly recommend that you _not_ lose any
> sleep over this. The ratio of people on the net who threaten to sue
> to those that actually do is staggeringly high. This person sounds
> to me like a standard-issue blusterer. He just wants to yank your
> chain.
Too late for the sleep thing. I spent a few hours one night reviewing list
archives, trying to figure out why a contributing list member went sour. I
also printed out the entire episode, just to be safe.
> If he were actually going to sue for damages, he would be
> having his lawyer send you a summons, not personally badgering you
> with email.
The summons would take a bit of time, so I do not feel completely out of
the woods yet. I realize the numbers are on my side, but this whole thing
is now only two to three weeks old. No doubt he is full of hot air. If
anything *does* happen, this list will hear all about it (laws permitting
of course).
> (And as Joe-Bob Briggs pointed out a while back, sueing somebody
> is not the cathartic, People's Court-esque experience that most of
> these morons seem to think it is.
Ten minutes to Whoppener!!
> Lawsuits take YEARS, and they mostly consist of lawyers sending letters
> back and forth. Very few of them actually see the inside of a
> courtroom. Your rude little friend would probably be greatly
> disappointed.)
Perhaps he envisions me on the stand, receiving scowls from the jury. "Mr.
Leben is an evil man your honor..." Stranger things happen every day.
> I have a short form reponse that I use with these types, and I
> strongly recommend it:
With your permission, I will modify this and keep it on hand.
<snip standard response>
> And then, start bouncing all of their mail. (If you own your own
> box, I can provide you with a sendmail ruleset to do this; if not,
> you can use procmail.)
I wonder what causes blood to boil more, being sent to /dev/null or
bounced mail? A while ago I had another disgruntled list member on AOL who
put me in his spam filter. I was quite relieved to see the bounce stating
he would ignore all mail from my address! One less headache to deal with.
> Entirely frivolous. He'd have to prove monetary damage in order
> to collect anything, and that would be damn close to impossible.
I am guessing he holds that he spent X hours dealing with the problem, and
he makes $x.xx an hour... If that is the case then I have him licked, at
least on the time spent.
> The only seriously threatening part of it is how much of your time
> it could take up, but since it would also take up an equal amount
> of _his_ time, I wouldn't sweat it.
If this does go through, I assume he will loose. The counter suit might be
interesting though!
> The life of a sysadmin is always intense!
Ain't that the truth!
-Mitch
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