I can't give company names on this one, but I dealt with two lawsuits in one week, once. One turned out to be an idle threat, and the other was filed in the District Court and served in triplicate.
Intrigued? Here's how it went down:
Lawsuit Number One
We were talking with a frustrated client on Monday. We've been building a website for him, to help him get out of a month-to-month site rental arrangement with another company. (Note: Be careful, when you sign up for a month-to-month website. It's great for small companies, but if you can afford it, build and manage your own. You'll be happier in the long run.)
We told him up front, the particular system he wanted required us to do many things that we had never done before. (We're not a web design company! Marketing and construction are very different functions. Think real-world, and it's pretty intuitive.) The price we offered was unbeatable, but we couldn't promise a timetable, or even guarantee every single feature he might be able to dream up. He jumped at it anyway. (For us, the incentive to do it so cheaply was simply that we wanted to try and do it -- we figured if we could, we would have a great new service to sell!)
Almost four weeks after the original estimated complete date, he was understandably upset. However, most of the delay came from additional feature requests he'd made. And we were just days -- perhaps hours -- away from completion. That wasn't on his mind, though, when he told us if we didn't have the site finished this week, he'd "pursue legal action."
That stressed us all out, of course, and we stayed late and set aside all other tasks to finish this.
Wednesday we called to give him an update on the project and he was thrilled. In the course of the phone call, he threatened to sue various other companies with which he was currently doing business, and we suddenly all realized that he was just blowing steam.
Lawsuit averted -- if it had ever really been pending at all.
Lawsuit Number Two
To balance that out, though, another client of ours was actually served with a lawsuit filed by one of their competitors. I flipped through the two hundred pages with a dull feeling of familiarity. Alleged copyright violations. An incredibly stupid mistake. Injunction and damages.
Basically, they claimed that we had taken their copyrighted text for use on our client's site. It was, perhaps, inevitable that this lawsuit would come -- we had, actually, copied the "terms and conditions" from their site, and left their company name and phone number at the bottom of the page. Our page ranked in the top 20 on Google for their company name.
Our CEO was on a business trip, so I gathered everyone involved in the project for a quick meeting.
One of our web developers had immediately deleted the "terms and conditions" page, and I told him to put it back up. The damage had already been done, and we wanted to proceed in a deliberate fashion; no knee-jerk reactions and deletions. (Think: Arthur Anderson, or Enron.)
Then I told everyone that if the client or anyone else called, they were not to answer any questions, but direct everything to me.
Finally, I split up the pages specifically mentioned in the lawsuit and assigned people to start going through them and responding to them specifically.
Because here's the thing: the text we had used was, indeed, virtually the same as that on the suing company's site, but that's only because it was all the same marketing text provided by the manufacturer that both companies source from!
The company suing our client didn't have a copyright on any of the text they claimed. (Well, they had filed for and received a copyright certificate, but whoever issued it was clearly asleep at the wheel.) If anyone were to sue and have a legitimate complaint, it would be the manufacturer -- but they never would, because they provided the text for this express purpose.
We started going page by page and finding all the other sites on the Internet that also had the exact same content, including the manufacturer's site.
Then I compiled all that information and drafted a letter setting forth our position on the matter. Basically, it stated that we did not dispute the similarity of content, but we felt their 'copyright' was invalid because they had not written any of the text themselves. Our formatting of the text was different, our site was coded entirely differently, and the vast majority of our site was unique anyway. There was only a small section of duplicate content, all in the product description areas.
The Funny Part
When I called our client to follow-up on the letter, they told me that the company who had brought the suit had already dropped it. Three reasons:
1. Our position, which I had already verbally related to our client and they had relayed to the plaintiff, was very sound.
2. The manufacturer had called the plaintiff and told them to drop the suit -- supporting our position entirely.
3. The law firm that had drawn up the papers realized they had represented our client in the past, and so their filing was both a conflict of interest and technically illegal.
Crazy, huh? But we still had to send the letter, because our client still had to file a formal response to the court. Our client read it over and loved it.
The End
I was mightily proud of myself at the end of that week. I think I managed to stay cool-headed through those two situations, and to keep the team focused and productive. I was strong where it was needed, and patient where that was needed. Good job.
(Hee hee. That's my letter of commendation to myself.) :o)
Have a great day!