Semantics seem to be very important in legal matters. Just saying…
Really? Are you an attorney? NO? How dare you offer that opinion!
Something similiar happened to my father-he originally had to turn down his current job because his former employer threatened to sue him over a contract he had assigned about not taking a job with a competitor. (Even though my father was advised by a lawyer when he signed it that such agreements weren’t legal in PA). My dad didn’t know if he’d win the court case, and had to turn down the job.
Well, surprise, surprise, two years later, their second choice wasn’t working out, and my father was no longer under the contract (even though he had to give up his yearly bonus for not signing another one). So it worked out in this case.
But yeah, Fear Itself is obviously full of shit.
FEAR ITSELF –
I’m busting your chops now, because having been informed that your statement was at best unsubstantiated by the facts as we know them and at worse wrong, you choose to continue to defend it. Think of it this way: I will excuse an unintentionlly fart; I will not continue to excuse intentional farting.
Gosh, that’s good news for the OP’er, isn’t it? In general, however, like “socks first, then the shoes,” it’s a good idea to remember “research first, then answer.” Because if you answer first and then do the research, you may well find out you were wrong. Even if it ends up you were right, you weren’t knowledgeable, you were just lucky.
As it turns out, however, it is still by no means clear you were right. The very site you link to goes on to say:
In this case, we don’t know if a non-compete even exists between the current employer (providing the service) and the client/potential future employer. We don’t know the wording of the agreement, the nature of the employers business, the product market, or the geographic area. So your advice is still too broad.
Gosh, and I so wanted to impress a nonlawyer with nothing better to do than give advice in an area he knows nothing about. If the law gives you such a hard-on and you can’t resist advising on it, go to law school.
Well, you’re certainly doing better when you acknowledge you don’t actually have the expertise to give the advice you’re giving. I do feel more comfortable letting people take their chances with your shady questionable advice when they know you may be pulling it out your ass.
And it is true, as several people have posted, that BUNNY takes her chances if she takes legal advice from a message board. But once it’s been pointed out that your advice is or may be complete shit, “I have the right to post complete shit if I want” seems to be a mighty weak excuse for continuing.
Bullshit. We want you to have the smallest idea of what you’re talking about before you talk. At the time you (twice) made your indefensible statement regarding her “rights,” you knew jack-shit about what the law was in New York and jack-shit about what she did or where she did it. Asking that you not pull opinions out of your ass is not the same as asking for a guarantee that you are correct.
This is an exceptionally stupid post. No, I’m not an attorney. However, I also didn’t offer legal advice to anybody. You’re dismissing people’s concerns with your post as “semantics,” when semantics will have a significant influence on how the situation will in fact be resolved.
Actually, one of the tacet assumptions here in recent years is that the opinions people offer have some basis in fact. That whole “fighting ignorance” thing, you know. It’s not that we want a guarantee; it’s that we expect you to back up what you say with a cite when it’s first challenged. Given that your answer as provided turns out to be true in part in that jurisdiction in some cases in the opinion of one lawyer does not in any way change the fact that your answer was in fact a WAG with no basis in fact, and that if the OP had taken your answer at face value, might be in a worse place than she is right now.
I’ve got news for you Counselor; everything you have ever told a client “might” be complete shit. Unless you have never lost a case; you have lost a case, haven’t you? Was your legal advice “complete shit” because the judge didn’t agree with you? Perhaps all attorneys should throw out their shingles if they lose a single case, because that proves that at least once, they were wrong. We can’t risk that, can we?
So your “advice” is based upon:
(1) Your ideology regarding “I honestly believe, etc.”, and
(2) A personal vendetta seeking to prevent lawyers from collecting fees from their clients.
Neither of which is based on knowledge of the law or the OP’s circumstance and is not calculated to help the OP.
I don’t know where this came from. Lawyers have the right to collect as much money as their clients will allow.
Jodi, nice job. I’ve noticed a tendency, particularly with legal questions, for people with apparently no understanding of the law to weigh in with their opinions and pretend that they’re the law. I find this eminently puzzling; while Fear Itself, in this case, may have a strong opinion, what in the world makes him think that his opinion is the law? There’s simply no explanation for it except to note that a surprising number of people simply don’t recognize the essential difference between what they would like to be true and what is true. I don’t understand this at all, but there’s really no other way to explain why folks like Fear Itself would offer their grotesquely erroneous analyses of things they don’t understand. I’m not sure if it reflects an intellectual disability - some form of mental retardation - or an emotional problem of some sort. But there’s obviously something broken in these people’s brains.
The evidence suggests you’re a moron, Fear Itself.
This is complete crap. If I have all the facts and I have researched the applicable law, there is no way that the advice I give will be “complete shit.” But don’t feel bad – that applies to you as well. If you had had all the facts FIRST and researched the question FIRST, there would have been no way that your advice could have been “complete shit” either. As it happens, if your advice was not complete shit in this case, you were just lucky, because you didn’t have the facts and you didn’t do the research.
Never. When I worked in the courtroom (until early this year) I practiced civil defense for government entities. As in all civil cases, the vast majority settled. If such a case goes to trial a “loss” is one where the plaintiff is awarded more than you were willing to pay to settle it. Of those I took to trial I never lost one. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
What the fuck are you talking about? I mean, do you even know? There is a huge difference between evaluating the facts and the law and in good faith recommending a course of action that at the end of the day is rejected by a judge, and pulling some extremely broad statement out of your ass before you have the facts or know the law. Expecting you to not state what BUNNY’s rights are when you have no earthly way of knowing, is not the same as saying you (or anyone else) cannot put forth an opinion without a gold-plated guarantee that it is now and will forever more be completely correct.
FEAR ITSELF –
Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick!! Do you never stop? This is in many cases WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG !!!
For fuck’s sake, isn’t there a topic you know something about that you could talk about?
Woooo - Boy!
No legal bills for me ---- ever!.
I’ll just post my legal issues on the SDMB and Jodi will protect me from anybody not licensed to practice in my state!
I can’t wait to tell all of my pals that the SDMB has flawless legal counsel.
wow. a totally justified pitting. Well done, Jodi
Gee, BUBBA, I’d think you could see that telling you not to take bad legal advice is not the same as giving you good legal advice myself. If you’re willing to settle for no legal advice, you shouldn’t be incurring any legal bills now.
I guess I guy named “Bubba” may not see that.
Jeez, you lawyers must a scream at parties; it was a throw away snark, not legal advice, you twit.
Y’all are pissing upstream with regard to Fear. He’s like lightning on the savannah–you never know where he’ll strike, but you can bet there will be trouble.
He will get nothing out of this pitting. Best just to watch for his inane and ignorant posts and block them on the spot. Consider it an illumination of a devil’s advocate rather than a hijack or derailment.
Riiiiiight. “Lawyers have the right to collect as much money as their clients will allow.” That is some withering snark right there! I’m surprised you didn’t say “I was joking, sheesh, don’t you lawyers have a sense of humor?”
Isn’t that exactly what he did?
Wha?!? If it turned out to be true, how did it have “no basis in fact”? A lot of people here seem to be missing that Fear Itself knew what he was talking about! An intelligent opinion/educated guess, proven to be true, is not “lucky” (as Jodi called him).
And furthermore, its obvious to everyone that he was expressing a generic political opinion when he said that lawyers ought to be able to get as much money as they can for their services.
This is just utterly weak piling-on.