I was just curious as to the most likely scenarios that would liken the chances of getting sued and some ways to prevent it as much as possible. :)

failing to provide what you advertise is a wasy to get sued, breaching the terms of your contract etc. The best way to avoid it is to make sure your terms have been checked by a solicitor. Make sure you make your clients agree to them and DO NOT ADVERTISE THINGS YOU CANNOT PROVIDE.

Originally posted by tazd9t9
failing to provide what you advertise is a wasy to get sued

Really? People successfully win lawsuits over a $10 hosting account? That's like suing Sports Illustrated because they failed to send you the swimsuit issue. I want the name and number of the attorney who'd take that case. :D

Seriously though, the above is good advice. Promise only what you can deliver and be diligent about it. It will not only keep you out of trouble but you'll earn a good reputation for it.

On the practical side, you might check into some kind of insurance. Professionals often purchase "errors and omissions" insurance to protect them against claims against their practice, but I don't believe there is such a thing for hosting businesses. Business attorneys are good resources for that sort of information.

There's a 99% chance that you will not get sued if you do something wrong in the web hosting industry. People may say they are going to sue you, but they never follow their words. For example, look at *****: they are horrible and have never been sued (at least not to my knowledge - they could have settled out of court before too).

where there is no insurance there are no law suits is true about 100% of the time.

i would never purchase nor have our s corp purchase any insurance.

been there done that, lived the consequences with and w/o insurance, amazing how an attorney gets shy when there is no cow to milk.

and if any legal counsel whos practice revolves around litigation is offended by this, 2 of you on the bottom of the ocean is a good start..

i repeat , where there's no insurance there's no suits

dos centavos

Originally posted by miami_g
i repeat , where there's no insurance there's no suits


What about assets? ;)

you got my blood pressure up.

look at it this way. for a suit to work a loss must be demonstrated.

so mr. $9.95/m web master your site went down, and how much income do you make from this site?

was it not possible to receive email via your current isp or even hotmail?

could you not have had your mission critical site up and running with another company in about 2 hrs?

in other words what type of demonstrable financial loss was there
and could you have not avoided all this loss by transferring to another host?

real websites making real $ might sue a noc cause their dedicated server went out and the loss was at least 10k during down time. but that can be argued against also.

this subject makes me loco

re assets one word

oj

miami_g, don't go loco. I'm with you on this one.

Just explain the bit about OJ. I don't follow.

oj simpson was found guilty in civil court

his untouchable tangible assets are over 10mil

so i speak of trust, veiled ownership, off shore games etc.

didnt mean to go nuts

lost suits and won em

and this subject grinds me to no end
of course revenge was shutting down an attorneys site for failed credit card- did enjoy that a bit:D

viejo going to bed cya

Hi all,

I'm not a lawyer -- nor is this in any way legal advice; the following are just my thoughts and opinions:

That said, what I've noticed when reading the license agreements on software is that many of them state something to the effect:

"we offer this software without warranty that it's fit for any particular purpose or free from bugs/problems/will work as desired"

and

"any liability is limited to the original purchase price of the software"

and

"any lawsuits will be filed in jurisdiction X" (i.e. their home jurisdiction so they don't have to defend a suit a long distance away.

and

"if you use the software, you are agreeing to these terms"

and

"if you do not agree with the terms of this license/agreement, then return the software unused and you will get your money back and we simply won't do business together"


Seems like good terms from a business point of view. Basically, I infer that for these companies the profit from any particular sale isn't worth the risk of legal bills. I also infer they are basically limiting their legal or refund risk to the cost of what they are selling you (albeit the retail you paid for the software, not the wholesale the software company got from the merchant).

As a legal layperson, I wonder if something like this would work for hosting?

Basically, I wonder if one could offer hosting -- but limit "damages" to the cost of hosting a person has paid. I wonder if one could further limit it to the current or maybe last billing period, too. Maybe in a user agreement they have to accept during signup?

Just my thoughts,

Louis

Bottom line, if someone wishes to sue you they will.

Your best bet is to never state a promised uptime, to clearly state that in the event of downtime you refund on a pro-rated system prehaps after a certain duration (say 15 minutes or so). You will also want to state that you are not responsible for things out of your countrol, you can not stop your noc from loosing power, and thus aren't liable.

Read the tos for a few of the big hosts and youll see how they state it again and again, follow this idea and your ability to fend off a suit will decline drastically.

Last off, like many others said.... if you have no insurance, no real company assets the suit will be worthless, getting your 2 servers wont even cover legal fees for a suit. I'ts the one thing movies arent wrong on, if you dont have anything, people won't have much reason to go after you.

Originally posted by stlouislouis
Basically, I wonder if one could offer hosting -- but limit "damages" to the cost of hosting a person has paid. I wonder if one could further limit it to the current or maybe last billing period, too. Maybe in a user agreement they have to accept during signup? That's certainly a good idea, and many hosting companies do just that. It's not by any means absolute protection, though. Even if you write contract terms and a customer agrees to them, they might still be challenged in court. That's why such agreements generally also include a clause stating something to the effect that "a finding of a part of this agreement to be void does not invalidate the entire agreement..."

Still, if your terms are reasonable and clear, it's likely that if you end up in court a judge will limit your liability to what you and your customer had agreed to. If you try to limit your liablity to, say, fourteen cents, you might have a tough time... but if you say "the value of three months of the supplied service," that might seem very reasonable.

As always, talk to a lawyer.

I would not worry about being sued either. Be sure to make all causes filed in your current state, and also just offer what you can reasonabily. Things happen in the hosting world, computers crash things get deleted for whatever reason, human error etc..the list goes on.

Best thing for an end user:

IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR HARD WORK, YOU WILL BACKUP YOUR OWN DATA AND NOT RELY ON SOMEONE ELSE.

All the techs dont have jobs because computers are perfect.

Secondly, if someone does file a valid suit and you dont want to fight it or dont have the money too fight it, just dump out all the assets of the Corp and they will be fighting for nothing. If you are a sole propriatorship, you better start finding a good lawyer and protect yourself.

Thanks all for the replies. I am just a Sole Proprietorship atm, but I do plan in a few months (if it all goes well) filing for INC.

If a host doesn't mess up what grounds would there be to sue on other then if they lost money over it?