How’s this for ridiculous misuse of the legal process? An American man bought a clock on eBay, and wasn’t happy with what he got, so posted negative feedback. The seller, of course, is suing him for damages.
Michael Steadman is being sued for $15,000 after posting negative feedback on the seller, Elliot Miller, accusing him of having the ethics of a car salesman. Mr Miller claims the negative feedback has ruined his "100 per cent" eBay rating and commercial reputation.
Mr Steadman was looking for a clock that would time stamp his employees cards for his welding business. He spotted one on Mr Miller’s eBay page, which sells electrical components and hardware, and send off his $44, the cost of the clock. However, the clock arrived in three shipments and the parts appeared to be from different models and were incompatible. He filed a complaint with eBay and got his money back, but said he wanted to leave the negative feedback to warn other potential buyers.
Mr Miller says in his lawsuit that the clock was "plainly offered for sale with the following language: ‘We cannot give you any guarantees and must offer it on an as-is, where-is basis only’."
Mr Steadman said that the case had so far cost him $7,000 in legal fees.
A few observations on this case:
- Mr Miller is a lawyer – probably explains a lot.
- I can’t imagine that Mr Miller could waive away basic consumer protections like goods actually being fit for purpose, ie working as they are intended – perhaps in the US the principle of caveat emptor applies more strongly than in most other Western countries like Australia?
- I think if I was Mr Steadman I’d have withdrawn the negative feedback when the threat of legal action obviously became serious – I’d not have cared enough about bagging out the seller to spend one dollar on legals let alone thousands
- as with all of these stupid lawsuits, the courts need to tell the parties to grow up, sort it out themselves and stop wasting court time.
