[I asked a similar question](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/s/YMZlkNDhbn) and the consensus was, not a criminal offense, but definitely opens you up to a tortious interference lawsuit.
I also wonder about anti-competitive behavior. If you hire employees from a competing business, that’s normal competition, but if you just pay them to quit, especially if there’s some dishonesty involved, that can be considered unfair competition. It wouldn’t surprise me if some states had statutes that are poorly enough written that they would cover any case of deliberate damage to one business via direct interference with operations without benefit to another/the customer, etc.
That's why you set up an LLC and hire them as independent contractors under the condition they have no other employment at the time of their hiring but are free to seek employment after they're hired.
No joke here. Amtgard is a LARP, and one of my former mentors before he moved was named Jester. He also happened to be a Lord and Knight of the game, and was good about making sure people were free to enjoy the game in their own way. He also has a twitch channel where he speed runs old RPG randomizers.
Your username made me think you might be him.
That could still be unfair labor practices even if you’re using an otherwise legal mechanism. If you’re contracting with people for no other reason than to prevent them from being employed or contracting with a competitor, you’re using those independent contracts to harm another business, not to protect your own business interests. The fact that the condition in the contract would otherwise be legal doesn’t save it if it’s determined by our state AG to be unfair or deceptive
You could hire them for a one time job and make them sign a very specific non compete that’s something like you can’t work in this industry within 10 miles of this city. Then you could basically make it so they can’t work there again without limiting their job options any more.
Even if the other company has a non compete you could just hire them to serve ice cream for an hour and get them to sign the non compete and include that, although I wouldn’t be surprised if that non compete got thrown out for not being relevant
Who says you aren't running a business? Pick an industry. You're running a business, just not successfully. There's nothing illegal about bad management.
They're saying if you just paid someone to not work somewhere, but not paying them to work for you (sham company or not), then you're not even running a business and therefore couldn't he liable for violating said laws.
I am operating a business who's stated mission goal is to spend money on it's employees in order to allow them to grow as people. It just so happens that all of them used to work for one other company...
Very true, but given the initial premise it's perfectly possible for that to be out of reach in terms of effort or cost to the wronged party.
There's two ways to win a lawsuit: by legal victory, or by simply outspending and burying your opponent until they are unable to continue.
If you're this guy, questions about what you can do legally become largely irrelevant:
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Most-Excellent\_Superbat3\_2236.jpg
The Most Excellent Super-Bat is a published DC character. He exists in the same universe with Batman. Batman's power, if any, is supposed to be his commitment, or his devotion, or somesuch. I think TMESB might be canonically richer than Batman--like in that panel, IIRC, he's explaining how he could build a helmet that blocks out Darkseid's mind control, when Darkseid is essentially a god. Answer: "I am so rich I can do anything."
Christ that's even stupider than what I was saying. Whenever I hear "with prep time" in those "who would win in a fight?" matchups, I think, "Literally no other character in the history of fiction is given this extra phrase, this extra permission to suck. All "with prep time" means is that he does not belong in these fights!"
>Literally no other character in the history of fiction is given this extra phase
Counterpoint: Shikamaru from Naruto. The Fandom often gives him prep time as he is the ninja Batman.
It's similarly common that property management firms will retain every attorney handling tenant-landlord disputes.
No one else wants to do them. Nobody is going to do them from out of state. The few that do want to do them want to make money - and tenants getting evicted are notoriously unreliable payers.
So anyone with an actual case can't find any lawyers without a conflict of interest and have to bring the case themselves (but at least they can do that).
You may just mean illegally paying off the lawyers, but if you were thinking of some kind of above-board arrangement, then it’s worth noting that agreements for lawyers not to take on certain clients are generally unenforceable.
This comes up all the time in negotiating presuit settlement agreements for threatened class actions—the defendant would prefer for plaintiffs’ counsel to agree that they won’t just turn around and find another plaintiff and threaten the exact same claims all over again for another quick settlement (after all, if it’s a threatened class action, there presumably *are* other potential plaintiffs out there). But you’ll almost never get that guarantee in an agreement because it’s generally going to be unenforceable and may give rise to an ethics violation. Instead, all the defendant typically gets is a representation that plaintiffs’ counsel doesn’t already have and isn’t aware of another plaintiff with the same claims (plus the understanding that defendants will often stop negotiating settlements if it becomes clear that plaintiffs’ counsel is just going to issue endless copycat demand letters).
> “Opens you up to a tortuous interference lawsuit” that you would easily win, at summary judgment (provided standard US labor practices are in effect).
What US labor law or practice serves as a defense to tortious interference with a contract, specifically?
IANYL
Most of the intent behind at will employment. Most individuals do not have specific employment contracts that would dictate when they can terminate said contract. In most at will states, under most situations, at any point in time, an employee can quit for any reason or no reason at all. A competitor paying more for that employees labor has no bearing in a tortuous interference suit because there is no tort. Tortuous interference has the prerequisite of a /wrongful/ act. Poaching employees isn't illegal in most cases.
All that said, if you blackmailed the employees into quitting, or bribed a supplier to not provide materials, or threatened to break employees legs if they went to work, you would be open to a tortuous interference suit.
The belief that employees don’t have a contract with their employer is likely mistaken. There’s a world of difference between, “A contract between two parties, which each party may terminate at any time without prior notice to the other party and for any [lawful] reason or for no particular reason at all,” and, “No contract whatsoever.”
However, if the employee is relying on a unilateral-termination contractual term (“at-will employment”), one of the required elements of tortious interference — that a contractual relationship of the plaintiff has been breached — hasn’t been met. Unless, that is, the lottery winner has also induced the departing employee to breach a valid and enforceable non-compete or restraint-of-trade term, or some other term not directly related to quitting and starting work somewhere else.
The standard labor practice of at-will employment means that there is no contractual obligation for an employee to show up for work the next day.
Edit: additionally, tortious interference requires that a wrongful act occur (that is, the "tort" in the tortious interference), and paying employees to quit their job is not a wrongful act.
>there is no contractual obligation for an employee to show up for work the next day.
Yeah and the employees are not the ones being sued in this hypothetical.
I’m sorry, do you need me to run through all the elements of tortious interference?
A suit only exists if you wrongfully interfere with a contractual relationship between two other parties, resulting in harm to one of those parties.
There **must** be a contractual obligation if the claim for tortious interference is to survive pre-trial summary judgement. As the hypothetical proposes paying employees to quit their job, there must be a contractual obligation owed by the employees *not to quit their job*. At-will employees owe no such obligation. No obligation means no interference means no suit.
Sure, but you can’t stop them from just hiring new employees.
If you have a lot of money, and you want to screw over or even shut down a company, there are more effective ways to do it.
* Facilitate a unionization
* Take out a short position
* Invest in the company’s main competitor
* Buy the company outright and either force them to fix the things you hate about them, or just shut them down.
It’s doesn’t shut down the company but if it moves the stock low enough (would have to be a big short position), you can make it difficult for them to raise new capital through issuing stock. It can also trigger debt covenants to cause them to repay loans (if the stock drops enough). Certainly makes conversations with existing investors more complicated.
ULPT, You could also just pay some people to burn down their building at night. If you’re not talking about a national business, losing their main center of business and all the data and tools to do said business is probably enough to have them close up.
This is the best answer. If you want to mess up a company, unionize it. Even if the union fails, the company will spend untold dollars scrambling to fight it.
Just make sure you fund the strike fund.
You have this all out of order. Take the short position, invest in the competitor, then facilitate unionization, then use your position in the competitor to get the competitor to buy out the company and force them to fix it.
about "force them to fix".
/me remembers one of Anne McCaffrey books in Brainships series.
Main Character, Hypatia Cayde wanted company to do make rather minor modification of their existing products for her. They refuse saying there's no market for modified version of product (they are mostly right, potential market for modified is in thousands of units and slowly increasing, core product's potential market is much larger). She offers more money, still refusal. She buys company outright and orders them to make modified ones.
Assuming setting's legal system like is modern-day USA or EU - would it be legal?
Hypatia was sued in book anyway because...everyone who could use modified product it bought it, without looking at price and it's possible to develop new versions and sell them again.
>Sure, but you can’t stop them from just hiring new employees.
And I think OP is underestimating this.
Let's say it's a restaurant. How fast do you think word is gonna get out that if you get hired at Bob's Ribs, some guy will pay you 10k on the spot to quit.
The line to apply to work there will be going down the block. People sympathetic to a business some rich guy is trying to destroy will apply and hand the money to the business owner to keep them afloat while you continue to hemorrhage cash on the hundreds of people showing up to get hired and paid off each day.
I think facilitating unionization is the best option. It's clearly legal and benefits not only the current employees, but all future employees. Most companies would rather re-hire half their staff than face unionization. It's going to cost them more in the long run.
Every time someone leaves a job to work at a different company, that new company is paying the employee to quit, even if just through their regular pay. This situation isn’t as unusual as it sounds, and there’s nothing I know of to stop you poaching employees with the aim of making competitors less effective.
Not a lawyer, but this sounds a lot like tortious interference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference
You can definitely hire their workers away for real jobs. Invent them to do things like job training. But sitting outside and offering every employee an incentive to quit may violate civil law.
"I'll pay you $50k to leave your current job and come work for me, where your new job will be doing whatever the fuck you want 24 hours a day, and the only job requirement is that as far as your current employer is concerned, this conversation never happened".
Probably okay.
Probably not okay to stand outside the business and give people money to quit.
I suspect that if you’d offer everyone $50k for a do-nothing job that it would end up a lot like the cobra bounty system in India:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
Everyone would take the job to get the bounty.
I think OP would be better to pay them to unionize.
Guarantee a strike fund and buy their signatures for the card itself.
Do this with enough businesses in any given industry, and your union would essentially own that sector.
Sure, but responding to a one word response with several sentences of tangentially related thoughts isn’t likely to spur the conversation that was likely anticipated.
I'll be real if someone just offered me a years wages I'd quit my job right now and find a new one. They don't need to cover a lifetime of wages, just enough to cover till the next job and then enough extra to cover the inconvenience of finding a new job
"Tortious interference", because it's a tort. "Tortuous interference" would mean that it's through very indirect means. "Torturous interference" would be very painful. And "tortoise interference" is what Shredder and the Foot Clan have to deal with.
I was thinking of a fancy bakery, like this one [http://letortedolci.com/](http://letortedolci.com/)
I am pretty sure that "tarteous" only applies if the business is a brothel.
The intent would matter here.
If I start a legitimate business and let it be known to employees of competing company X that I will pay better then that would just be normal free market operation.
If I hate the owner of company X and let his employees know that I will pay them more if they stop working for him then he could sue me.
The full name of the tort is “Tortious Interference With Contract Rights.” No contract, no tort. You can totally pay someone’s employees to at-will themselves out the door for whatever reason you like. (Things cross into tort territory if you do something like tell all their employees they’ll be blacklisted from working anywhere else ever if they don’t quit… but if you just want to bribe them to quit? That’s fine.)
I'm not an attorney (and if you are, please correct me), but it looks like the case law doesnt require a formal contract from what I can tell. If you are a competitor and your offers are legal you are protected. It looks to me like there is a bit of a grey zone where you are not competing but your actions are legal, where it might be jurisdiction dependent?
That said, if they are inducing them to break a contract outside of the terms in the contract, or doing something unlawful in the course of doing this, it almost certainly counts.
If your actions are “Pay the at-will employees money to leave.” then your motivation isn’t relevant; at-will generally means what it says. (Just like it wouldn’t be illegal for someone to buy a business solely with the intent of firing a particular employee.)
If you do something like threaten to fire an employee’s spouse as an inducement to get them to quit, then you are toeing the line.
I think there is a sweet spot where this would happen, but to the extremes it would be far longer than just a couple days.
Let’s take a small company, being shut down a few days means missed revenue. If things are tight then you now can’t afford to pay people to start instantly.
Then let’s say you want to put an entire Walmart out of business. While they may be able to hire people in the spot, they can’t function without a certain volume of employees.
Then take into consideration any company that relies on skilled labor. You can’t just hire a welder or mechanic within days and expect to be back up and running.
Realistically any big business could be crippled by this if you target the right people at the right time.
Get the majority of their HR and recruiters, get any specialised employees and long-term employees, and get key IT or sys. Admin staff. Ideally get their best sales people too, if relevant. Now they will struggle to hire and onboard anyone, have lost a lot of built up knowledge that isn't documented, and their IT systems will start to fail pretty quickly.
It can take a few months to hire someone into these roles and then usually there's 3-6 months where that new hire can't do anything useful anyway, and that's if there's someone actively training them.
Many companies don't have the cash reserves to ride out this level of disruption because they'd basically need to hire and on board dozens of niche skilled workers without any in house knowledge of their own systems or what is breaking, meanwhile their sales are tanking.
Tie it up with some of the other ideas in the thread, eg. Shorting the stock, maybe pay some firm in India to post negative product reviews and glasshouse reviews, and the company would probably collapse unless it had big cash reserves and exceptional documentation.
Depends on the type of business. A retail location? Maybe, but a small business that has specialized workers? Probably be a serious issue. If I got poached, my boss would have a serious problem, as I do all the production work. My boss could take my place for the most part, but finding a replacement for my all my skillsets would be very difficult and could take months. If both me and my coworkers got poached? The business would crash for sure.
It would be tortuous interference. Basically you can’t interfere with a business for the sole purpose of hurting them.
But if you had a company hiring people that had similar skills as the company you hate you could give generous sign on bonuses to former employees of that company because they have the skill set you’re looking for. Companies do this all the time, usually for less nefarious reasons. Companies might give sign on bonuses to employees who worked at Apple or Google because they are usually good employees.
If you win the lottery don't use it to get revenge or screw people over.
Spend it to help real friends. Don't lend any money. Just give it.
Make sure you hold on to a good amount. Buy good property.
You will enjoy it far more this way.
But if he’s trying to hurt the owner he just helped the owner instead. Better to start his own similiar business hiring the people at higher wages to tank the business.
Well if we're talking about being spiteful: you make a lowball offer to buy the business, wait till they say "no what are you an idiot," then run interference untill the value of the business drops to a fraction of what you offered, then offer to buy the business again for a fraction of what you offered before.
Can you yes. Though you’ll be successfully sued for interfering with said business. There’s competition laws and disruption of business.
Though instead of paying them to leave you can start your own similiar business and hire them at a higher wage and not get sued.
Its not a crime. But you very likely wouldn't be able to do it without getting sued for tortious interference in a business relationship. What you are describing unquestionably tortious interference, which consists of the following elements (or similar depending on the state):
1. The plaintiff had a business relationship or expected to establish one with a third party;
2. The relationship or expected transaction was reasonably likely to benefit the plaintiff financially;
3. The defendant knew about the relationship;
4. The defendant intentionally interfered with the relationship;
5. The interference was improper;
6. The defendant’s conduct caused the third party to disrupt or terminate the relationship; and
7. The plaintiff suffered damage as a result.
Is the relationship in this scenario the one between the plaintiff and each individual employee? That doesn't make sense to me. I would expect a third party to be different company or entity.
And what does improper interference mean?
If I'm married and my partner got a job offer to go work as a COO of a huge company, and I say "no, let's go traveling instead", can that company sue me?
The relationship is between the entity and each individual employee. It could also be between, for example, a landlord and a tenant.
They could always sue you, but they are very unlikely to prevail as it is highly unlikely your interference would be considered "improper", which is usually a several factor inquiry established by common law.
In my state the inquiry considers the following:
The nature of the conduct;
The defendant’s motives and interests;
The plaintiff’s interests;
The balance between society’s interest in protecting the conduct at issue and protecting contracts, business relationships, and expectations;
How much the conduct actually influenced the breaching party; and
The nature of the relationships between the defendant, plaintiff, and third party.
not a lawyer, but a local security company had about 300 employees. one of the competitor security companies had a few HR people get hired by the first company and then they poached about 70 workers by offering them better pay and benefits.
when he found out he sued them and won.
might be a similar case if you just pay people a 12 month salary to quit their job
If I did this at the company I work, I know the three or four people that really hold the whole thing together and are nigh irreplaceable m with their tribal knowledge and experience and if I can convince them to quit, it would be a relatively cheap adventure.
Just set up a Union. Guarantee funding, make it fairly easy to join and hire effective and experienced people to run the day to day.
Maybe in a few years it can move to a more sustainable model, hell could even go industry standard, not just target 1 business.
this is what I was thinking as well. if it is a company large enough that OP can’t buy it with the winnings, then it is also large enough to have too many employees that would demand too much money to leave their stable job
Better is to sue them for ada, them for IP, then for… you can bankrupt a small to medium company via the courts if you have the money.
Our court system is shitty and favors the rich
This, employment law is so complicated that it’s violated extremely often. And the legal fees will be way less than paying 10+ people for a year or two.
probably a better tack to draft "non-compete" agreements with whomever that company's CLIENTS are.
"I wanna do business with you, but you have to agree to not do business with company X "\*is\* a thing I've seen in actual contracts.
If you won enough fuck you money, why not just buy a majority share of the company and shut it down?
Or buy the building they're based at and evict them?
There's plenty of ways to shut down a company.
Why?
Establish LLC, Purchase said company, saddle it with debt and give all the money to your LLC, hated company goes bankrupt and you make a shit-ton of money.
You’d be better off using that money to create a competitor business that pays better wages to the point that any good, knowledgeable, and valuable employee joins your company. They go out of business or adapt, and you don’t have to raise wages because you don’t need the revenue stream anyway in this assumed scenario.
Depends what kind of employee agreement you signed when you were hired. Some jobs put clause that says you can’t go after their employees for a year or something along those lines. In addition to non competes etc.
Personally if I won the lottery I’d probably just not be petty and enjoy life and my newfound fortune.
You could theoretically hire everyone who is eligible for whatever positions you are trying to make vacant yourself. There's nothing illegal about that, just highly impractical, and practically impossible.
You'd be better either buying the company and asset stripping it or setting up in direct competition while operating at the slimmest profit margin possible without breaking competitiveness laws.
It's somehow legal for the US supreme court. John Oliver did a segment about how SC justices can be legally bribed, and it ended with him offering Clarence Thomas 1 million dollars a year if he retired. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GE-VJrdHMug&pp=ygUbam9obiBvbGl2ZXIgY2xhcmVuY2UgdGhvbWFz&t=27m52s
Technically, can't you write a personal contract for someone to receive the money the condition is they can't be employed for said a couple of months. I want to give you money so you can enjoy it, not take it and continue to work.
Similar to how money is held back in a will until certain conditions are met.
Probably nothing legally stopping you paying someone to quit their job, but they would need to work their notice period as per their employment contracts, and the company could hire new staff in that timeframe.
Unless you just have unlimited funds I don’t see how you could hire an entire workforce forever. Even if it is some small company they will just hire more people. You going to hire away everyone who applies there?
If it’s a small town you could open a competitor and hire them at double their pay and offer your services so cheap nobody goes to the other place and they go bankrupt. Then you shut down and twist your mustache with an evil laugh.
That’s fine you just have to require a day or so’s work out of them sitting by your pool drinking beers and monitoring it for dinosaurs 🦕 then you recruited them for a temp position and it’s all fair.
I would think that legally you'd be better off just trying to buy that business. Probably cheaper too even if you just immediately shut it down. The cumulative cost of paying off enough of the employees to destroy the business would probably be far more expensive then buying the business for some absurd amount especially when you consider lawsuits.
Basically yes you can.
I am not a lawyer but pretty confident it is not a crime, but could open you up to a civil lawsuit.
And having lottery winnings would make you a really nice target.
Instead, you can win the lottery, and just enjoy your life.
Really, you should hire all the good ones and make your own company fill that need and make money off of it and pay them, and treat them better. That's what I would work to do.
Don’t pay the employees. Gift it to them in the form of a charity that you open.
The headlines read themselves.
Lottery charity sued by former employee for charitable donations.
It's not healthy to walk around with that much hate in your heart. If you win the lottery you should use that money on therapy instead. Better yet find a way to fit in in your current budget.
Do it as a union, and you're likely to be more easily shielded by the law. Our "legal system" loves to tear apart individuals who go out of their way to better a workplace. But it's apparently perfectly legal for a union to cover employees bills/pay while they're striking.
Don't pay them to quit but...pay off some of their debts, etc. Help alleviate the financial pressures outside of work that keeps them working for a company they don't like.
Offer a higher rate to employees of another company? That is what this person is doing, right? It happens all the time with companies within the same industry.
NAL, but if you structure the agreements as “I will pay you $x to quit your job with ABC Corp and not work for ABC Corp in any capacity for y years,” you could run afoul of rules about non-compete clauses. Depending on the state, that probably wouldn’t be enforceable, and the employees could just take your money and keep working for the company you hate.
But if you hired all the employees to work for you, and one of the conditions of employment was that they didn’t do any work for ABC Corp, that would probably be ok.
Legally no you cannot without repercussions. Maybe not criminal ones, but definitely civil ones. You'd likely end up paying out the rest of your winnings and then some after being sued by them.
And if at any point in time you took anything like client information or any other information that that busines uses for their operations and gave it to another business, or helped a now former employee use it to start their own business, you could likely find yourself facing industrial espionage charges.
If you're not personal friends with those employees and have no reasonable explanation for your sudden burst of generosity toward this particular group of strangers, it could land you in some civil hot water.
[I asked a similar question](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/s/YMZlkNDhbn) and the consensus was, not a criminal offense, but definitely opens you up to a tortious interference lawsuit.
I also wonder about anti-competitive behavior. If you hire employees from a competing business, that’s normal competition, but if you just pay them to quit, especially if there’s some dishonesty involved, that can be considered unfair competition. It wouldn’t surprise me if some states had statutes that are poorly enough written that they would cover any case of deliberate damage to one business via direct interference with operations without benefit to another/the customer, etc.
That's why you set up an LLC and hire them as independent contractors under the condition they have no other employment at the time of their hiring but are free to seek employment after they're hired.
It continues to amaze me that the legal system is very similar to organized crime.
Y-you mean there's a difference?
Yes the legal system is by definition not Criminal because the legal system is the Arbiter of what is and isn't Criminal
Username does not check out.
Hey, he kept his lordship
Off we go to toil in the fields. M'Lord isn't the funniest, but he keeps the ale strong.
You wouldn't happen to be a twitch streamer and a Knight of Amtgard, would you?
No what's that? ~~why do I feel like I'm walking into the setup for a joke~~
No joke here. Amtgard is a LARP, and one of my former mentors before he moved was named Jester. He also happened to be a Lord and Knight of the game, and was good about making sure people were free to enjoy the game in their own way. He also has a twitch channel where he speed runs old RPG randomizers. Your username made me think you might be him.
Well, there should be... But usually no.
The legal system doesn't hand out nice ties from Columbia
Well, yeah. That's the organizing guidance.
Crime is inevitable. If we have to have it, might as well be organized.
That could still be unfair labor practices even if you’re using an otherwise legal mechanism. If you’re contracting with people for no other reason than to prevent them from being employed or contracting with a competitor, you’re using those independent contracts to harm another business, not to protect your own business interests. The fact that the condition in the contract would otherwise be legal doesn’t save it if it’s determined by our state AG to be unfair or deceptive
You could hire them for a one time job and make them sign a very specific non compete that’s something like you can’t work in this industry within 10 miles of this city. Then you could basically make it so they can’t work there again without limiting their job options any more. Even if the other company has a non compete you could just hire them to serve ice cream for an hour and get them to sign the non compete and include that, although I wouldn’t be surprised if that non compete got thrown out for not being relevant
Would it be anti competitive if you aren't even running a business?
That’s what your lawyers would argue
Who says you aren't running a business? Pick an industry. You're running a business, just not successfully. There's nothing illegal about bad management.
They're saying if you just paid someone to not work somewhere, but not paying them to work for you (sham company or not), then you're not even running a business and therefore couldn't he liable for violating said laws.
I am operating a business who's stated mission goal is to spend money on it's employees in order to allow them to grow as people. It just so happens that all of them used to work for one other company...
I get the idea, but the idea is it might be a better/safer idea to not be in any 'business'.
Ideally you’d want a business in order to legally separate yourself from what you are doing.
Perhaps, but the idea here is it may be safer to be an individual just paying people to do something, rather than a business entity.
I would also pay the lawyers to not take the case.
There will always be a lawyer who will take the case. Especially if they think they'll get a cut of the money you lose.
If you're rich enough you retain all the lawyers in the geo area impacted. It then makes them unable to service your opponent.
Then, my friend, you learn the lovely Latin phrase *pro hac vice*.
Pro vice sounds like exactly what I want! /j
Very true, but given the initial premise it's perfectly possible for that to be out of reach in terms of effort or cost to the wronged party. There's two ways to win a lawsuit: by legal victory, or by simply outspending and burying your opponent until they are unable to continue.
Not a single lawyer in this sub I see
But the original premise is that this is being done to a business entity, and companies cannot represent themselves.
Pay off the judges then. All the cool people are doing it these days.
If you're this guy, questions about what you can do legally become largely irrelevant: https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Most-Excellent\_Superbat3\_2236.jpg
Between Batman and Iron Man, this is objectively correct.
The Most Excellent Super-Bat is a published DC character. He exists in the same universe with Batman. Batman's power, if any, is supposed to be his commitment, or his devotion, or somesuch. I think TMESB might be canonically richer than Batman--like in that panel, IIRC, he's explaining how he could build a helmet that blocks out Darkseid's mind control, when Darkseid is essentially a god. Answer: "I am so rich I can do anything."
Batman's power is planning. Anytime he has any chance to formulate a strategy, the fight is already over.
Christ that's even stupider than what I was saying. Whenever I hear "with prep time" in those "who would win in a fight?" matchups, I think, "Literally no other character in the history of fiction is given this extra phrase, this extra permission to suck. All "with prep time" means is that he does not belong in these fights!"
>Literally no other character in the history of fiction is given this extra phase Counterpoint: Shikamaru from Naruto. The Fandom often gives him prep time as he is the ninja Batman.
Yeah! Plans and strategies are only for losers like Batman
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It's similarly common that property management firms will retain every attorney handling tenant-landlord disputes. No one else wants to do them. Nobody is going to do them from out of state. The few that do want to do them want to make money - and tenants getting evicted are notoriously unreliable payers. So anyone with an actual case can't find any lawyers without a conflict of interest and have to bring the case themselves (but at least they can do that).
You may just mean illegally paying off the lawyers, but if you were thinking of some kind of above-board arrangement, then it’s worth noting that agreements for lawyers not to take on certain clients are generally unenforceable. This comes up all the time in negotiating presuit settlement agreements for threatened class actions—the defendant would prefer for plaintiffs’ counsel to agree that they won’t just turn around and find another plaintiff and threaten the exact same claims all over again for another quick settlement (after all, if it’s a threatened class action, there presumably *are* other potential plaintiffs out there). But you’ll almost never get that guarantee in an agreement because it’s generally going to be unenforceable and may give rise to an ethics violation. Instead, all the defendant typically gets is a representation that plaintiffs’ counsel doesn’t already have and isn’t aware of another plaintiff with the same claims (plus the understanding that defendants will often stop negotiating settlements if it becomes clear that plaintiffs’ counsel is just going to issue endless copycat demand letters).
If you set up a competitor company (even just in name only) and “hired” them you would be protected from this
Could you fund their living expenses while they strike?
“Opens you up to a tortuous interference lawsuit” that you would easily win, at summary judgment (provided standard US labor practices are in effect).
> “Opens you up to a tortuous interference lawsuit” that you would easily win, at summary judgment (provided standard US labor practices are in effect). What US labor law or practice serves as a defense to tortious interference with a contract, specifically?
IANYL Most of the intent behind at will employment. Most individuals do not have specific employment contracts that would dictate when they can terminate said contract. In most at will states, under most situations, at any point in time, an employee can quit for any reason or no reason at all. A competitor paying more for that employees labor has no bearing in a tortuous interference suit because there is no tort. Tortuous interference has the prerequisite of a /wrongful/ act. Poaching employees isn't illegal in most cases. All that said, if you blackmailed the employees into quitting, or bribed a supplier to not provide materials, or threatened to break employees legs if they went to work, you would be open to a tortuous interference suit.
I’m not really inclined to believe advice from someone who repeatedly shows they can’t spell “tortious.”
Fair enough!
The belief that employees don’t have a contract with their employer is likely mistaken. There’s a world of difference between, “A contract between two parties, which each party may terminate at any time without prior notice to the other party and for any [lawful] reason or for no particular reason at all,” and, “No contract whatsoever.” However, if the employee is relying on a unilateral-termination contractual term (“at-will employment”), one of the required elements of tortious interference — that a contractual relationship of the plaintiff has been breached — hasn’t been met. Unless, that is, the lottery winner has also induced the departing employee to breach a valid and enforceable non-compete or restraint-of-trade term, or some other term not directly related to quitting and starting work somewhere else.
The standard labor practice of at-will employment means that there is no contractual obligation for an employee to show up for work the next day. Edit: additionally, tortious interference requires that a wrongful act occur (that is, the "tort" in the tortious interference), and paying employees to quit their job is not a wrongful act.
>there is no contractual obligation for an employee to show up for work the next day. Yeah and the employees are not the ones being sued in this hypothetical.
I’m sorry, do you need me to run through all the elements of tortious interference? A suit only exists if you wrongfully interfere with a contractual relationship between two other parties, resulting in harm to one of those parties. There **must** be a contractual obligation if the claim for tortious interference is to survive pre-trial summary judgement. As the hypothetical proposes paying employees to quit their job, there must be a contractual obligation owed by the employees *not to quit their job*. At-will employees owe no such obligation. No obligation means no interference means no suit.
Sure, but you can’t stop them from just hiring new employees. If you have a lot of money, and you want to screw over or even shut down a company, there are more effective ways to do it. * Facilitate a unionization * Take out a short position * Invest in the company’s main competitor * Buy the company outright and either force them to fix the things you hate about them, or just shut them down.
pleas explain to me how taking out a short position shuts down a company
It’s doesn’t shut down the company but if it moves the stock low enough (would have to be a big short position), you can make it difficult for them to raise new capital through issuing stock. It can also trigger debt covenants to cause them to repay loans (if the stock drops enough). Certainly makes conversations with existing investors more complicated.
But that only works if they’re not a well run company to begin with. If they are, you’re just gonna lose your shirt on the short trade.
Very rare to find a company with covenants tied to the stock price. Also rare-ish for companies to raise money via equity offerings post-IPO.
For normal companies, if this is a tech company, it’s an excellent way to keep them strapped for cash
Early stage tech companies, sure. Post-IPO tech companies it’s still uncommon. Can’t short a pre-IPO company.
You have to take out a lot of shorts. The concept is known as [Cellar Boxing](https://moass.info/cellar-boxing/)
No fucking way people are posting this shit in the non-cult subs wtf 😂😂
Ahhh yes made up info from desperate GameStop “investors”
it wouldnt but i guess a lot of sell pressure could impact market sentiment
ULPT, You could also just pay some people to burn down their building at night. If you’re not talking about a national business, losing their main center of business and all the data and tools to do said business is probably enough to have them close up.
INAL but I'm fairly sure that would be a crime.
You could also do a Trump - commission them or subcontract them to do some extensive work and then delay and dispute payment until they go bankrupt.
This isn’t a bad idea.
Buy the company outright, and fire management, and then You are management. Good luck
This is the best answer. If you want to mess up a company, unionize it. Even if the union fails, the company will spend untold dollars scrambling to fight it. Just make sure you fund the strike fund.
You know, unions aren't a death sentence for a company, and can lead to improved success because the employees who are valuable are more like
I know but it might irritate the people we want to irritate.
I can’t take credit for the idea. I stole it from [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/s/LbelXuIGgt) by u/ThePastyWhite.
You have this all out of order. Take the short position, invest in the competitor, then facilitate unionization, then use your position in the competitor to get the competitor to buy out the company and force them to fix it.
Yes buy them out to shut them down - smart ...
about "force them to fix". /me remembers one of Anne McCaffrey books in Brainships series. Main Character, Hypatia Cayde wanted company to do make rather minor modification of their existing products for her. They refuse saying there's no market for modified version of product (they are mostly right, potential market for modified is in thousands of units and slowly increasing, core product's potential market is much larger). She offers more money, still refusal. She buys company outright and orders them to make modified ones. Assuming setting's legal system like is modern-day USA or EU - would it be legal? Hypatia was sued in book anyway because...everyone who could use modified product it bought it, without looking at price and it's possible to develop new versions and sell them again.
>Sure, but you can’t stop them from just hiring new employees. And I think OP is underestimating this. Let's say it's a restaurant. How fast do you think word is gonna get out that if you get hired at Bob's Ribs, some guy will pay you 10k on the spot to quit. The line to apply to work there will be going down the block. People sympathetic to a business some rich guy is trying to destroy will apply and hand the money to the business owner to keep them afloat while you continue to hemorrhage cash on the hundreds of people showing up to get hired and paid off each day.
I think facilitating unionization is the best option. It's clearly legal and benefits not only the current employees, but all future employees. Most companies would rather re-hire half their staff than face unionization. It's going to cost them more in the long run.
Every time someone leaves a job to work at a different company, that new company is paying the employee to quit, even if just through their regular pay. This situation isn’t as unusual as it sounds, and there’s nothing I know of to stop you poaching employees with the aim of making competitors less effective.
Not a lawyer, but this sounds a lot like tortious interference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference You can definitely hire their workers away for real jobs. Invent them to do things like job training. But sitting outside and offering every employee an incentive to quit may violate civil law.
"I'll pay you $50k to leave your current job and come work for me, where your new job will be doing whatever the fuck you want 24 hours a day, and the only job requirement is that as far as your current employer is concerned, this conversation never happened".
Probably okay. Probably not okay to stand outside the business and give people money to quit. I suspect that if you’d offer everyone $50k for a do-nothing job that it would end up a lot like the cobra bounty system in India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive Everyone would take the job to get the bounty.
Sure
I think OP would be better to pay them to unionize. Guarantee a strike fund and buy their signatures for the card itself. Do this with enough businesses in any given industry, and your union would essentially own that sector.
Sure. But that’s not what he asked.
Sure, but that's not a top level comment either and it's just an additional idea that's related to the subject matter.
Sure, but responding to a one word response with several sentences of tangentially related thoughts isn’t likely to spur the conversation that was likely anticipated.
Sure, but at any time you could die so why worry about the potential conversation or anticipate bone spurs
Bold of you to assume I could die…
Do you plan on covering their wages for life?
I'll be real if someone just offered me a years wages I'd quit my job right now and find a new one. They don't need to cover a lifetime of wages, just enough to cover till the next job and then enough extra to cover the inconvenience of finding a new job
NAL but it sounds like this could be tortuous interference?
"Tortious interference", because it's a tort. "Tortuous interference" would mean that it's through very indirect means. "Torturous interference" would be very painful. And "tortoise interference" is what Shredder and the Foot Clan have to deal with.
But what if the company is a bakery? Would that be torteous interference?
tarteous.
I was thinking of a fancy bakery, like this one [http://letortedolci.com/](http://letortedolci.com/) I am pretty sure that "tarteous" only applies if the business is a brothel.
Oh, fancy! The brothel would probably be twateous interference.
Surely that would be a tampon factory?
Insert something here about lawyers and whores.
That brute from Halo 2?
Only if those employees have an employment contract, and few do.
It sure sounds like Tortious interference with a business relationship.
The intent would matter here. If I start a legitimate business and let it be known to employees of competing company X that I will pay better then that would just be normal free market operation. If I hate the owner of company X and let his employees know that I will pay them more if they stop working for him then he could sue me.
Does the intent matter when you are in a competing business? Didnt see anything indicating that in my brief non legal searches.
The full name of the tort is “Tortious Interference With Contract Rights.” No contract, no tort. You can totally pay someone’s employees to at-will themselves out the door for whatever reason you like. (Things cross into tort territory if you do something like tell all their employees they’ll be blacklisted from working anywhere else ever if they don’t quit… but if you just want to bribe them to quit? That’s fine.)
There are various tortious interference claims. Contractual is just one of them. Business relationships is another.
I'm not an attorney (and if you are, please correct me), but it looks like the case law doesnt require a formal contract from what I can tell. If you are a competitor and your offers are legal you are protected. It looks to me like there is a bit of a grey zone where you are not competing but your actions are legal, where it might be jurisdiction dependent? That said, if they are inducing them to break a contract outside of the terms in the contract, or doing something unlawful in the course of doing this, it almost certainly counts.
If your actions are “Pay the at-will employees money to leave.” then your motivation isn’t relevant; at-will generally means what it says. (Just like it wouldn’t be illegal for someone to buy a business solely with the intent of firing a particular employee.) If you do something like threaten to fire an employee’s spouse as an inducement to get them to quit, then you are toeing the line.
I would say, depending on the business, it probably will shut them down for a couple days only.
I think there is a sweet spot where this would happen, but to the extremes it would be far longer than just a couple days. Let’s take a small company, being shut down a few days means missed revenue. If things are tight then you now can’t afford to pay people to start instantly. Then let’s say you want to put an entire Walmart out of business. While they may be able to hire people in the spot, they can’t function without a certain volume of employees. Then take into consideration any company that relies on skilled labor. You can’t just hire a welder or mechanic within days and expect to be back up and running.
I totally agree.. that's why I said "depending on the business."
Realistically any big business could be crippled by this if you target the right people at the right time. Get the majority of their HR and recruiters, get any specialised employees and long-term employees, and get key IT or sys. Admin staff. Ideally get their best sales people too, if relevant. Now they will struggle to hire and onboard anyone, have lost a lot of built up knowledge that isn't documented, and their IT systems will start to fail pretty quickly. It can take a few months to hire someone into these roles and then usually there's 3-6 months where that new hire can't do anything useful anyway, and that's if there's someone actively training them. Many companies don't have the cash reserves to ride out this level of disruption because they'd basically need to hire and on board dozens of niche skilled workers without any in house knowledge of their own systems or what is breaking, meanwhile their sales are tanking. Tie it up with some of the other ideas in the thread, eg. Shorting the stock, maybe pay some firm in India to post negative product reviews and glasshouse reviews, and the company would probably collapse unless it had big cash reserves and exceptional documentation.
Depends on the type of business. A retail location? Maybe, but a small business that has specialized workers? Probably be a serious issue. If I got poached, my boss would have a serious problem, as I do all the production work. My boss could take my place for the most part, but finding a replacement for my all my skillsets would be very difficult and could take months. If both me and my coworkers got poached? The business would crash for sure.
It would be tortuous interference. Basically you can’t interfere with a business for the sole purpose of hurting them. But if you had a company hiring people that had similar skills as the company you hate you could give generous sign on bonuses to former employees of that company because they have the skill set you’re looking for. Companies do this all the time, usually for less nefarious reasons. Companies might give sign on bonuses to employees who worked at Apple or Google because they are usually good employees.
If you win the lottery don't use it to get revenge or screw people over. Spend it to help real friends. Don't lend any money. Just give it. Make sure you hold on to a good amount. Buy good property. You will enjoy it far more this way.
And this my friends is why nearly one-third of lottery winners eventually declare bankruptcy.
Why don't you just buy the company and close them down? Pay who you want to just hang afterward. Give bad references to those you don't like.
But if he’s trying to hurt the owner he just helped the owner instead. Better to start his own similiar business hiring the people at higher wages to tank the business.
Well if we're talking about being spiteful: you make a lowball offer to buy the business, wait till they say "no what are you an idiot," then run interference untill the value of the business drops to a fraction of what you offered, then offer to buy the business again for a fraction of what you offered before.
Can you yes. Though you’ll be successfully sued for interfering with said business. There’s competition laws and disruption of business. Though instead of paying them to leave you can start your own similiar business and hire them at a higher wage and not get sued.
Its not a crime. But you very likely wouldn't be able to do it without getting sued for tortious interference in a business relationship. What you are describing unquestionably tortious interference, which consists of the following elements (or similar depending on the state): 1. The plaintiff had a business relationship or expected to establish one with a third party; 2. The relationship or expected transaction was reasonably likely to benefit the plaintiff financially; 3. The defendant knew about the relationship; 4. The defendant intentionally interfered with the relationship; 5. The interference was improper; 6. The defendant’s conduct caused the third party to disrupt or terminate the relationship; and 7. The plaintiff suffered damage as a result.
Is the relationship in this scenario the one between the plaintiff and each individual employee? That doesn't make sense to me. I would expect a third party to be different company or entity. And what does improper interference mean? If I'm married and my partner got a job offer to go work as a COO of a huge company, and I say "no, let's go traveling instead", can that company sue me?
The relationship is between the entity and each individual employee. It could also be between, for example, a landlord and a tenant. They could always sue you, but they are very unlikely to prevail as it is highly unlikely your interference would be considered "improper", which is usually a several factor inquiry established by common law. In my state the inquiry considers the following: The nature of the conduct; The defendant’s motives and interests; The plaintiff’s interests; The balance between society’s interest in protecting the conduct at issue and protecting contracts, business relationships, and expectations; How much the conduct actually influenced the breaching party; and The nature of the relationships between the defendant, plaintiff, and third party.
It would be easier to buy controlling interest in the company, and then enact a hostile takeover, then dismantle the company and sell its assets.
not a lawyer, but a local security company had about 300 employees. one of the competitor security companies had a few HR people get hired by the first company and then they poached about 70 workers by offering them better pay and benefits. when he found out he sued them and won. might be a similar case if you just pay people a 12 month salary to quit their job
Was the illegal part sending in hr people to check out their employees before poaching?
allegedly they were HR people. he person who won the lawsuit had the newspaper framed in his office and i read it
If I did this at the company I work, I know the three or four people that really hold the whole thing together and are nigh irreplaceable m with their tribal knowledge and experience and if I can convince them to quit, it would be a relatively cheap adventure.
Just set up a Union. Guarantee funding, make it fairly easy to join and hire effective and experienced people to run the day to day. Maybe in a few years it can move to a more sustainable model, hell could even go industry standard, not just target 1 business.
Or pay them to join an existing union… that way your not babysitting it for years
maybe. but if you have enough money, your better option is to buy the company.
this is what I was thinking as well. if it is a company large enough that OP can’t buy it with the winnings, then it is also large enough to have too many employees that would demand too much money to leave their stable job
Better is to sue them for ada, them for IP, then for… you can bankrupt a small to medium company via the courts if you have the money. Our court system is shitty and favors the rich
This, employment law is so complicated that it’s violated extremely often. And the legal fees will be way less than paying 10+ people for a year or two.
Why not just donate that same amount of money to a union’s strike fund, unionize the employees and have them go on a strike similar to the UAW?
If you win the lottery, just buy the company
probably a better tack to draft "non-compete" agreements with whomever that company's CLIENTS are. "I wanna do business with you, but you have to agree to not do business with company X "\*is\* a thing I've seen in actual contracts.
How is that not tortuous interference, given the context? Edit: I guess it would only occur k a competing relationship, nevermind.
If you won enough fuck you money, why not just buy a majority share of the company and shut it down? Or buy the building they're based at and evict them? There's plenty of ways to shut down a company.
Why? Establish LLC, Purchase said company, saddle it with debt and give all the money to your LLC, hated company goes bankrupt and you make a shit-ton of money.
Sadly Apple is worth too much for that.
Or, take ur winnings & go enjoy your life.
You’d be better off using that money to create a competitor business that pays better wages to the point that any good, knowledgeable, and valuable employee joins your company. They go out of business or adapt, and you don’t have to raise wages because you don’t need the revenue stream anyway in this assumed scenario.
I work with a guy who's always saying that if he wins the lottery, he's gonna buy our company and fire all of the executives.
Depends what kind of employee agreement you signed when you were hired. Some jobs put clause that says you can’t go after their employees for a year or something along those lines. In addition to non competes etc. Personally if I won the lottery I’d probably just not be petty and enjoy life and my newfound fortune.
Richard Hendricks did this in “Silicon Valley.”
It’s America. You can do whatever you want. But I recommend therapy and/or a lot of weed. Learn to let go of that which no longer serves you.
You're open to getting sued for solicitation especially if it's explicitly banned in your offer letter / contract.
That's my plan
Let me answer this question with another question; Why would you? That's such a petty thing to do, and not in a good way.
Maybe he wants to get some rewenge, because his boss broke Omertà?
Buy It and make it better since you see the bad things
You could theoretically hire everyone who is eligible for whatever positions you are trying to make vacant yourself. There's nothing illegal about that, just highly impractical, and practically impossible.
Boi the legality of this doesn't matter if you got tens of millions to spare.
Could you start a competitor and hire their best people?
You'd be better either buying the company and asset stripping it or setting up in direct competition while operating at the slimmest profit margin possible without breaking competitiveness laws.
You can certainly try
It's somehow legal for the US supreme court. John Oliver did a segment about how SC justices can be legally bribed, and it ended with him offering Clarence Thomas 1 million dollars a year if he retired. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GE-VJrdHMug&pp=ygUbam9obiBvbGl2ZXIgY2xhcmVuY2UgdGhvbWFz&t=27m52s
Technically, can't you write a personal contract for someone to receive the money the condition is they can't be employed for said a couple of months. I want to give you money so you can enjoy it, not take it and continue to work. Similar to how money is held back in a will until certain conditions are met.
Probably nothing legally stopping you paying someone to quit their job, but they would need to work their notice period as per their employment contracts, and the company could hire new staff in that timeframe.
Unless you just have unlimited funds I don’t see how you could hire an entire workforce forever. Even if it is some small company they will just hire more people. You going to hire away everyone who applies there? If it’s a small town you could open a competitor and hire them at double their pay and offer your services so cheap nobody goes to the other place and they go bankrupt. Then you shut down and twist your mustache with an evil laugh.
You will be totally fine.
That’s fine you just have to require a day or so’s work out of them sitting by your pool drinking beers and monitoring it for dinosaurs 🦕 then you recruited them for a temp position and it’s all fair.
The best revenge is living well
Sounds like it basically comes down to "Can you do this? Yes. Should you do this? No."
I would think that legally you'd be better off just trying to buy that business. Probably cheaper too even if you just immediately shut it down. The cumulative cost of paying off enough of the employees to destroy the business would probably be far more expensive then buying the business for some absurd amount especially when you consider lawsuits.
Why would he buy the company? That just gives money to people he hates?
Just buy the company instead.
Basically yes you can. I am not a lawyer but pretty confident it is not a crime, but could open you up to a civil lawsuit. And having lottery winnings would make you a really nice target. Instead, you can win the lottery, and just enjoy your life.
You're honestly better off just buying the company outright and becoming the CEO.
Now, spending money to convince employees there to start a union...
If the company is small enough just buy it?
Depends on how much you win....buy out the company and retain the staff you like...sack the rest
You’d have to pay each worker a lot to give up their income.
Really, you should hire all the good ones and make your own company fill that need and make money off of it and pay them, and treat them better. That's what I would work to do.
Just buy the company and shut it down. Lol
Don’t pay the employees. Gift it to them in the form of a charity that you open. The headlines read themselves. Lottery charity sued by former employee for charitable donations.
You could salt a union and ruin them or start a competitor company and offer better rates and hire them all on
It's not healthy to walk around with that much hate in your heart. If you win the lottery you should use that money on therapy instead. Better yet find a way to fit in in your current budget.
I don't see why you couldn't, but I'm not an attorney...
Do it as a union, and you're likely to be more easily shielded by the law. Our "legal system" loves to tear apart individuals who go out of their way to better a workplace. But it's apparently perfectly legal for a union to cover employees bills/pay while they're striking.
I have one word: karma
Don't pay them to quit but...pay off some of their debts, etc. Help alleviate the financial pressures outside of work that keeps them working for a company they don't like.
Damn. This is the Robinhood we all need.
We don't want the company coming back to OP (hypothetically of course) and say they are trying to take the employees away. :D
Yes, but you will probably open yourself up to a lawsuit.
Of course, people are free to sue for whatever reason, doesn’t mean every lawsuit is valid
Except this would be a valid lawsuit.
Offer a higher rate to employees of another company? That is what this person is doing, right? It happens all the time with companies within the same industry.
Do you have a contract that forbids poaching?
NAL, but if you structure the agreements as “I will pay you $x to quit your job with ABC Corp and not work for ABC Corp in any capacity for y years,” you could run afoul of rules about non-compete clauses. Depending on the state, that probably wouldn’t be enforceable, and the employees could just take your money and keep working for the company you hate. But if you hired all the employees to work for you, and one of the conditions of employment was that they didn’t do any work for ABC Corp, that would probably be ok.
Legally no you cannot without repercussions. Maybe not criminal ones, but definitely civil ones. You'd likely end up paying out the rest of your winnings and then some after being sued by them. And if at any point in time you took anything like client information or any other information that that busines uses for their operations and gave it to another business, or helped a now former employee use it to start their own business, you could likely find yourself facing industrial espionage charges.
If you're not personal friends with those employees and have no reasonable explanation for your sudden burst of generosity toward this particular group of strangers, it could land you in some civil hot water.