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Why? Paypal refused your dispute request?
It's not about paypal, if someone can give me some lawsuit precedents between customer and hosting company I would appreciate it thanks. Or where can find this info?
You can sue anyone for anything, but is it worth it?
Time is money.
Sue the hell out of it! Please post frequent updates about the trial.
Some details of the issues may help people advise, what has the host done?
Did OP lose billions because their $2/mo VPS went down?
You'll have to give us more details.
What has the host done? Downtime? Lost your data? Libeled you? Who's the host?
Some hurdles you face:
you have to pay a lawyer. I doubt lawyers would take something like this on contingency. Contingency cases are more usual where the sums are huge or the case is routine and predictable. Look at what lawyers charge per hour and you'll see your case has to be huge for this to be worthwhile. Maybe you will get lawyer's fees awarded and maybe not, but you're fronting the money.
if it's small, you can go the small claims route (I'm assuming US - no idea what the process is in other countries). You likely have to file suit where the host is located or where the jurisdiction clause in the agreement says you have to file suit. That means flying there perhaps...probably multiple times. And the defendant can easily make that very painful by asking for continuances.
if you win, now you have to collect. courts don't collect. you would have to find assets and attach them. 70% of all small claims judgements go uncollected, typically because the defendant doesn't have any assets.
and of course, you have to demonstrate damages: real money that whatever the host did cost you.
And that's all provided that there isn't an arbitration clause first 😉
Liability clause actually works very well to limit how much you can win, unless the court find it illegal (which means the host didn't have a good lawyer to review it, and probably don't have that much asset in the first place anyway) or they're criminally negligent (say, claiming HIPAA compliance with fake documentation that convinced a client that already did their due diligence).
It would be a very rare situation where you could make even a single cent more than just disputing your payment.
@raindog308
it's not about downtime, it's about hacking. One of their users injected hundreds of hacked URLs into various websites on their servers. The hosting told me so. I now have over 1000+ hacked URLs indexed in google.
--
A few years ago because of a plugin leak, 100+ URLs were accidentally indexed in Google. It took me 18 months to get them removed and my rankings dropped and I lost over $100,000 in 1 year.
Now we're talking about 1000+ URLs indexed. I am of course hoping that google will be faster removing this now, but in my experience stuff like this is a nightmare.
Someone should be held accountable for this so I am exploring the route to sue them. It's a big/famous USA hosting company.
I read all you wrote about the pain in the ass of doing this, but this website is basically my livelihood and I am pretty pissed about this whole thing.
So can someone please answer my question about precedents? Any?
I suppose you guys are aware of none, and most of you hosting owners reading this are just thinking of what other clause they should add to their terms and conditions.
You want to sue a hosting company because your Google rankings dropped?
Nice reframing bro. But you didn't understand anything.
What does this mean exactly? You mean an employee, or another customer of theirs in a shared environment?
Is there a reason you didn't notice this before thousands of pages were indexed on Google with malicious URLs?
Thanks. I didn't receive any encouraging news from this forum yet.
Only lawsuit I'm familiar with is the one related to the OVH fire, and the plaintiff(s) won. But good luck with your case.
Launch your lawsuit here on LET Court. Come on, name and tag your defendant.
I'm a law student, I'd be happy to help you find any precedent in case law if I have the time.
Feel free to shoot me a DM.
Hire @deank as your legal advisor.
I'd ask legal advice on Reddit and then watch some TV commercials in between the cartoons at 4pm, usually they're inspiring.
Also Google, yep I recommend Google, it will find just the right video that you need.
Just wondering are you using WordPress?
and
Are we talking about GoDaddy?
Unless you can demonstrate to the court that
The host was aware of the vulnerability before the hack and didn't take enough feasible action to protect against it, while other hosts offering similarly priced packages take action that protects theirs
The host didn't notify you in a reasonable period after they detected and verified the hack, and Google crawler indexed those URLs during that period
Your 100k loss in income is directly caused by the hack, and your direct competitor that didn't suffer the hack retains their income pattern
it would be very hard to win anything worthwhile. Note that it's very easy for them to poke holes in your claims, eg, they can easily show their competitors decided preventing the hack was not profitable, their other customers who also suffered the hack didn't register the loss of income, Google crawled your site after you've been notified (so it's on you to protect the site) etc.
I don't think any reputable host reading this would think "oh noes I need to update my T&C", they would just remember their lawyers had already gone through over this a long time ago while writing the first draft of their T&C
Yahoo was apparently sued for downtime once...sorry, I don't know anything other than what I just googled:
https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/other-courts/2007/2007-51721.html
You loose $100k and ask for a lowendadvice? seems legit oO
oh that's a lot. How much did you pay them in 1 year?
If you are earning that much, why are you relying on other companies plugins?
Would it not be safer and better to hire your own developers to make these even if other companies are already making these to ensure you remain secure?
Also if you are earning that amount, why on gods earth are you hosting on a shared server? You would be hosting on a dedicated server secured by professionals if your website is that important, or are you simply looking for someone to be like yes, here is an email template to send them with threats and cases that maybe be a tiny bit like and they will give you a bit of cash or free hosting time to dry your tears?
I'm not a lawyer but
It sounds like your website was compromised due to containing vulnerable code. Unless you are suggesting that the hosting company experienced an intrusion at the root level, that is. Given how many Wordpress websites are compromised every day due to vulnerable code, and how few are compromised due to root level intrusions by comparison, I would propose that if I understand this situation correctly there is no precedent for winning such a lawsuit against the hosting company (and unlikely any precedent for even filing one). In fact if there were, the entire hosting industry would likely be dramatically changed in the weeks that followed. Not necessarily for the better of anyone (more likely Wordpress/Joomla hosting would be banned on shared hosting providers while they worked on new plans).
The simple fact being that what you host and how secure your code is, is entirely within your realm of responsibility. I'm not saying you won't succeed in arguing the opposite somewhere, but if someone had succeeded in it thus far then it wouldn't just be a casual court case that no one took note of. It would be huge. Probably no less than a 50 page thread on this very forum.
You could also be a lawyer but
He could also have been a lawyer but