Comment by whall6
20 hours ago
You should sell your right to litigate this. There are hundreds of firms that would pay you to take this on. Would involve near zero effort for you and would also check the box of being “about the principle”.
20 hours ago
You should sell your right to litigate this. There are hundreds of firms that would pay you to take this on. Would involve near zero effort for you and would also check the box of being “about the principle”.
I doubt it for three very big reasons and you're wrong about one big point:
1. Time barring is pretty iron clad. Sucks for the author but consider the alternative where anyone could sue anyone after any period of time.
2. If a court did find in favor of the plaintiff, the court would be more likely to award the 90s cash value of the stock, plus interest, rather than awarding the shares or current market value (damages being how he was actually wronged in the 90s rather than speculating what he might have done with the stock to present)
3. Given 1 and 2, Nvidia is unlikely to make a big settlement, meaning an expensive and risky trial.
Which brings us to hidden reason #4: nobody would pay that much for the rights so it probably isn't worth the author's time. He'd still be the man at the center of the suit: depositions, testimony, cross examination, records subpoenas...
> but consider the alternative where anyone could sue anyone after any period of time
What's the problem with this alternative, exactly? Some crimes already have no statute of limitations, and this hasn't caused the sky to fall.
It would create a burden on businesses to keep all records indefinitely (most businesses only keep around 7 years of most records). This has a monetary cost to it that would disadvantage mature businesses against younger ones.
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Yeah I never understand this idea that “if you avoid getting caught long enough, you deserve to enjoy the spoils of your crime.”
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> After much soul-searching, deliberation, and gnashing of teeth, my attorneys and I concluded that the statute of limitations was against us. Because of the thirty-odd years that had passed while I “sat on my rights,” it seemed unlikely we’d make it past a motion to dismiss.
That was my first thought as well.
Statue of limitations hasn't started because the acts in 1996 by the company and officers are part of an ongoing conspiracy. Maybe?
Source: cannabis and Law&Order reruns.
Would they? Surely they'd realize that they too have no chance of winning because of the same issue.
Unless the options grant had specific language of an expiry period I would gather there's a very good chance of a large payout. I don't know why you wouldn't go after closure of this if you found yourself in the same scenario. Many legal agreements are simply a percentage of winnings and no payments otherwise. Seems pretty obvious to take that route.
Eric didn’t post the full stock option agreement, only its cover sheet. Given the language of the 1996 termination letter, it’s a good guess that the full agreement specified expiration 90 days after termination.
>Unless the options grant had specific language of an expiry period I would gather there's a very good chance of a large payout
You're intentionally trying to muddle the waters here by arguing along two different axis.
1. the contract granting options has a delivery period (in your words "expiry period")
2. the options themselves have a duration (aka expiry period)
When you are saying "Unless the options grant had specific language of an expiry period" you are only talking about the delivery period of the options. Aka when the options become available. So you are not complaining about late delivery, you're complaining about lack of delivery.
When you are saying "I would gather there's a very good chance of a large payout." you are intentionally confusing (1.) with (2.). The delivered options have a value on the open market and that value was not delivered. Hence there is a contradiction. You're saying "large payout" but the options are only worth a fraction of the shares at the time the issues vested. You do not get to simulate the most optimal future that you would have exercised the options and held them for thirty years, you have to prove that yourself and the best time to prove that was 27 years ago aka within the statue of limitations. Now that 30 years passed, you have to argue that you would have held the options all the way until today and exercised them today, but the grant only covers the option premium at the time of the grant, not the option premium of a 30 year long option. So Nvidia can still give you your options but the options would give you the exact same duration as the options back then and you would get exactly the same premium on them.
Basically you could make Nvidia the offer to settle for the value of the options so that you stay quiet and don't sue them, that's what your lawyers can get out of that contract.
Edit: Correction with regards to how big the payout can be, can be found here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49874789
"no chance" can still be 1/1000 which is ~1 million
the lawyers cost more
1 reply →
There’s already a relatively liquid market here around legal financing, but they only finance cases that can win. This is not a case that will result in anything but a dismissal.
I am not a lawyer. If you are, then I will consider this response null and void… but if you’re not, just go to your LLM du jour and ask it why this case might have ground. If it is even 1% convincing then imagine what sort of case a real attorney could come up. Then multiply the odds of winning against a billion dollars. A >0.01% chance EV would probably catalyze at least one of these firms.
That’s not how the real world works. Sometimes the chance of winning is actually 0, and sometimes when you pursue something frivolously you actually end up having to pay the other side’s fees. The EV of a lawsuit can easily be less than 0.
Make sure you ask it why it wouldn't work too. Because its answer given the same facts will be different depending on the question asked
No it would not.
Firms can be sanctioned for pursuing cases knowing the statute of limitations has expired.
Why would anyone buy that right? Statute of limitations is crystal clear here. The case is going to be dismissed the moment it gets in front of a judge.
Out of curiosity, why do you think you know that?
For reasons, but the main one is that the author stated that they and their attorneys have seriously explored this case and reached this conclusion.
https://selfhelp.courts.ca.gov/civil-lawsuit/statute-limitat...
> Breach of a written contract: 4 years from the date the contract was broken.
Which part do you think is debatable?
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I think you may be right but also may be wrong. If that was indeed the case, they wouldn't have to respond to him for a whole year. nVidia knew they screwed up back in 1996, but was 100% uncertain like you are. There is 5-10% chance that a judge would accept this on the basis that this was grossly incompetently misrepresented in 1996 and OP actually has some ground for suing. There is serious financial loss here. If I received 1000 shares from Meta for my work during my full time employee and then keep thinking I had 1000 shares invested for 30 years, but turns out no I do not, that's a big loss!
It’s the other way round. For 30 years he has happily believed that he received 16k shares. Now he learns that he was owed another 7k at the time but neither party in the transaction noticed and he wants them to pay the difference now.
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Or, find one of the many interest groups who have a non-economic reason to hate NVIDIA.
What OP has here is a license to go on a fishing expedition through NVIDIA.
Even if they won, Nvidia would only be obligated to deliver a fresh option contract. E.g. they would issue options today with the same strike price difference. The options mentioned in the block post are not worth more than $9000 and even that is generous. Selling those options on the open market probably would have generated $2250 in income.
Let's say those options were worth $0.25 back then, Nvidia would have to issue an option with a strike price of $224.72 at a share price of $225.07 and the same duration to honor the contract. They could also set the issue date and duration to be the IPO day and the strike price the IPO share price, but then the premium difference would have to compensate the gap between the IPO price and the current price and you'd have to pay that premium difference out of pocket to simulate the fact that you kept holding an option, then let it expire and kept paying the premium to buy new options to extend it.
Edit: I didn't read the letter when I wrote this so my numbers are off. He might be owed $100k+ worth of options if the strike price was $0.05 and the share price was $12. I apologize for wrong numbers, but the general concept should stay valid.
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Absolutely this.
You know there’s an upvote button?