I'd have loads of sympathy for the OP. As would thousands of others.

How many people in a jury do you think would share your feelings?

Depends on which "prestigious organization" it was and how convincingly the defense lawyer could frame it as a David vs Goliath situation, rather than straight-up blackmail.

When you do business, understand money makes everyone into a sociopath. So you are dealing with a sociopath. A sociopath that has the law on his or her side. Remember this well. Don't trust sociopaths, and don't trust anyone that you do business with to hold up their end of the deal if they can get away with it. Start with this and you'll limit your exposure. They will still screw you now and then, but you limit the amount of damage they can do to you.

Seeing how people rarely view businesses as the "good guy", it is likely that many people would.

I don't know. Corporations have been able to paint individuals as leeches trying to take advantage of businesses pretty successfully with their frivolous lawsuits are ruining America narrative. For example, the McDonald's coffee case involved an elderly woman with 3rd degree burns inflicted on her genitalia. I can't think of a more sympathetic victim, yet her case is the poster child for supposed frivolous lawsuits hurting businesses.

Even if the coffee were at the boiling temperature, how could it have caused 3rd degree burns?

"3rd degree" just means full thickness burns. She was an older woman, thus had thinner skin; the spill was onto clothing; the spill was into a seat where she had limited mobility.

But ignoring all of that: hot water is dangerous and can cause full thickness burns in seconds.

http://www.accuratebuilding.com/services/legal/charts/hot_wa...

At 60 C you'd have full thickness burns in 5 seconds.

Thanks for the explanation. I had some misconceptions about this stuff, clearly.

Spill an entire cup of boiling water in your lap while sitting in the passengers seat of a car while wearing cotton sweatpants and find out.

Don't actually do this, you'll likely end up with serious disfiguring injuries such as:

>Liebeck was taken to the hospital, where it was determined that she had suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent.[11] She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. During this period, Liebeck lost 20 pounds (9 kg, nearly 20% of her body weight), reducing her to 83 pounds (38 kg). After the hospital stay, Liebeck needed care for 3 weeks, provided by her daughter.[12] Liebeck suffered permanent disfigurement after the incident and was partially disabled for two years.[13][14]

Basically very hot water is dangerous and it's much easier to get a serious injury from it than you'd think.

This has graphic photos of the victim's wounds (they are quite unpleasant): https://www.quora.com/How-did-McDonalds-lose-the-hot-coffee-...

As someone who used to process accident claims for a large insurance company, I will suggest that if you spill hot water in your lap in a public place, you are probably not going to whip the clothing off right then and there to protect yourself from the burns. She is also elderly and elderly people have slower reflexes and can be more vulnerable to all kinds of health issues.

Ask the facts, man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaura...

If you haven't seen the documentary Hot Coffee, I highly recommend it. Very interesting look at that case.

a "jury of their peers" would likely include a fair # of self-employed folks who've been shafted on payments, so... I'd say a lot.

That's not how they select peers.

yeah porn is bad... instead have a php file that simply has unlink('public_html'); when called. That'd show them... The only way to sometimes ensure payment is make sure that the product isn't delivered until paid.. -- or just use a staging server and be like this could be yours if the money hits my bank account.

I was worried about that, but I just couldn't resist. Besides, they were the type of organization that wouldn't have wanted that to get out.

Even more troubling if you think that, since "he didn't perform the work", then he could only have gotten to the server by nefarious means. Hence, hacking charges...

I was thinking they'd have to prove that, and it makes it look that more likely that I actually did work for them (because I had access).

Access isn't necessarily the same as authorization. After all, any hacker who successfully penetrates a system technically has access to it at that point. Their argument would be that you exceeded your authorization by deleting files or a website, defacing it with porn or a "Widgets Inc. Doesn't Pay Its Bills" notice, scrubbing a Git repo, or whatever other poison pill you implemented to force payment.

And they'd likely win with that argument under the CFAA. Even if they just handed you login credentials, they did so in the context of you fulfilling a specific task. From a technical perspective, those credentials might give you root access that lets you do anything. From a legal perspective, that's not the same as giving you authorization to do anything. For the CFAA, this would likely constitute "exceed[ing] authorized access." Not to mention that taking down a site (or just defacing it) is, on its face, clearly against a client's interests.

In any case, you're using the threat of damage to force payment. Even if the client owes you a valid debt, those threats can likely be considered extortion. The sort of jerks who will gleefully screw over a freelancer because, as they so kindly informed you, "no one will listen to you" are often the sort who have no problems with screwing you another way.