We're a pretty small org, and not sure we have the organizational heft or resources to do so. That being said, the $1k discount they gave us for Nov based on the broken SLA (resources down) was kind of a slap in the face. We had our minimal core services up in 16hrs, but recorded about 100-120 internal engineering hours for config, testing, and other fallout +1 month.

When we opened the initial ticket, the IBM engineer kept saying "you should ask X why they deleted your stuff". Eventually after attaching the LinkedIn page for the IBM SRE in the audit logs, they realized something was screwed up on their side.

Good luck suing ibm..

For breach of contract and negligence, IBM were successfully sued, and then banned from all future projects, by the Queensland government in 2013. [0] Which sets you up with a nice precedent and set of documents to see their angle of attack.

> IBM will not be allowed to enter any new contracts with the State Government until it improves its governance and contracting practices.

With that ban _still live today_, it astonishes me that any corporation would trust the organisation to actually carry through with their obligations. You have to really, really, royally screw up for a government body to consider you anathema.

The old adage of "No one was ever fired for hiring IBM" is no longer true or reasonable.

[0] https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/72961

> For breach of contract and negligence, IBM were successfully sued, and then banned from all future projects, by the Queensland government in 2013. [0] Which sets you up with a nice precedent and set of documents to see their angle of attack.

I mean, yes, but also think about how long a government can afford to have their lawyers pursue a case like that. If you don't have those kind of resources, it's a lot riskier.

They also have a very significant interest in pursuing it, in that they often have to follow procurement rules that prevent them from excluding vendors without good reason. If you think a vendor will be a problem in the future, getting a legal judgement in place may sometimes be necessary to save a lot of grief that a private company can avoid by just privately and quietly blacklisting the vendor in question.

For material breach of contract and negligence? Easy peasy.

Reminds me of the IBM lawyer scene in Halt & Catch Fire

It may take a while, but you’ll win.

pyrrhic victory is not good for business

At what cost?

In civilised lands the loser has to reimburse the winner's legal costs, so at no cost. If you don't live in civilised lands, well you have other problems.

I'm not sure that is as civilized as you think it is. Loser pays discourages any small company or individual from suing because the cost is too great if they lose.

But the thread here was talking about a slum dunk case of contract breach.

Even AWS contracts are vague enough to not make this a slam dunk. They pretty much explicitly say if you don’t store stuff in multiple regions you are going to take outages/data loss.

Does your civilized legal system also force the inevitable loser to front your legal fees while the case is ongoing? Or is it possible the plaintiff with deeper pockets can just stretch things out until the legal system has bled you dry and you must withdraw?

My guesstimate of the legal fees to try the case would be in the region of $100k.