Forums | MacLife

Farmerkev wrote:

As a business decision, often times no.
You know that too.
There is a reason so many class actions and ambulance chasers are settled before trial, it's much cheaper.
Right or wrong doesn't enter in to it when even if you win, you lost.

It's a normal cost of doing business.

As far as litigation goes, I highly doubt that this case would be prohibitively expensive.

Farmerkev wrote:

There is nothing "normal" about being sued except for those that make their living doing it to others.

Well, I guess that if one doesn't want to open themselves up to the legal liabilities that businesses face--they shouldn't open a business!

Should I be weeping for eHarmony, here?  They don't assert that they're somehow being bankrupted by some sort of protracted litigation tactic of the state.  What they do claim is that going forward is risky.  Yeah, that's true.  They could have lost.

(...and I don't know if that was intended to be a personal dig or what, but I don't make my living suing people.  I write administrative rulings for a government agency.  We are constantly sued by private parties and other governmental bodies.  Involvement in some sort of litigation is quite common for large businesses.)

Last edited by bratboy (2008-11-22 4:18 pm)

bratboy wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

There is nothing "normal" about being sued except for those that make their living doing it to others.

Well, I guess that if one doesn't want to open themselves up to the legal liabilities that businesses face--they shouldn't open a business!

Should I be weeping for eHarmony, here?  They don't assert that they're somehow being bankrupted by some sort of protracted litigation tactic of the state.  What they do claim is that going forward is risky.  Yeah, that's true.  They could have lost.

(...and I don't know if that was intended to be a personal dig or what, but I don't make my living suing people.  I write administrative rulings for a government agency.  We are constantly sued by private parties and other governmental bodies.  Involvement in some sort of litigation is quite common for large businesses.)

No, you aren't being sued, the govt is.
Get the letter with your name on it, then we'll talk about business as usual.

Farmerkev wrote:

No, you aren't being sued, the govt is.
Get the letter with your name on it, then we'll talk about business as usual.

I didn't say I.  I clearly said we.  In any event, I'm a bit puzzled as to why you're challenging my assertion that large business entities are often involved in legal disputes of some form or another.  To say that something is common is not to say that it's invited or painless.  (Hint: Simply because I'm referring to 'business' does not necessarily mean that I'm referring to your business.)

I'd ask what your point is in all of this, but I'm not convinced that you have one.

*edit*

...and enough about "ambulance chasing."  There's no indication that this suit was pursued in order to make a quick buck.

Last edited by bratboy (2008-11-22 6:07 pm)

TB wrote:

resedit wrote:

bratboy wrote:

...and I don't understand the point about religion being brought into this.

I can't comment on New Jersey law, but I don't think that it's necessary or appropriate to require an online dating service to cater to homosexuals.  However, let's remember that eHarmony is a business, not a religious entity.

And when a church marries two people who call them out of a phone book and have no affiliation with the church, is it really religious?
A lot of pastors pick up some extra cash that way.

Maybe churches of all stripes should just stop marrying people.

The solution is to make all legal marriages civil unions, and allow churches to perform marriages that have no legal value.

You want the legal benefits of a marriage - you fill out form 1265a with the county clerk, sign on the dotted line, and it's done.
You want a wedding, then you find a church that will do it - as a religious rite of that particular church - with absolutely no legal meaning - akin to how baptism is currently done.

Hell - I know street evangelists who baptise their converts w/o the sanction of a church (which is Biblical). They don't get a pretty church issued baptism certificate, but a baptism certificate is just a piece of paper, it has no legal meaning.

Then there is absolutely no confusion with any interpretation of the establishment clause.

resedit wrote:

TB wrote:

resedit wrote:

And when a church marries two people who call them out of a phone book and have no affiliation with the church, is it really religious?
A lot of pastors pick up some extra cash that way.

Maybe churches of all stripes should just stop marrying people.

The solution is to make all legal marriages civil unions, and allow churches to perform marriages that have no legal value.

You want the legal benefits of a marriage - you fill out form 1265a with the county clerk, sign on the dotted line, and it's done.
You want a wedding, then you find a church that will do it - as a religious rite of that particular church - with absolutely no legal meaning - akin to how baptism is currently done.

Hell - I know street evangelists who baptise their converts w/o the sanction of a church (which is Biblical). They don't get a pretty church issued baptism certificate, but a baptism certificate is just a piece of paper, it has no legal meaning.

Then there is absolutely no confusion with any interpretation of the establishment clause.

Good call res.

Pariah wrote:

I tend to agree with res in this. On principle I think niche sites should be allowed. Hetro/christian being one niche.

Is eHarmony a hetero-Christian site? Their website seems to indicate they don't care about religion, and their constant TV commercials don't seem to indicate any Christian bend either. They're just a "dating" site from all of their indications, not a "niche" dating site.

Steyr AUG wrote:

mo' ron wrote:

Pariah wrote:

I tend to agree with res in this. On principle I think niche sites should be allowed. Hetro/christian being one niche.

Is eHarmony a hetero-Christian site? Their website seems to indicate they don't care about religion, and their constant TV commercials don't seem to indicate any Christian bend either. They're just a "dating" site from all of their indications, not a "niche" dating site.

They arent a dating site, they are a matchmaking site. The whole focus of their business model is "scientifically" produced matches between people which are supposedly based on compatibility and leading toward long term relationships and marriage. The founder, Dr Neil Clark Warren has both experience in clinical psychology and Christian theology that led him to create his company. At the very minimum, he simply doesn't have the experience necessary to create a formula for homosexual relationships, and its pretty rediculous for someone to sue his company and force him to pay extra to figure it out.

Does the term "matchmaking" inherently exclude homosexuals? There is no note of this underlying Christian background on their site (or their commercials) so if I were gay, i wouldn't think there was anything that would prevent me from having a match made based on their commercials or website (until I tried to register obviously).

And psychologically, homosexuals have been found to be as normal as heterosexuals, so i'm not sure if you have some intimate knowledge of eHarmony's algorithm to make the assertion that they'd have to do a lot of retooling, but this may not be the case. And considering they set up a site in response to this lawsuit that uses the same algorithm, it obviously wasn't that hard to do.

Steyr AUG wrote:

Its not that difficult to figure out that eharmony is a hetero matchmaking site just by watching a couple of their commercials. If you look at their statements surrounding this suit, you will see that they clearly have expertise in hetero matchmaking, not homosexual.

I wouldn't have thought just from their commercials they don't handle gays.

Match.com and Chemistry.com both handle gays, there's nothing about eHarmony's commercials different from theirs that says "straights only."

They even say as much:

a.     Research Basis of Service.  You understand and acknowledge that the Company’s patented Compatibility Matching System® was developed on the basis of research limited to married heterosexual couples, and that the Company has not conducted similar research on same-sex relationships.

Where does it say this? it's not in their TOS: http://www.eharmony.com/about/terms or FAQs: http://www.eharmony.com/about/faq

And them just saying it will not work is not the same thing as it actually not working. That's likely with the lawsuit was filed though, to see if they were just being discriminatory, or if they had technical reasons they didn't want to match gays. Since they settled, we'll never really know, but considering they were able to modify their method to work with gays, i'd guess it was easier that they are letting on.

mo' ron wrote:

... Since they settled, we'll never really know...

I repeat: money to be made.

(is that my cynicism showing again?!)

resedit wrote:

Steyr AUG wrote:

but now they are being forced to take a business risk on a product they dont have any expertise in.

Bingo.

Nonsense-- they just need to back propagate a same-sex data set.

resedit wrote:

Steyr AUG wrote:

but now they are being forced to take a business risk on a product they dont have any expertise in.

Bingo.

Well, perhaps they shouldn't have settled!

Alternatively, they could withdraw from New Jersey.