The end of legal battles regarding startup PriceOn
7 years ago or so, me with my business partner Jurij started working on price comparison platform PriceOn. Now it’s long gone, and here is the aftermath. I’m translating Jurij’s post from fb.
— — August 2012 . Investor. — -
- “What!? Do you not read news? Of course, it’s off for today! beep beep beep” — Ryčka drops the call nervously.
- “WTF? So it’s cancelled?” — the phone falls from my hands, along with a shirt, just ironed for this occasion.
<…>
I’m googling for news, the mind is racing — “Shit, we’ve been negotiating terms for two months, and it’s driving me crazy. It seemed like yesterday we’ve arrived at a final agreement, Tadas comes over today, and we’re signing it, but… cancelled?!”
<…>
Nope. Not cancelled. It appears he just couldn’t arrive.
The breaking news were overflowing with headlines. Vaiva rushes out from the bathroom:
- Have you seen it??? So what now?!
- I don’t know, i don’t know anything, maybe they’ll let him free…
- What if it is a sign.. that, you know.. that, maybe you shouldn’t sign it?
- Who knows, maybe …
<…>
Next day he’s been released. Negotiations resumed, and we’ve hired the “best” lawyers* in town, negotiated for another month and finally it was signed. I had a bottle of collectible whiskey waiting just for this occasion, but after a few months of battling I was not in a mood.
— — November 2014. Encounter on a bridge. — -
On 15 Nov 2014, at 20:06, Jurij wrote:
to sum this up, the situation is very clear: either we come to an agreement ourselves, or it will be decided for us, by arbiters, expensively, slowly.
on 19 Nov 2014, at 13:00, Tadas wrote:
it will be expensive not for us, but for you <…> we have enough money for that and will invest whatever it takes. so, expensively and slowly, we’ll make that on principle
— — June 2019. Celebration. — -
A week ago, Lithuanian Supreme Court has concluded disputes over PriceOn story.
It’s been going pretty OK a first few years, but then we’ve been hit by surprise at a court of first and then second instance — we’ve been charged for nearly 1M eur in “fines”. What could it be — oversights? bribes? or maybe the madams at court didn’t like us? But, somehow we’ve put it together and came back.
All claims against founders have been dropped. We’ve proven that neither did we steal code, nor did we cause harm to PriceOn, and it’s not us who drove it to the ground. And, in fact, there was nothing to be fighting about 🤣
Quite probably, it’s been a first time the Lithuanian Supreme Court has used word “startup” in its practice. There were plenty of other precedents in this case, but the court chose to avoid them, and rejected the claims as being unfounded by having no causal link. Well, that’s what we’ve been telling all along.
Five years in courts. That’s quite some time. One’s keeping on with his own life, it’s even hard to remember all the details, and the litigation process keeps on going. Perhaps, such is the guerilla antimotivational system of courts, where they make it so inconvenient on purpose, so that people would avoid using it. Maybe, it’s to the better: let people negotiate peacefully, without courts😀
So, five years in courts, fighting over nothing:
- One principle.
- Tens of cases in court.
- Hundreds of court hearings.
- Thousands of work hours.
- Tens of thousands of pages in cases.
- Hundreds of thousands in litigation expenses.
For what? Nothing, just for sake of it. You bet, even such amusements have the right to exist😁
So, to conclude — it wasn’t a bad experience, I don’t think so. Hard, expensive, and extremely frustrating at moments. At times it was hard to keep on going, having to explain to friends and relatives what the hell I’m in to. At times I wanted to scream when we had to acknowledge the losses at first court instances, and still retain faith in the system.
However — imagine the joy of being put down by such losses and then coming back at the Supreme Court. It’s like in the grand final, entering the 4th round having 0–3, an then walking away with a champion’s cup.
Thanks to our lawyers Martynas Kalvelis, Marius Devyžis, thanks to everyone who stayed with me during these hard times, and thanks to all those with no integrity who revealed themselves so easily and had gone from my life.
PS. This ruling concludes the last case in PriceOn story. All the court proceedings: civil, criminal, bankruptcy; all the arrests, fines, bailiffs, domain and company shares matters — everything is finished. What remains is to “clean up the room” after this pillow fight, i.e., all the paperwork to lift arrests, etc. This will be another story, there is a fair share of surprises there already🤣🤣🤣
*not the ones whom I’m thanking below, but the firm TGS Baltic which was representing us at the time. Just a few years later, these blokes have switched the sides and were already coming against us, on the basis of the same agreement that they helped us to form🙀🙀🙀
