January 3, 2018 8:30am

Trial Day

I arrived at court at 8:30am for Trial Day. There were 12 of us packed into the hour, but 7 were no-shows, including several Equifax plaintiffs that Legalist had funded court costs for. (Just to clarify, if you receive funding from Legalist, you are contractually obligated to show up for trial, but that’s a separate matter). I was second in line.

The Equifax representative was present as well, and she sat directly in front of me. She looked like a nice lady, with a neat packet and a red coat that she laid on the seat next to her. I knew she was probably a nice person, but as a corporate mouthpiece, she represented my adversary.

The clerk instructed us to exchange evidence with the Equifax representative, and I handed over the print-outs I had made the night before: of my screenshot saying I had been hacked, my Lifelock receipt, and the news articles on Equifax executives leaking our data, dumping their stock, and subsequently sharing links to phishing websites that lured consumers into (yet again), giving hackers their data. The Equifax lady looked at all the documents impassively.

Our judge that day would be Michelle McGill, a real estate lawyer in San Francisco who was acting as judge pro tem. That means it’s basically a lawyer that the Superior Court got to put on a nice black robe and act as a judge for the day to resolve the petty disputes of commoners. Fine fine.

Pro tip: Always address the judge as “Your Honor.”

The first plaintiff was called up. He was deaf, and had an interpreter with him. Ever since the Equifax breach, he had been getting spam calls from random numbers and locations he didn’t recognize. The judge looked skeptical. The Equifax representative piped up, and said, the plaintiff had not incurred any damages, but that if he was concerned, he should sign up for TrustID, Equifax’s free credit monitoring service. The judge asked if he had any evidence that the spam calls were linked to Equifax. He said he didn’t. She told him to sit down.

“Christian G. Haigh, you may approach the bench.” I stood up.

“What do you seek and why?”

My hands were sweating a little. I suddenly thought, this is why criminal defendants are allowed to plead the 5th. Because being interrogated by a judge is really freaking terrifying.

I started to read my speech. Equifax leaked my data, yada yada, but more importantly, they didn’t care. Bloomberg reported that three of the company’s senior executives sold nearly $1.8 million in shares after the company learned internally of the data breach, but before the announcement was made to the public.

This was apparently new to the judge. She looked at the Equifax representative, “Is it true that Equifax executives dumped their stock after internal news of the breach, but before it was announced to the public?”

The Equifax representative looked temporarily flustered. “I’m not sure, Your Honor.” She looked frantically through her packet of talking points. “I haven’t been given that information.”

The judge looked at her calmly. “Thank you.”

The ten minutes passed faster than I thought. Several plaintiffs came after me, and at the end of the session, the judge announced that we should all go home and wait for our judgments to come in the mail.

The only thing left was to keep my fingers crossed.