From Dave Winer: Roy Wildstein:

"I've never known anyone named Roy Wildstein.  Otherwise, everything in this story happened."

Yeah me neither, and this happened to me too.  Only we chose to fight, and we won ... and we still lost, because it took a lot of money to win.  Actually everyone involved lost, except possibly our attorneys.

"The charge, age discrimination ... here's what I learned, something that Roy clearly understood before he started working at my company. I could choose to fight it, and I would lose."

This doesn't just happen with age discrimination, it happens with every other kind of discrimination too.  It's a tough problem; you want laws that protect people from discrimination, but you don't want to enable people to use them for a scam.

I think the solution lies in punishing the lawyers.  If a lawyer represents a client and she wins, great, you pay their legal fees.  But if they lose, they have to pay yours.  I think that would put an end to illegitimate cases pretty quickly, and would raise the bar on the level of proof attorneys would need to see before they bring suit against a company.