Author here. Thanks for all the comments, I've been hesitant to post this to the court of public opinion, yet curiosity about what the HN community would think caused me to push the button. My lawyers - who were really excellent - represented me (on contingency!) because it seemed the chance of a judge not accepting a motion to dismiss (for a variety of reasons I don't want to detail here) was non-zero. And the process of discovery would be very costly for NVIDIA with depositions from many executives who have better things to do.
Your blog post is making a logical error. You're assuming that you're being owed the right to exercise your options retroactively so you calculate the foregone value of the stock you could have had if you exercised, which is dishonest because they can only deliver expired options to you.
You could still sue Nvidia for compensation, assuming no statue of limitations, but the thing you can be compensated for is a completely different thing. You can still be compensated the value of the option. I.e. the difference between the strike price and the market price 30 years ago. That's the thing you can sue for. You cannot retroactively extend the option because longer duration options have a higher premium so you would be telling Nvidia to pay you more money than they contractually obligated themselves.
Eric_Gullichsen · · focus · HN ↗
imtringued · · focus · HN ↗
You could still sue Nvidia for compensation, assuming no statue of limitations, but the thing you can be compensated for is a completely different thing. You can still be compensated the value of the option. I.e. the difference between the strike price and the market price 30 years ago. That's the thing you can sue for. You cannot retroactively extend the option because longer duration options have a higher premium so you would be telling Nvidia to pay you more money than they contractually obligated themselves.
nujabe · · focus · HN ↗