[ul]
[li]Anyone Can Legally Say, “Eat Shit, Bob!”[/li][li]Plaintiff’s Motion for a Restraining Order is Ridiculous. Courts Can’t Tell Media Companies How to Report, Bob.[/li][li]All of John Oliver’s Speech Was Protected by the First Amendment. You Can’t Sue People for Being Mean to You, Bob.[/li][li]Plaintiff’s Requested Injunction Is Clearly Unconstitutional. You Can’t Get a Court Order Telling the Press How to Cover Stories, Bob.[/li][/ul]
The ACLU makes it entirely clear just how nuts they consider this lawsuit to be. The whole thing is freakin’ hilarious. I don’t remember the last time I saw a legal document this funny - maybe the benchslap that one judge gave the SovCit morons, or the transcript of Georgia vs. Rick Allen. This stuff is gold.
I lost it at “And with regard to the Dr. Evil remark, it should be remembered that truth is an absolute defense to a claim of defamation”, accompanied by side-by-side headshots of Bob and Dr. Evil, and a lengthy footnote about Dr. Evil’s habit of demanding unreasonable sums of money.
This thing is no Meads v. Meads, but it’s a masterwork of legal writing all the same.
I’ve seen no sign of that. People have been ridiculing him more and more since the suit. I’ve not heard of anyone who is repeating the issue getting sued, either.
Plus the guy’s almost dead, and the entire suit reads like a vanity project for the man in question, touting how amazing a man he is. I don’t think the suits last past his death.
If anything, HBO’s willingness to take the hit will dampen (slightly) the willingness of rich folk to file these intimidation suits in the first place. His health issues aside, this will not end well for Bob Murray or his company - if he survives he’s still likely to lose the case badly and the Streisand Effect will ensure that everyone knows why. Is this really how he wants to spend his last days on Earth?
Now that I’ve watched a lawyer on YouTube read the brief, I’ll add that the whole point of this amicus curiae is to try and get this thrown out of court and the guy fined for abusing the court system, after citing how many times he abused it in another state.
So the ACLU-WV is trying to resolve the issue of abusing lawsuits.
This isn’t Murray’s first lawsuit. The document lists a number or previous lawsuits where Murray sued media organizations for expressing views he didn’t like.
Murray has a strategy. His lawsuits will not win in court. But they will cause media organizations to spend money. And Murray surely knows that some media organizations will make the pragmatic decision to avoid spending money defending against frivolous lawsuits by doing what Murray wants.
Having a nuisance lawsuit backfire to the point that lots more people are Googling images to confirm that Murray looks like a geriatric Dr. Evil, does not seem like a positive outcome for Mr. Murray.
I suspect that writing legal briefs is almost always an exercise in boredom and tedium, so when the opportunity to write this one came up, someone thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
I already know the guy’s strategy. Hence the purpose of getting the case thrown out and him sanctioned. I suspected that the brief was about that, but waited to read it to be sure.
He has a strategy. He was stupid to use it here, especially after all the previous vexatious litigation. I wish the court could do more to stop him, but it does seem that his attempt to chill speech is fi ally failing.
I think that these suits are referred to as SLAPP lawsuits, which stands for strategic lawsuit (or litigation) against public participation. A political operative in the town that I used to live in filed one of these suits against some local political bloggers. It did not end well, as the guy suing had to pay lawyer costs to the people that he sued. Also received a strong rebuke from the judge.
As a retired legal secretary, if I ever decided to go back to work as a legal secretary or transcriptionist, I want to work for attorneys who write like this! I would have had so much fun preparing this brief!
I would have suspected an ulterior motive: Pre-empting President Rumps efforts to SLAPP media organizations for reporting things that aren’t flattering to him and thereby setting up a string of losing cases to remind The Donald that he can’t do that kind of thing.
Alas, other discussions in this thread suggest Bob doesn’t tend to think that far ahead, or with such civic-minded altruism.
–G!
Well he can’t even run his own life
I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine!
…–Jonathan Edwards
…Sunshine
…(Single)
Bumping, because the lawsuit has been dismissed by the presiding judge. Details at lawfulmasses.com.
In the dismissal, the judge writes:
I assume that this is fairly common, but what are the odds that HBO’s attorneys have a little fun with the Order at Mr. Murray’s expense, and perhaps in keeping with the tone of the ACLU-WV amicus brief? Were I part of the Defendants’ team, I don’t think I could resist the temptation.
Can’t wait to see what they do with this on “Last Week Tonight.” I predict it will be epic.
Are you kidding? Epic isn’t going to cover it; I can hear John Oliver chortling right now as they brainstorm in the writer’s room and I’m 2500 miles away!
