His information packet cost $20, less than the danegeld demanded by the USCG to settle a case, which is, in turn, less than someone would need to hire an attorney to help fight the case. Allegedly, anyway.
(As an aside, and at great personal risk, one of the magic defenses the lawyer was selling was the magic phrase “lack of personal standing”: Apparently, not just anyone can file a copyright lawsuit, only the people who actually own the copyrights involved. Therefore, since the USCG lacked standing, their suits didn’t have a … [removes glasses] … leg to stand on.)
First off: Is this actually happening? Assuming it is: Don’t sane people need a valid cause of action before suing someone? Is providing legal information a valid cause of action now?
The OP is confused. The issue is lack of personal jurisdiction over some of the defendants, who have entered the case as interested parties to declare that they are outside the reach of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, where the action Achte/Neunte Boll Kino Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG v. John Does Number 1-4,577 has been filed.
Also, i’ve searched for and read a few articles on this case, and not one of them mentions the question of standing.
What they do mention, however, is the issue of jurisdiction. Apparently the plaintiffs’ law firm recently asked for a 5-year extension (!!!) for naming the defendants in the case (currently, they are all John and Jane Does). The law firm was only naming about 28 defendants per month, and wanted to have until 2015 to name all of the individuals concerned.
Also—and here is where the issue of jurisdiction comes in—the firm wanted to be able to sue all 4,577 defendants in the same court. The case is being held in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
The judge in the case granted part of the firm’s request, and denied part of it. She did allow a short extension, but only a matter of weeks, and not the years that the plaintiffs were seeking. She notes, in her ruling, that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure requires that the defendant be served within 120 days of the complaint being filed in court, or the case will be dismissed. This time limit can be extended, however, if the plaintiff can show good cause for not serving the defendant in the time allotted.
It seems that one effect of this might be to pose problems for the blanket approach being used by the plaintiffs. Currently, the law firm seems to be doing what the much-reviled ACS-Law was doing in the UK: simply sending out a massive shotgun blast of suits, and relying on people to fork over a couple of grand to make the suits go away.
That’s why they’re so angry with the lawyer described by the OP; because the kit he sells allows people to cheaply and easily file motions to quash, it dramatically increases the workload of the plaintiff law firm, because they have to respond to every one of those motions. When the main purpose of your lawsuits is to get people to fork over money to you without ever actually seeing the inside of a courtroom, it messes with the business model if the objects of your lawsuits decide to make you do some actual work.
It’s also rather amusing that the plaintiffs’ law firm is accusing Syfert of selling the kits as a “money-making scheme.” They should certainly know one when they see it.
Can i just add a comment about the supreme irony of being sued, and possibly losing thousands of dollars, for downloading an Uwe Boll movie. This is one director who should actually be paying people to watch his films.
Not exactly, you need a valid cause of action to avoid having your lawsuit dismissed for failure to state a cause of action. Suing someone is easier – it only requires filling out some forms and paying the associated fees.
Also, the inter-lawyer fighting described in the OP’s linked article uses the term “sanctions”, which to me sounds less like a lawsuit, and more like asking the professional regulatory agencies to step in and discipline their opponents for making lawyers look bad.
Right. I’m aware of that. But how often do sane people (lawyers, no less) sue someone without a valid cause of action knowing that their case will be thrown out? I could almost see it happening if some real slimeballs sued a naif betting that the suit would drag on for a while due to the defendant’s inability to file the proper motions, but still.
OK, this makes more sense and I should have imagined it was something like this from the beginning.
So now I have a new question: Is what Mr. Syfert’s doing likely to be sanctionable?
Let me introduce you to the concept of the nuisance lawsuit. It’s just strategy on the lawyer’s part to put the fear of God into someone to stop doing something; i.e., download media, or do something; i.e., pay a collection agency. Even if the suit goes nowhere, the target of the suit is likely to be afraid of a judgment against them, and will either pay whatever is asked by way of a settlement, or stop doing whatever they’re doing to make it go away.
I have to wonder, though, and maybe Bricker can answer this. Wouldn’t Syfert’s package of forms be analogous to a do-it-yourself will or lease or some other legal document you can find in a book or buy online? How would Syfert’s forms be any different?
Since I made my earlier post, I found Spamigation, which is the term for such suits as the one being discussed here. One of the classical examples of this is DirecTV, which sued people who bought smart-card technology, because smart cards are sometimes used by pirates of satellite TV signals. It also sued people who had legitimate reason to own smart card technology, and consequently, found itself facing racketeering charges.
That said, as I understand it, nuisance suits are just that, nuisances. Sometimes they have merit, sometimes they don’t.
From the article, if this works, it would serve as precedent to make the publishers of legal self help books (as well as all publishers of legal forms and manuals) liable to the opponents for the cost of opposing the motions. That isn’t going to happen. This story must be mistaken, because this is way to far out there as frivolous and malicious prosecution. In America you can write an Anarchist’s Cookbook and keep the profits and not be liable for people using it illegally.
If I had to guess, and going by this quote from **mhendo’s **post above
I suspect the issue that USCG may raise is whether Syfert is effectively encouraging people to raise grounds of defence that they know to be false. In other words, they may argue he is encouraging people to say they had no knowledge, used a VPN etc when they know that is false. There is, I guess, a fine but logically valid difference between shotgun litigation where you fire off what you think are valid shots but accept that you may accidentally hit innocents (which is what USCG may believe they are doing) and a defence where you *knowingly *spray false defences to slow the process down.
The sale of forms to end users with the implied intention that the users can avoid engaging an attorney and represent their own interests has often seemed close to the unauthorized practice of law. The user may, by relying on the form, waive important rights or place himself in a worse position by not exploring the advice of an attorney who can ask questions and determine the complete set of relevants facts.
A Texas publisher called Nolo Press faced similar charges, but the state bar’s investigation of unauthorized practice of law was stopped when the Texas legislature passed a law speciifcally allowing these forms as long as they state that the forms are not a substitute for an attorney’s advice.
IANAL (which is why I’ve asked Bricker, who is), but you don’t need to be a lawyer to know that your scenario involves suborning perjury, which is a Big No-No.
Worse, from their POV, is that an actual defense creates an opportunity for a judge who knows barratry and abuse of process when he sees it to instruct the baliff to whack their peepees.
I just looked up the docket of the Achte/Neunte case in the D.C. District Court and I don’t see a motion for sanctions against Syfert. Are we sure that this is something that has been filed in this proceeding or is it a separate action, possibly before a bar ethics committee? Has anyone found the text of the motion against Syfert?
