Prenda
Paul Duffy dumps the second lawsuit assigned to an “inconvenient” judge
Remember how John Steele was ridiculed by Judge Shadur after his two troll cases in a row were assigned to a judge who once said that this divorce-lawyer-turned-copyright-hound “abused the litigation system in more than one way”?
It seems that attorney John Steele (“Steele”) might be well advised to stay away from Las Vegas or other casinos, because his current filing on behalf of plaintiff Boy Racer, Inc. has—despite odds in the range of 25 to 1—been assigned at random to the calendar of this District Court, which had previously been the recipient of another random assignment of a Steele-filed action (that one being CP Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-300, No. 10 C 6255). This Court had ended up dismissing the CP Productions action for the reasons stated in its February 7, 2011 memorandum order and its February 24, 2011 memorandum opinion and order, which (among other reasons) rejected attorney Steele’s effort to shoot first and identify his targets later.
Now we witness how Paul Duffy, Steele’s apprentice, follows in his master’s steps. Duffy was no luckier with his DC cases than Steele was in Chicago. His debut lawsuit was assigned to judge Bates, who (unlike many other judges) paid attention to anonymous motions and strongly suspected that the court was used as a front end for a brazen scam, so he ordered Does to go forward and speak out their frustrations under seal, protecting them from premature harassment. Subpoenas to ISPs were stayed.
In his next two cases Duffy was even less fortunate: the first one was assigned to judge Robert Wilkins, known for his strong opposition to “fishing expeditions” — lumping together defendants from many jurisdictions. So what did Paul Duffy do? He simply dismissed the entire suit immediately after learning to which judge this case was assigned: the case was filed on 11/15, dismissed on 11/18. The second one was assigned to… judge Wilkins again. I was curiously watching… And what do you think? This case was dismissed on Friday: this time it took 9 days: a record! Surprised? I’m not.
I’m not a specialist in legal ethics and court rules, but from the common sense perspective, the mechanism of randomly assigning judges to cases makes a lot of sense as a safeguard against tendentiousness. If “shopping” for judges is not a sanctionable conduct, I would be disappointed. As Mike Masnick wrote a couple of months ago,
With so many lawyers jumping into the copyright trolling game lately, using the same basic blueprint (if only they’d sue each other for infringement!), it would be nice if we could get a higher court to issue a bright line rule that said such a joining of totally unrelated parties is totally improper. That could cut off this whole shakedown game quickly. But until we get that, these copyright trolling operations will just continue forum shopping, hoping to find a judge who isn’t hip to how they’re just using the judicial system as a way to force people into paying money.
By the way, anyone still believes that these scumbags are “fighting piracy”?
Updates
5/14/2012
DieTrollDie reports that at least one of these lawsuits reemerged in Texas by Prenda’s goon Douglas McIntyre: it’s slightly different, more sleaziness is added (trying to present it as a lawsuit against a single Doe but listing pages and pages of co-conspirators), but the IP addresses are reused.
5/29/2012
Comcast notices blatant judge shopping and refuses to hand out customers’ info. Now Sleele emerges from under the bridge trying to compel Comcast to betray its customers.
Rob Cashman posts news and insight regarding this drama.
6/26/2012
Judge Wilkins rules: denies Prenda’s motion to compel, only allowing Prenda to get location (state and city) of each accused subscriber: Pyrrhic victory: this information is openly available via geolocation tools.
Note Judge Wilkins’s awareness about all Prenda’s deeds: he even mentions a counter-suit (Abrahams v. Hard Drive Productions, Inc., No. 3:12-1006) and extortion letters. We’ve been watching each Prenda’s step, and trolls did not like it, but when a federal judge hints that he watches too, it should send some shivers down scumbags’ spines.
Raul adds a few initial impressions:
- The judge has given to the ISPs a roadmap should they elect to contest Prenda’s other pending subpoenas and succeed.
- The judge has cleverly pointed to a “new” ground for Does to move to quash: abuse of Rule 45.
- The judge has shoved Prenda’s abusive subpoena practices up its collective ass.
- The judge has pointed out that Prenda’s legal theory of civil conspiracy (“borrowed” from Randazza) is bullshit and is preempted by the Copyright Act and it’s venue provision. This ought to be useful for any Doe caught up in just about any Prenda lawsuit (LMC, CP Productions, Sunlust, etc.).
I am sure I missed a few thing but those are the highlights. What the judge did not mention is how Rule 41 will now come into play, DTD did a post about this in May. Basically if you are named in two voluntarily dismissed lawsuits, it operates as an adjudication in your favor meaning trolls cannot sue you a third time. Prenda is now in a Catch-22 position as it will have to dismiss Millenium II Does if they do not reside in TX, but if they do that, Rule 41 bars a third lawsuit.
Fight © Trolls 
Attaboy Duffy!! Game over!! Run Troll Run 😀
Thanks SJD! Been a busy weekend for you. Fight Piracy???? For the Trolls and the copyright owners involved, piracy (to include the mere allegation of it with low-grade proof) equals profits for them). That would mean the Trolls would have to find some other revenue stream and the copyright owners would actually have to change their business model to adapt to technology and society.
DieTrollDie 🙂
At what point does someone make a motion for sanctions under Rule 11 against these guys?
How about a community form letter to the Florida Attorney General’s office? These guys are operating out of Florida and are currently abusing Florida’s pure bill of discovery:
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/bhuffman/latest-nationwide-internet-user-identification-part-1-ancient-state-law-pure-bill-disc
Along with the template motions to quash we can put together a template complaint, attach relevant articles as resources (either with permission as part of the bundle or we can provide links so people can print them out and send with the complaint.).
I’ll bet even a couple dozen, but better yet a couple hundred of these would get some attention.
Here’s the Florida AG’s complaint form:
http://myfloridalegal.com/Contact.nsf/Contact
The Trolls are outnumbered by their enemies by thousands to one.
I had to google “tedentiousness”. There’s my vocab lesson for the day.
Yes, I believe that the trollawyers will be encountering an ever-increasing level of tedentiousness as these cases continue to spread and more and more judges wake up to the fact that they’re carpet-bombing the internet to catch the crooks who see them coming a mile away, and simply cannot be caught with such heavy-handed and ill-guided techniques.
And yes, of course they’re “fighting piracy”! Don’t be ridiculous! They’re doing it EXACTLY the same way that the United States fought terror with the shock-and-awe carpet-bombing of Baghdad! Taking down an oppressive, but unrelated, regime that had nothing to do with terrorism sure taught those terrorists a lesson! Before destabilizing the ruling government, causing anarchy and a power vacuum that actually drew the terrorists in … and made the general population loathe the invading army to the degree that they started sympathizing with the incoming terrorists when they weren’t too busy fighting each other in miscellaneous uncontrolled sectarian violence …
…Wait…
Let me rethink that line of reasoning before I put it in my next motion to the court.
I wonder where Captain John “hubris” Steele is with a comment?
Well… Since his gang now uses comments from this site in motions, he must of figured that could work both ways and his comments could be used against his scam also. Maybe I am just giving him to much credit. He will mist likely appear before xmas with a lump of FUD.
I wonder if he regrets, for example, the adult webmaster forum thread where his clients discuss how the scam is padding their bank accounts and how it is hush money and they LOVE it!
See EXHIBIT C in DieTrollDie’s declaration filed in an Arizona case. I think better screen grabs are available on one of the blogs but I can’t find them now.
That’s going to look great when regulators and class action lawyers come knocking. I hope for the Troll’s and Troll Plaintiff’s sake that everyone’s accounting has been meticulous as well. Actually I don’t, it’ll be fun to see the IRS clean their bones.
I wonder if Duffy suspected he was being set up to be a fall-guy. I’ll bet Steele’s pitch sounded like a really sweet deal.
Here are some good threads, they have been posted on various blogs like this one.
http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=985302&page=8 Steele comments at post# 358 post#362 is a good one
http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=987547 post# 8
http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=989218&page=3 Post# 116 shemaleyum/Millenium TGA Owner
http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=990073
http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=985302
http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=915109
Yes. You are giving his ego too much credit.
The best part of the trolls dismissing cases like Steel and Duffy have done, it makes a crystal clear statement regarding the credibility of their suits.
3 new Duffy suits filed in Northern Illinois yesterday.
http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/illinois-northern-district-court/87114/hard-drive-productions-inc-v-john-does-1-48/summary/
http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/illinois-northern-district-court/87115/pacific-century-international-ltd-v-john-does-1-31/summary/
http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/illinois-northern-district-court/87116/first-time-videos-llc-v-john-does-1-43/summary/
1:11-cv-09066 First Time Videos LLC v. Does 1 – 43
Milton I. Shadur, presiding
Date filed: 12/21/2011
Date terminated: 12/22/2011
Date of last filing: 12/22/2011
What’s the matter Paul “steele Jr” Duffy?
anonymous,
Judge Shadur tends to hate these cases, and repeatedly threw them out – John ‘Rusty’ Steele knows it all too well. A bunch of lucky Does, I would say…
P.S. In case this was thinly veiled irony, sorry I completely missed it…
yeah. I am well aware of Steele’s history with Judge Shadur. It will be interesting to see if the Judge comments on the early dismissal, like he did when Johnny Boy dismissed the Boy racer case.
Judge Shadurs’ Memorandum Order to Steele:
“It seems that attorney John Steele (“Steele”) might be well advised to stay away from Las Vegas or other casinos, because his current filing on behalf of plaintiff Boy Racer, Inc. has—despite odds in the range of 25 to 1—been assigned at random to the calendar of this District Court, which had previously been the recipient of another random assignment of a Steele-filed action (that one being CP Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-300, No. 10 C 6255). This Court had ended up dismissing the CP Productions action for the reasons stated in its February 7, 2011 memorandum order and its February 24, 2011 memorandum opinion and order, which (among other reasons) rejected attorney Steele’s effort to shoot first and identify his targets later.”
Here is a link to a great article on the case
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/judge-dont-bring-me-any-more-anonymous-file-sharing-lawsuits.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20arstechnica/index%20(Ars%20Technica%20-%20Featured%20Content)&utm_content=Google%20Reader
As much as I like Shadurs’ attutide about these things, he apparently doesn’t grasp the extent. If you are rolling the dice 2-3 times then yeah bad luck. Steele and his boys have rolled the dice 20 or so times.
I sent you an email regarding your other comment 😉
Wow! Sitting in the library parking parking lot as my Wi-Fi is out for the next 24 hours and have finished reading Judge Wilken’s Memorandum Opinion. I am sure Cashman or DTD will dissect it but wanted to throw out. A few initial impressions.
1. The judge has given to the ISPs a roadmap should they elect to contest Prenda’s other pending subpoenas and succeed.
2. The judge has cleverly pointed to a “new” ground for Does to move to quash: abuse of Rule 45.
3. The judge has shoved Prenda’s abusive subpoena practices up its collective ass.
4. The judge has pointed out that Prenda’s legal theory of civil conspiracy (“borrowed” from Randazza) is bullshit and is preempted by the Copyright Act and it’s venue provision. This ought to be useful for any Doe caught up in just about any Prenda lawsuit (LMC, CP Productions, Sunlust, etc.).
I am sure I missed a few thing but those are the highlights. What the judge did not mention is how Rule 41 will now come into play, DTD did a post about this in May but I am on the IPad and cannot link to it. Basically if you are named in two voluntarily dismissed lawsuits it operates as an adjudication in your favor meaning trolls cannot sue you a third time. Prenda is now in a Catch-22 position as it will have to dismiss Millenium II Does if they do not reside in TX but if they do that Rule 41bars a third lawsuit. I wish I could say I was the clever guy who came up with this but DTD predicted this might happen last month (track down his post “Two Strikes and You’re ‘Out!'”).
I hope John Steele’s ISP Ass Kicking foot has had time to heal. Looks like it’s going to need to kick harder next time.
Interesting how all the Prenda hand-waving in various venues about not really accusing Doe, just trying to discover the ‘real infringer’ has come home to roost. Seems like the judge paid particular attention to the fact that subscribers may not actually be parties to the lawsuit, and thus should not be unduly burdened.
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