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Google sued as PetsWarehouse Lawsuit Continues.
Ikari Gendou writes "In April, Slashdot reported that Robert Novak, owner of Internet pet store Pets Warehouse filed a $15,000,000US lawsuit against several individuals who made comments about his company's poor service on an Internet mailing list. Also named in it and in the suit that followed were the owner of the mailing list, the owners of several informational sites about the lawsuit, the owners of other forums where the lawsuit was discussed, the attorney for the defense, and several sites that merely ran banner ads promoting the defense fund set up for the lawsuit. Some defendents settled out of fear, and were forced to pay cash, transfer their personal domain names to Novak, or even run banner ads for Petswarehouse on their websites. Now, the attorney for the defense has announced that in round three of the lawsuit, Google has been sued, as well as several other sites that have carried news about the lawsuit, such as search engine Judge-For-Yourself.com and pet stores DoctorDog.com and FerretStore.com. Robert Novak is representing himself in this lawsuit, and thus it is effectively costing him nothing to persue this campaign of harassment. He's already gotten several thousand dollars from settlements and cost the defendents considerably more than that in legal fees. More details should be posted soon here, including court documents that tell why Google was added to the suit."
Now he's suing people that can actually afford to fight back. I hope he gets the pants beaten off of him by Google's lawyers.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
One day, a man was hit by a bicycle. The man got so angry, he demanded the cyclist pay him five dollars. And the cyclist did so because he was too busy to argue.
Then the man thought 'Maybe I should throw myself in from of another bicycle to get five dollars'. And so he did.
Five bicycles later, he thinks 'If I get five dollars from bicycles, I can get twenty from cars'. And he threw himself into on comming trafic.
And was squashed by a pickup truck.
...is a good offense.
/.'er can provide a simpler summary on his/her his web page for reference. In addition to the defense fund's site. We also may wish to provide links to the mailing list comments that started this.
Perhaps a good round of public boycott will enough to deter Mr. Novak from suing anyone who criticizes his store. Start by emailing all your pet-owning friends and informing them of what has happened. Ask them to stop purchasing from Petswearhouse until this kind of senseless lawsuit'ing has stopped... Also perhaps a
Basically give people information to make an informed decision.
managers...why god invented purgatory
In such a litigious society, where lawyers chase after every dollar they can, and where "greed is good" is a mantra, is anyone truly surprised at this?
It's a sad reflection of American society that it has turned into a victim culture where nobody is ever to blame for their own shortcomings but is instead a victim of the malignant actions of anyone or everyone else.
It's an easy out - why bother seriously examining where your business plan was flawed or where your process broke down when you can simply point the finger at someone else and say "I would have succeeded if it wasn't for you".
Part of the problem is that there is little to discourage malicious and/or spurious litigation. Some sort of penalty for repeatedly taking out this sort of action would be helpful but it's hard to imagine that happening any time soon.
The fact is that many companies will rather settle lawsuits like these ones before they get to court even if they are without merit. The rationale behind this is ironic - lawsuits (even ridiculous ones) bring down share prices, and which "greed is good" CEO is going to let that happen for the sake of a few thousand dollars?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
You know, I was going to post something informative or maybe even (+3 Insightful), but this nausious feeling just won't go away. I can understand suing someone for libel ... even if I do think it's just customers sharing their experiences. Considering the net-based nature of his business, people posting in online forums about how bad he is would strike me the same as people marching outside the front door of the local pet store carrying signs and shouting slogans. But to then start suing the people who carried news of the origional lawsuit? Or the ones who carried the ad banners for the legal defense fund? What's next, sue the WayBack machine? Sheesh... sounds like someone isn't selling enough Kibbles n' Bits to pay the bills...
/., then you have enough time to do this as well.
I hope the good folks at Google countersue him, and I also hope that this spurs all the people who've had bad experiences with this place to file a group or class-action lawsuit, and I hope it hurts him good.
Does anyone know the results of the origional lawsuits? (not including the &*%(#&'s who settled)
And does anyone have the links to the legal defense fund, and any of the BB's that posted the comments? They deserve links on my homepage (made and hosted in Canada, where we don't take this kinda crap, eh?)
Now, I'm going to write the nice man an email explaining why I'll be boycotting his business, and why I'll be encouraging others to as well. Shouldn't you, too? If you have enough time to post on
(Sig 0.5b)
I'll defend your right to spew fruitless venom and baseless idiocy with my dying breath, just as you must defend my right to call you an asshole.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
I don't think he cares whether he looks like a fool or not. Remember that "Seinfeld" episode where George gets a job by pretending that he was disabled, and then after he's found out, continues showing up at the job because his employers are contractually bound to keep him on for a full year? His boss hates George and makes his life miserable, his coworkers all tell him to drop dead in the hallways, but George doesn't care--his paycheck is worth more to him than his dignity or his reputation, and as long as he gets it, George thinks that he's won.
Same with his fellow Novak, I guess. He must know that the lawsuits are frivolous and that his name is mud among everyone who's ever heard of him. No matter--he keeps suing and keeps collecting from people who can't afford a protracted legal action, and so by his lights, he's won.
hyacinthus.
IWALS (I was a Law student), but don't take this as professional advice.
It certainly is that way here in Europe: the side that loses the case usually has to pay both sides' legal fees (at the judge discretion).
But not in the USA. Well, maybe it is in some states, but generally every side has to pay its own legal fees.
Maybe that's the reason we have so few of those plainly stupid suits here, as if you sue someone you have to be really sure of it or face paying up your lawyer and theirs.
Some statistics I read a while ago (might have changed): While in the USA 80% of the suits are between private parties, in Europe only 20% are. The rest are between the State and the defendant, that is, criminal suits.
Until I got to this fundamental difference, I didn't understand why lawyers were so important in the USA.
If I have posted far, it is because I replied to giants.
This is an interesting case and I hope that the courts will take action to address these abusive legal actions. There are actually mechanisms in the law to accomplish this, ranging from a court order barring a litigant from filing further motions or actions on a certain issue to a court declaration that a litigant is characteristically abusive (I can't recall the term for this, but it is assuredly legal latinate). The latter requires the censured litigant to gain court approval before filing any further actions.
Check out the following case; it's very interesting.
http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/flsupct/sc94012/op
Novak is a pathetic moron. If he comes after me, I will drop him like a bad habit. He already read the mention of him on my site.
Part of the problem is that the people did settle instead of filing a motion to dismiss or a summary judgment motion. I can understand why they would settle for a nuisance amount. If a motion for summary judgment had been done, the case would have been kicked.
Fight Spammers!
Over here, there is no such thing as punitive damages. One can only sue for real and quantifyable damage. [stuff deleted] The result? There are no cases in my countries legal history, of people sueing because they spilled hot coffee on their leg, tried to dry a poodle in the microwave, or any of that sort of idiocy.
The McDonald's case is a bad example- do a Google search. When people talk about tort reform they always trot out this overhyped example, as if there are no better ones to use.
That lady was originally willing to settle for $20,000 to cover medical expenses for the skin grafts, because she was broke and couldn't afford the medical bills. McDonald's made a counteroffer of $800 and refused to admit any responsibility or to adjust their thermostats. A mediator recommended settling for $225,000, but McDonald's refused and went to trial.
What inflamed the jury was the fact that McDonald's had done a risk-benefit analysis on this issue. Several hundred people had gotten burned by the coffee, and at least one burn center had requested that McDonald's turn its coffee down. But overheating the coffee improved the aroma and allowed the use of a cheaper, inferior grade of beans. (When the coffee is burning your mouth you can't taste it.) McDonald's had concluded that the risk from settling the occasional suit would not offset the profits they would make from higher sales.
It also didn't help McDonald's that they were caught lying about this and the existence of the other claims in court. The jury set compensatory damages at $200,000 minus $40,000 for the lady's own contributory negligence, and then added the cost of two days' of coffee sales- which turned out to be $2.7 million. A judge lowered that to $480,000 and it was finally settled for an undisclosed amount.
The poodle in the microwave appears to be an urban legend. Maybe you can provide a link to a believable reference. But to me this looks like you've got issues with stupid old ladies.
Be warned that the media is extremely willing to overhype anecdotes of individuals abusing their rights to sue corporations. In fact those cases get pounced upon, like when that fat guy brought that moronic suit against fast food restaurants for making him fat. We got saturation coverage of that case. But these things go both ways. Abuses of the legal system by litigious corporations against individuals (and other corporations) are just as frequent, but they don't receive as much media attention, nor are they presented as evidence that the system is broken and in need of legislative reform.
If you really read the lawsuit, you'd see that he's suing because the search terms "pets warehouse" (two words) are bringing up the competing sites. This is as much copyright infringement as the dictionary, which also contains the word "pets" and the word "warehouse". The sites in question have not put the word "petswarehouse" or "petswarehouse.com" in their metatags -- they've put "pets" and "warehouse".
The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
An individual who was responsible for the creation of the Comcast consumer advocacy catagory on Yahoo! was successful in finally getting Comcast to drop their cable fraud lawsuit when he threatened to countersue for malicious prosecution.
This individual *clearly* is in it for the money, and nothing else. Aside from a possible slander charge against the original poster, if what was said was in fact false; Google, nor any other news site, has any business being named in the law suit.
Something to the effect of "common carrier" status should apply to these sites. Unless they posted their own commentary that was specifically derrogatory to the owner of that web site, they have no grounds for the law suit; and even if commentary was posted, by the time the lawsuit is reaching national coverage for it's stupidity, you've lost any right to complain about it.
Google, being the group with the greatest amount of cash, should counter-sue the individual in question for being an asshat and attempting to exploit the system. If I recall correctly (IANAL), exploting the courts for personal gain is CONTEMPT and you go to jail for that, instantly.
My $0.02.