Slashdot Mirror
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."
THe man can't be "defending himself" if he is bringing accusations. He is representing himself is more along the lines of what is happening here.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Hey, somebody, sometime, somewhere, said something I think that just maybe might have been true but I think that I maybe didn't like it. F^CK IT, I'm suing everybody.
Knightfall
Countersue
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Come on guys let's get with it here.
The more people he sues, the bigger a joke he'll become in the courts. Next, I hope he sues God for allowing these other humans to even exist on Earth.
Somebody may figure its cheaper and easier to just hire a hit man to take the sleazeball out.
Doesn't sound like anybody would weep over it.
Be careful.. .or they'll wind up suing /.
Awww......forget it......fuck em.
/. and Anonymous Cowards #1-#50,000!
Is it me, or is being a lawyer far more profitable than honest, hard work? I don't know about you, but I think there are a lot of problems here.
The blinking links alone tell me that he's a complete idiot.
I bet he was teased in high school and wants to get back at all the bullies.
*sigh*
If a and b in c, and a can create b, and a can create a, and b can create b, and b cannot create a, then a created c.
Wait... He's suing someone for reporting the news? Isn't that like, wrong and shit?
What next, some pedophile suing CNN for reporting that he was arrested & convicted of bangin' a 12 year old?
No, just like everyone else, I didn't read the article.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Someone tell this guy that the phrase 'any publicity is good publicity' isn't always true.
Click here here and here
:)
Who is John Galt?
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 --
If not, maybe next week they will be
Nothing is more idiotic than a legal system that allows one person to abridge the security and personal freedom of another, but exercising their own right to continually sue or press frivolous charges against individuals/organizations that cross their path.
We NEED a law to deal with idiotic lawsuits. That is to say, one that carries penalties for those use lawsuits as a continual source of revenue. I think I read earlier that there are some laws regarding individuals that are sue happy, why not make it federal (and get the Canadian government to apply one as well, although Canada seems less lawsuit-crazy than the US).
Lawyers: Who do you want to sue today? - phorm
Er...constitution anyone?
Plaintiff:
Robert Novak,
d/b/a Pets Warehouse.com
Defendants:
Overture Services, Inc.
Google, Inc.
Innovative Marketing Solutions, Inc.d/b/a Kanoodle.com
Neeps, Inc. d/b/a Theferretstore.com
John Holdefehr d/b/a Judge-for-yourself.com
Biochemics, Inc. d/b/a Doctordog.com
COURT DOCKET - Third Lawsuit
09-24-2002 (1) Complaint filed and summons issued as to defendant(s) Biochemics, Inc., Google, Inc., John Holdefehr, Innovative Marketing Solutions, Inc., Neeps, Inc., Overture Services, Inc. Filing fee $150.00. Receipt number: 7370. Jury trial demanded. filed by pro se Robert Novak. (Attachments: #1 Civil Cover Sheet) (Romano, Daniel) (entered: 09-26-2002)
09-26-2002 (2) Notice of Report on the filing of an action regarding a patent orTrademark Infringement sent to Washington DC (Romano, Daniel) (Entered: 09-26-2002)
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Any commercial site that uses blink on their tags deserves to be shot dead.
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Despite years of my hard work and overtime and brown nosing, my wife has a job offer with a starting salary that would make you cry, and hasn't even graduated law school!
I'll tell you what the problem is, WHY AREN'T YOU IN LAW SCHOOL?!?!
P.S. don't forget about the bonus if you meet all your billable hours.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Will Slashdot be sued next for posting this story?
Doesn't this sound like a job for the EFF to defend these people?
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.
Yes, I don't like her as much as the next man, but the big factory farmers here in Texas couldn't pin anything on Oprah (a national celebrity) for saying "I'll never eat beef again" (pp). How does this guy have a case against people posting in public forums? Or reporting it?
He will lose unless these defendant's can't get decent lawyers. But then again, the guys representing himself. Hence, he'll probably just lose.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
well i got on there and bought a 50 pound bag of "OL' ROY" dog food for my german shepherd general rommel. well, it took like EIGHT MONTHS for it to even get there. so when it did, general rommel was pretty damn hungry. so I opened up the bag of "OL' ROY" and poured a bowl and gave it to him. he ate it. AND THEN I NOTICED that it was not dog food in there, but rat poison! PET WAREHOUSE is shipping RAT POISON in their pet food! general rommel promptly keeled over and croaked.
i sent a mail to mr. novak and he told me to go eff myself with a shovel. now THAT is what i call customer service. anyway, i've got a new dog now, I called her eva braun, and i will NOT be ordering any more "OL' ROY" from PET WAREHOUSE
your buddy
--gbd
Pets Warehouse sucks.
(I don't know anything about Pets Warehouse, I just think it'd be funny to get sued by this loon. Hope he reads Slashdot!)
Game... blouses.
as a followup Id like to comment that this guy is a total tool and will deserve the legal assbeating hes about to get...
"Robert Novak is representing himself in this lawsuit, and thus it is effectively costing him nothing to persue this campaign of harassment. "
You just made the list, buddy! I don't want anybody touchin' my stuff. Anyone touches my stuff, I'll kill ya!
I think this suit will draw more bad publicity than what the the peoples comments did... really i never heard of this until i read about the suit today.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
"Dear judge-
Some mean person made very nasty remarks about my crappy online store. Since we now live in a world where every single whining crybaby threatens to sue somebody over the most trivial of things, I feel I want to sue a person who made some comments on their website. Sure, my knowledge of the legal system is little to none, but I really want to sue these guys because they are so mean! I have obviously never done any research on libel, or I would've learned the following information:
Ideas and opinions, whether true of false, cannot constitutionally be subject to libel claims.
However, my lawyer, who also works the night shift at the local Dairy Queen, says I can sue for MILLIONS of dollars! I tend to believe him, because I once saw him wear an expensive suit and I think that makes him smart.
Sincerely,
Mr Novak"
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Now this idiot has finally bit off a little more than he can handle and I'm guessing that Google's legal team is going to make short work of him and hopefully put an end to this spree of lawsuits by that moron Robert Novak who owns that useless, cheap, rip-off company Pets Warehouse and ...
Eh? What that? What do you mean "I'm being served?!?"
I stole this Sig
Can you say countersued into oblivion?
Unlike some of his other targets, Google can fight back. He's going to get smacked... Hard. What an idiot. He deserves what he's going to get.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
On the surface, this seems to me like a stupid lawsuit that cannot hold in court, since it is clearly trying to violate the consitutional right of free speech (i.e.: "you cannot say I suck, I'll sue you").
However, *maybe* (and I repeat, just maybe), if beyond any reasonable doubt the guy can prove that the people who made the first comments made them with the premeditated malicious intention of bringing down his business, then that's another matter. However that still does not give him the right to sue everyone else (if that holds in court, Microsoft could be suing the slashdot parent company on the basis that they're hosting anti-microsoft discussions by some users).
In the end, my guess is that the case can not hold in the supreme court, if it ever gets there. if he wins a few cases it's probably because he's got tons of money to spend on lawyers or just some very good lawyers, or everyone else's lawyers suck.
The comments are about "Pet Warehouse", which is here while the link is for Pets Warehouse.
What happened, according to the Salon article, linked in the original /. article is that the "s" was left off.
More understandable since Pet Warehouse is a reputable outfit predating the dotcom boom. I've dealt with them lots of times.
Everyone who responded to this thread will be sued in round 4 of the lawsuit :-)
Now he will sue you and Slashdot! And Rob and his dog! Shame on you! :
He made a big mistake this time. Google is going to kick his ass and countersue and before we know it we're going to see "PetsWarehouse.com now owned by Google". Right now I'm assembling a ravenous, drooling, insane mob of /. firstposters to go down to his store and rough him up.
You'd be bitter too if you got ass pounded every single day of your high school career.
Struggling to put it behind him he did the perfect thing: opened up an internet store (hey you don't have to see the customers!)
Now he's getting ass pounded on the internet.
which is fine by me...
and everyone who has posted on this thread!!
seibed
Somebody actually survived the web pet supplies business?
Does that mean I can bring my sock puppets back out from the basement?
Table-ized A.I.
Wasn't it this guys MO to sue "little guys" who don't have the resources to fly to Alabama and fight it? Doesn't he think he's going to get in trouble suing bigger companies?
I would think they could countersue for some reason like "Mr. Novak is irritating" (say in California) and cost him bundles of $$.
Know what, you're probably a better target than Google. Why? Well, you don't have as much money, not having as much money means that you are forced to hire a lawyer, fly out to NY (if you don't already live there), etc. That means you're far more likely to just say "Screw this" and settle out of court as it may even be cheaper.
Here's a relavent quote from an article on the case:
Resler said his lawyer was confident they could defeat Novak in court. But, Resler said, when the lawyer told the defendants how much it would cost, "we said, 'Settle.' "
My hope is that after Google finishes with this case, they counter-sue the guy's ass off.
Not that talking head that gained notoriety during the OJ debacle, is he?
Well anyway, Fuck Novak and fuck Petswhorehouse (preferably with a broom handle)! I'm glad he's decided to sue Google...maybe they'll give him the bitchslapping that he so richly deserves!
You're using her as bait, Master!
You can't. I have a pending patent on the underlying method used is "suing everybody"
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
...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
There's nothing wrong with getting back at the bullies of one's youth. More likely, he was a bully in High School and wants to regain that youthful feeling of power.
Pick One: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~stremler/sigs/sigs.html (Note - disable Javascript first!)
"slashdottin my site? thats a paddle'in" (jasper)
Wonderfull name. Brings to mind a large building stuffed with pets from top to bottom. Hi-Lo's and Forklifts shuffling boxes of animals about. Over in the far rear corner is the "Scratch and Dent" bin full of great bargains.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
If you are reading this, consider yourself sued! Sincerely, Robert Novak
Mr. Gates and M$ are probably filing a suit against half of the World.
Free Speech is a wonderful thing
Well the first mistakes were the people who settled. If the guy is representing himself, one good lawyer could easily outwit him in court (or maybe Im giving lawyers too much credit..). The guy is a public business, he is not immune from slander. What hes doing is the exact thing that pisses me off the most about things like the RIAA and BestBuys/Fry store policies, ect. Its companies telling us what we can and cannot do, no longer is the customer always right. Instead, we the consumers, are seen as stupid people who have to be put in our place by some snot nosed store clerk or some half assed executive hiding behind "company policy". BS... its on paper, paper does not bind us physically. This is exactly what this guy is trying to pull. he is trying to take away a consumers right to free speech. They shouldnt settle, they should just tell him to kiss their ass, and until the day that he can physically force them to not advertise the fact that a vendor did not come through with a promised transaction, he can take his lawsuit papers and shove them up his a$$. Second, they should have filed a complaint the Chamber of Commerce and the Better Business Bureua, thus having a registered and documented complaint against the company, then his lawsuit would have no grounds. Of course... maybe I should keep quite, he might try and sue me... oh no....
create a mirror on slashdot:
I would like to voice my opinion about a company that I have had
experience with, PetSwarehouse. Based on true experience, I feel that
they suck. According to their Better Business Bureau rating of
unsatisfactory (the bureau's lowest), I see that I am not alone in
this opinion--a conclusion arrived to by factual data.
Furthermore, I understand that free speech is right of all Americans,
protected by the constitution.
"Libel is injury to reputation.
There is only one and unconditional defense to a civil action for
libel: that the facts stated are PROVABLY TRUE." --AP Stylebook and
Libel Manual.
Reputations are earned from true experiences, not fabricated online,
Mr. Novak. Everyone has the right to share and express their true
experiences and the feelings and opinions drawn from these factual
events.
contribute to the defense fund: http://www.petsforum.com/psw/Fund.htm
-- john
New to Google! It's Google Pet Warehouse! Now you can search and purchase all your pet needs right from your favorite search engine!
Want to know how we did it? Sure, we'll tell you! Some moron sued us and we won! We got his pet store and now it makes us a mint!
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Therefore I can look like a champion of free speech, get all the free publicity I need, and then sit back and let Google's lawyers squash this guy for me.
It could be scalable. 0.00 would be unmodified. 0.02 could just mellow it out, strip the blink tags. 0.05 could get the major spelling errors. 0.08 could fix the color scheme and so on
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Point taken, but the difference here is he was never tried or convicted of having a crappy pet store. They aren't publishing facts, they are publishing opinions.
He is suing for libel, defamation, or slander.
And yes, if you print the opionions of someone else with the intent to cause them problems, then you can be sued.
Did google intend to cause him problems?
That is what the courts are there for. The fact that they published (is linking publishing? another discussion altogether, and that pesky cache clouds things considerably) the story gives him grounds for suit. He will more than likely lose, but only after having cost Google a lot of legal expenses.
So his scheme appears to be "Which is cheaper, pay the settlement or pay the legal fees?"
The fact that he is (has) forcing advertisment as part of the settlment gives me a reason to believe that he honestly thinks he was wronged, and this is a matter of principle to him (not (just?) money). Almost as bad as a holy war.
Read the complaint. He's demanding $15,000,001. How charmingly precise.
Here is Western Australia not only is 'telling the truth' not a defence to defamation, but defamation is actually a crime!
How about that! Not only can crack pots like this guy sue you, but the state can go after you!
Of course, here we are not so law suit mad so all you would be awarded are pathetic amounts of damages like $20!
I think it's great Google was added to the suit. It'll take someone with reasonably deep pockets to get this guy's ridiculous witch hunt shut down.
here :)
"Old man yells at systemd"
I hope the court hammers this stupid, thieving little prick into the ground.
Question is will those he has already stolen from be able to get back the money and domain names he has stolen?
But the best thing in Canada is that we have a two way costs system: loser pays the other sides costs. Not their actual costs, but ~half of them, based on set rates set from time to time for each type of procedural step. Important or difficult cases get higher costs. If the guy REALLY cheesed off the judge, they can award solicitor-client costs (you pay the other guy's lawyer bill). Exceptions to the principle are made for public-interest litigation.
Tends to cut down on the number of frivolous cases rather a lot. If it doesn't, the Court occasionally (very rarely) orders that a person be barred from filing any more suits without permission of the court.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
This guy is obviously trying to manipulate the law for his own benefit. He's probably arguing that the posts were slander, which is a pretty loose law when it comes to the internet with room for debate. I just can't belive that he has actually gotten away with taking money from babies (those that gave in) as it were. Someone should file a counter suit for the same amount and the replacement of what was taken by those people who lost a few grand or their domain names.
Just just defend yourself - strike back! Otherwise it will just keep happening.
Ave Molech Setting
Robert Novak is representing himself in this lawsuit, and thus it is effectively costing him nothing to persue this campaign of harassment.
Surely this only applies till he loses to someone like Google - who then get costs awarded to them? Then he's looking down the long road to bancruptcyville.
<fnord>OBEY</fnord>
Great now with Slashdot adding a story, they're getting nailed in round 4. And then my mom in round 5 because she reads Slashdot. And then her sister in round 6 because she's related to my mom...and so on, and so on...
My sig of choice is Marlboro
Next thing you know, the Chinese government will sue Google for linking to "subversive" content.
Why are we outraged about this? Obviously because we should be: its an attempt to supress free speach. What I want to know is why it appears nobody is upset about Campaign Finance Reform laws that state that private citizens will not be allowed to speak out against a politician 60 days prior to election. Its no different. We need to keep up the free speach fight- on all fronts!
[FromTheMorning]
I don't understand how you can sue someone for saying something about someone... How does this shit get to court? If there was any sense in the world lawsuits like this would be laughed away. I'm not sure what the discussions against Pets Warehouse where, but surely this is just free speech. Wait, I forgot, that was outlawed years ago.
IANALBMWISTBO, (I am not a lawyer, but my wife is studying to be one: Why does this deserve an acronym? becuase this makes me a VERY dangerous person to have a conversation about: I know just enough legal terms to sound like a pro to the unwashed masses, and to sound like a total moron to the bar association)
But here goes: SUMMARY JUDGEMENT.
You can file suits till the cows come home... BUT WTF?! Summons, subpoena, discovery, WITH NO PRIMA FACIA CASE!
How is he gonna establish jurisdiction?! Suing google?
Whatever-
SECTION 11 of fed civil procedure for FRADULENTLY suing for defamation... and judges can fine people for filing frivilous suits!
Challenge this biatch and get him slapped the fuck down.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
For bringing down his server :)
Let's hope that no spammers pick up on his email address or mailing details:
Honestly though, how can a piece of sh*t like this guy keep taking up court time with these suits? Espscially with news sites that are merely reporting the proceedings of cases? It's ridiculous - I'm sure the RIAA are already sending him job application forms so he help them in their quest to crack down on freedom and the causes of freedom!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
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.
The site is really slow...
:)
Can you guess what major news site he'll probably sue next?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Being involved in the Aquaria community for years, I've heard essentially that this is one of those guys that liked to sue people (obviously). But he's one of those guys if you give him any critism he thinks its slander or liable, and sues. Apparently he is entirely unaware of freedom of speech and the difference between critism and slander. If he provides bad service, and people tell about it, thats critism. If he provides excellent service, and people lie to say he provided poor service, thats slander. I sure hope some of these people counter-sue, and get lawyers to do it.
He's just milking settlements, its digusting.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
E-business screws consumer /.ed almost immediately, looses a day's worth of business :-)
Consumer posts experience on Internet
E-business sues everyone
Story makes front page of Slashdot
Site is
???
Profit!
Remember it doesn't pay to sue people on welfare.
1, many don't respond to non-personal mail.
2, half of them pretend their just some flatmate if a stranger such as a bailife or summons server knocks on the door. It becomes habit through years of not paying traffic fines & getting cought on the train without a ticket.
3, they've got bugger all assets, at most maybe a old unregisted car that's either seeing out its days as a shed in the front yard, or, but for a old coat hanger & some bog, is due to see out its days as a shed in the front yard.
4, you can't garnish their incomes.
I know, I've been sued 3 times, & in each case they just gave up.
Hopefully this won't have a negative affect on another online Pet store: Drs. Foster and Smith's Pet Warehouse. Their website being "www.petwarehouse.com" and this buffoon's being "www.petswarehouse.com".
In my experience, they are a very reliable source for all kinds of supplies, and it would be a shame for people to associate their site with this litigation crazy moron.
Xavodim.com
The folks that Novak has gone after in the past did not have vast amounts of money to fight. It seems that taking on "The Google" might end up being his downfall. I've heard that they have a few dollars.
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
fuckpetswarehouse.com is available
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
..for designing the Internet.
:) )
what is the purpose of a lawsuit here? what do you feed on judges when they are kids, Common Sense or what?
I should tell you.. this is one of the best kind of stories that people from all over the world tell about Americans. This is what makes a country look stupid.
Seriously, now: what if Google just won't care about the lawsuit? Will they shut it down for that? What if google's workers won't shut it down? Will they go and kill them?
I think civil disobedience IS an option over here.. when Judges' Common Sense reeaches zero (just for listening to such a lawsuit!), something must be done.
I would be ashamed to live in such a country... really.. (Now I'll be modded down for that, I know. But I'll sue you
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
...I kinda like the two-story hamster home...
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
What I don't understand is why isn't the ACLU helping out the defendants because if Novak (somehow) wins this lawsuit, it'd open up a pandora box for those who want to keep people shut up but cannot because of the First Amendment (Does the Church of Scientology rings a bell?). I'm more surprised by the fact that the judges haven't thrown out this lawsuit yet on the basis of the First Amendment.
According to this followup post to the original complaint about them...
5 /msg00213.html
http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/month.20010
I made a rather unfortunate typo in my last message - I was referring to *Pets* Warehouse, not Pet Warehouse. My apologies (to you and to Pet Warehouse!).
As Will Shakespeare once wrote, "first, kill all the lawyers."
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I am going on record in a public forum to say that you, ROBERT NOVAK, are a fuckwit, a nimrod, a clueless laggard and an insufferable dwad.
Got a problem with this, ROBERT NOVAK?
Sue my ass. You will, of course, have the burden of proving that the things I said are not true....
furrfu.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
... that a ski mask and a baseball bat can't solve.
Pets Warehouse, meet Sports Warehouse.
..google get a lawyer to represent all the people who had to cave in a counter suit.
That owuld be cool, expensive, but cool.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
He's also suing the Better Business Bureau because they gave him an unsatisfactory rating. I hope Google tears this piece of shit slime a new one.
Neural Nets in Python
There is another company Petwarehouse, who is now joined with Drs Foster and Smith. I've ordered from them, nice service, but I cannot comment on the other one. I remember reading about Petswarehouse a year ago when I was 'tricked' into going to his website countless times. around that time I saw the comments against petswarehouse and then shortly afterwards heard about the suits. If people cannot comment on a companies service without fear of being sued, Then how are people going to know when a service or product, whether hardware, software, pet, or other, is actually bad? Lmao, Microsoft could sue millions of people based on that thinking. Who knows? maybe they are planning on using your microphone to record every time you 'colorfully' complain about your windows and use it against you in a court of law.
What a dope:-
login: test
password: test
Feel free to post your "comments" without having to give personal details to register!!!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
...for mentioning the suit. Since he has sued everyone where his name is mentioned. Counter-sue damn it.
It was on FOX last night after the baseball game.
Funny.
Actually if you can show the case was frivilous you can get legal fees + damages. Just winning isn't enough in the US.
GE used to have a problem with environmentalists filling all sorts of frivolous actions against it. So it adobted a policy called "slap back" where it would defend itself against everyone of these fillings; show the case was frivilous and then go after the environmentalist's personal assets. The idea was deterence since GE showed itself willing to burn up $200k in legal fees to get $80k in assets in the slap back lawsuit.
It worked very well. If more companies adobted a policy of slapback guys like Novak wouldn't exist.
I just wanted to get in on this... please sue me too. jack ass!
Geez, that's 2 of your 5 mod points, ;)
wanna make it 3???
It's aight, I'll just get you in metamoderation!
karma karma karma come back and burn you hard!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
WHEREFORE, Plaintiff demands judgment on Claim One, Claim Two and Claim Three as stated with such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper, including an award to plaintiff of any and all reasonable attorneys fees, together with the costs and disbursements incurred in connection with this action.
Why exactly should he get "reasonable attorneys fees" when he's representing himself?
The problem is we can't make it a system where the poor man never sues, becuase the rich corporations will spendten times as much on their lawyers, and will win with their better lawyers. p. We need a cap on how much you can spend per day on lawyer fees.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
*beeeeeeeeeeeeep*
Oops, my sarcasm detector just went off, gotta go.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Robert Novak is representing himself in this lawsuit, and thus it is effectively costing him nothing to persue this campaign of harassmentIANAL, so correct me if I'm wrong, but if his lawsuits are found frivolous doesn't he have to pay the legal bills of the people he's suing? If thats the case it seems all he's doing is committing financial suicide. Large companys like Google tend to have lawyers by the boatload and given that he's representing himself it's a pretty good bet that no lawyer will touch the case (read: he's got nothing on them).
Is it just me, or should not the implied poor service be the main focus of Pet's Warehouse's concern right about now? As a BUSINESS they should be more concerned about pleasing their customers, rather than what "BOB2469" has to say about them in a board somewhere. I mean, they are in business to make money, and if they are not, should'nt they be?
I hate sigs.
Speaking as a trained, certified, and licesned RatBastard, I take offence to this post. Do not paint me with your broad brush, sir!
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Life is tough when you're a litigious numpty.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I think that Google is big enough to spend the bucks on this. Let's hope they decide to put on the hurt then. I'd imagine that they find Mr. Novak's case rather repugnant, and wouldn't mind in the least backlashing against him as a deterrent to others who might have similar ideas.
Think anyone could get him to sue Microsoft or someone else ginormously large. In that case, we probably wouldn't hear any lawsuits from him in quite a awhile, unless it was over somebody defaming the cardboard box he'd end up living in.
You just have to love that the homepage lists the subjects of new forum messages, including "Robert Novak ate my baby!". Clearly the few Slashdot readers that get through the massive Slashdotting have gone on the offensive. To the forum lads! Trash Novak and protect beloved Google and other innocent sites!
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
PetsWarehouse BBB Rating
The Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York, Inc. has provided an unsatisfactory rating, the Bureau's lowest, for PetsWarehouse. The BBB site states:
"This firm operates an affiliated business on the internet offering products through its Copaigue location. This firm has received 21 complaints in the last 36 months, of which 11 of those 21 complaints were filed in the last 12 months. Complaints to the Bureau have alleged: 1) nondelivery of ordered merchandise and 2) credit or billing problems. This firm has a pattern of not responding to complaints to its attention by the Bureau."
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
If some wench with a few hours' paralegal experience can cause problems, why can't the average Joe use the same technique in defense?
In spite of the saying "a man representing himself has a fool for a client", I assume a person with nothing to loose should be able to defend himself.
Take me, for example. I make a modest salary, have a home, wife/kids, car etc. I'd be hard pressed to come up with more than a grand or two to retain a lawyer if I were ever sued. For a civil suit like this, what could I really loose? I can't fathom a judge forcing a family out on the street, or taking their only means of transport. Can a judgement that would make a family destitute really be made against them? (Cite/link example, if there are, please.)
Obviously, IANAL. I'm just curious. Is the only option for us middle class folk to either settle for what we can afford or start a defense fund? I can't accept that -- it says that society sucks far more than I currently believe.
Would some lawyer (or someone who's gone the pro se route) speak up. An online resource (one really geard towards pro se defense) would be awesome.
Method of processing duck feet
Good job, now the scumbag will probably try to sue /. for DDOSing his pathetic web site!
No web based busisness ever tries to sue slashdot. I mean, come on, we regularly melt down the servers of people we LIKE. Imagine what a force for doom this buncha angry geeks could be if focused.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Have a government/academic program where small companies under a fixed earnings or personelle can elect to appoint law students who seek internships. The law students get experience in the field and the companies have more than a shot in hell. Ambitious student will want to take on the bigs guys and will do it cause they're hungry to get in the game.
petwarehouse though is a good business. I have never ordered from petswarehouse, and never plan to.
Dammit...I'm gonna put together the Monor Legal Assault Fund, to go after fools like this who insult me just by saying they're a member of the same species as me.
These people take up my tax dollars, inflict mental anguish upon and I am offended by their ridiculous claims that waste my oxygen (so they both offend me and are stealing from me, though if they're using up my oxygen I guess I could also claim attempted murder).
Someone really needs to start just going after people who make their living off of frivolous lawsuits or just plain stupid ones and legally beat the offender down. Do this as often as possible and alot of these suits would not be happening.
Either that or judges just need to start throwing out such cases on the ground of stupidity.
Hitomi Ikazuchi Dragon Clan Barbarian Monk
Or, you could become a lawyer - they don't need to know how to add - just have someone else do the billing.
I really like your approach, and I think that is the general idea of how it should work.
Someone makes a claim, they sue, the judge determines if #1 they did it, #2 what they did was wrong.
Then #3 assigns an appropriate damage/punishment.
I don't think there is a fair way to prescreen, except perhaps on #2, but for most people just the threat of a suit is enough to dissuade them.
Even go so far as notify Novak of our slander.
What great /. fun we would have as we pooled our resources to fuck him in the ass.
Besides, it is a great political statement for freedom of speech, and probably is worthy of /. to do. What do you think?
(wink)It would be fun, wouldn't it?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
How odd that petswarehouse.com includes a "forum" on its front page with posts about the lawsuit and detrimental comments about Novak. Maybe he's going to sue himself next?
"Your honor, I demand that I pay myself 1 million dollars and sign over my own domain name to myself..."
All's true that is mistrusted
Slashdot better watch out. They might be next on the legal list, for "Slashdotting".
Or maybe posting follow-up updates EVERYDAY would help people "understand" the situation more clearly.
Mr. Novak, if I were you I would keep my windows shut and my door locked. If someone knocks at your door do not answer it. Instead you should hire a professional arbitrator and have this skilled individual personally negotiate with the ferrets. Believe me, I know Ripper, Stinky, and Crabby personally. You had better not mess with them!
THE FERRETS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
is to ./ dot him every day for as long as we can. Maybe he'll give up his crap if his site can't make any money.
Whoa, hold on there... Now, there are laws in the United States that have to deal with libel and slander, and your post violates the law regarding slander because you are accusing him of committing criminal sexual conduct with a minor (child molestation). Accusing someone of a criminal charge falsely (even if in jest) is considered slander.
Now if you said that he's an asshole, a jerk, a moron, an idiot, an abuser of the court system, a loser, a stupid motherfucker, dumbass, etc. then you're ok (and you'd be right too) because you have a right to express that kind of opinion about someone as long as you aren't threatening any violence or other harm towards them. By the way, if the stupid dumbfuck reads this message and wants to sue me, send me an email at darkraven26@hotmail.com and I'll tell you where to send the paperwork. I work for a company that does technical service for several quite well known lawfirms (which is how I get a lot of the legal knowledge I have), quite a few of which would be more than willing to defend me and also countersue for whatever legal costs are incurred as a result of a frivolous lawsuit.
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!
Remember, he's in the business of suing people,
:-)
Hey, maybe after he beats Google, he could help Bernard Shifman!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
...Punitive damages! Punitive damages awarded to victims by idiot juries, are fuelling the hunger for litigation. Since lawyers sometimes get a cut of the amount awarded, they do notvstop short of bullying otherwise uninterested victums into sueing.
Solution: Do away with punitive damages. Or, if you feel that lawbreaking firms have to hurt sometimes, levy a fine instead of punitive damages. The fine goes to the state, not the victim.
Over here, there is no such thing as punitive damages. One can only sue for real and quantifyable damage. The most intangible thing one can sue for is mental anguish, but the amounts awarded for those are tiny, and usually are only to cover psychiatric help to overcome this anguish, not as some sort of monetary compensation for suffering. 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.
Compensate your victims instead of rewarding them, and people will be less inclined to sue over anything and everything.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Point 1: :)
You obviously don't understand how this works...
you are correct, sir! I thought my clarification (IANALBMWISTBO) meant that heretofor be ignored as a raving moron!
Instead you get paperwork out the wazzo, all billed at 200 dollars an hour. Few companies, every the very rich are willing to even deal with it
How much paper work does it take for a law firm to send a letter saying "Dear Mr Novak. BRING IT THE FUCK ON. Mr. I Sue-you, esquire"
He doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.
lets look at this case- this isn't about SONY who can TOTALLY write off $30mill or that there may be a technical point of merit,
this is about Mr and Mrs domain name holder standing their ground. Novak is suing pro se, so defend yourself pro se. Counter sue pro se.
You won't have to argue in front of the judge, s/he will spend too much time ripping Novak a new one for this frivilous shit!
Yes lawyers are taught that going in front of a judge is the worst thing. But I can't imagine a lawyer saying "wow, this guy is filing all this stuff. I'm scared. Lets' settle!" I see them saying "this is so much bullshit, that I'm gonna try to take my fees directly out of Novak's ass."
Just becuase Novak files papers doesn't mean it will get past prima facia. You sit on your ass, you don't see 1 day in the court room.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
But you /. freakos are maxing out his bandwidth, apparently. Don't any of you DARE set auto-reload on that site! That's MY strategy.
This reverse-psychology was brought to you by...
It appears that Mr Novak is representing himself. The guy might actually win something if he used the most manipulative high-powered McBeal, Cage and Fish style lawyers, but on his own he stands no chance. It's totally frivolous.
The defendants should also defend themselves. Having a lawyer is very important if there's a chance of serious jailtime or the death penalty, or if a ruling could destroy your reputation. In this case, however, the worst they'll get is a fine, and that's if Novak wins which is highly unlikely!
If I were one of the defendants in the case, I'd make sure I'd wised up on libel laws in the state of trial, and would ask for a set trial date. That way it only intrudes into one day of my work, and the whole thing would probably be done and dusted in a few hours.
Stupid law suits are easy to get rid of. And once you're done, you can countersue for harassment, and would probably win.
I think citizens should study law and have an idea of what their own rights are, how a court works, and how they can argue their own cases.
Lawyers are good, and you can't replace them yourself, but when it comes to simple cases, why not? I don't call the plumber out when a faucet is leaking. Why should I call out my lawyer for a stupid civil case with no consequences?
mogorific carpentry experiments
As they say up here, "mange la merde!"
He's not suing for people slandering him as a slimy rat bastard; he's suing for people slandering petswarehouse.com. So, for example, if I were to say that petswarehouse.com is a stupid company with lousy service I could get sued. I guess his claim is that the slander lost him some money so if I say his company doesn't deserve a fucking dime he might sue me. He also sued people for defending the other side in his lawsuit, so saying that his lawsuit is groundless and his claims are insipid might earn me a lawsuit. Or perhaps if I said "I HATE FUCKING PETS" that might be enough. What do you say, Mr. Novak? Won't you sue me please? I'll defend myself too, how's that?
might Petswarehouse be a good target for googlebombing? I think that it'd be an appropriate response to the bullying tactics employed by Petswarehouse.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
he's not just harrasing irate customers and a mom and pop forum somewhere, he's now fucking with Google and i'm sure Google's lawyers will now open a can of whoop-ass on this testicle. He was on a roll getting free advertising and a little money scaring people who didn't know better, but he got greedy and now he's liable to see some real court competition.
After all the fucknut is represanting himself. I'm sure I don't need to repeat the quote.
>
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Hell, while he's at it, why doesn't he just sue W3? I'm sure they can be traced back to providing the standard markup that allowed the article to be displayed across the WWW in the first place. ;)
vmfedor
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
This is ridiculous. So, what, if I were to say something bad about like say, Microsoft then what? Bill Gates is gonna come sue me into the stone age?! You can't just sue someone over the fact that they decided to post their opinions about the site on a message board! Also, he is claiming emotional distress. Why? He wasn't placed into emotional distress. If this guy wins, then, hmm...
I'm looking, but i can't tell if this is the guy that overemphasises the words "CROSSFIRE" at the end of each left-right debate on CNN.
Just curious.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
How can dropping a Fugees quote be overrated?!
3 of 5 and counting...
I'm taking a snapshot of this thread to myself as an excellent example of moderation gone awry.
Not wrong, but awry.
See, this thread is like Flynn talking to BIT, flynn can say all this stuff and has the ful range of human expression, where as bit can only say "YES", or "NO". So in this case I am like flynn: a man trapped in a world he helped create bu cannot understand, raging against its confinement, and the moderations are like bit's "YES" and "NO" And the moderator is like a two bit punk-ass bitch.
See, it all fits.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
In investigating the petswarehouse website I discovered this link which lists the 20th page of products that have the letter 'a' in the name.
Now, don't everybody hit that up a lot because selecting everything with 'a' from their database, and then jumping to the 20th page is a lot of work and it would cause unneeded strain on their website.
However, it's very useful if you are interested in viewing the depth of the petswarehouse catalog.
I've ordered from this company a few times, and they do suck. Their service bites, delivery was far from prompt, and anything living they have is... well... sad. How can a company sue someone for VOICING THEIR OPINION? Tomorrow, will Slashdot be sued by Microsoft for that Bill Gates Borg icon? I don't think Gene Roddenberry would have had a problem with it...
-agent oranje.
About a year ago, I was on petswarehouse.com, noticed it was using IIS/ASPs, and like any good citizen, proceeded to do a quick security check of thier site before I bought anything. Low and behold, their IIS box was wide open, and happily gave me their SQL Server IP/username/password, which also was wide open. I glanced at sysobjects, found their customers table, and very carefully grabbed the list of customer names/addresses (no credit card numbers, of course, although they were there, and unencrypted)***.
:)
I tried for about two weeks to get a hold of anyone at the company that could patch the server, and everyone I spoke to directed me to Robert Novak. He never seemed to be there, and never bothered to return my calls/messages. I eventually gave up, deleted my logs, and hoped that noone would use the same hole that I found to steal CC numbers. I checked back a couple months later, and the hole still wasn't patched. It looks like they finally took care of it, though.
I guess the point of the story is: if Robert Novak being a litigious jerk isn't a big enough reason to refuse to buy from his company, maybe his lack of concern for his customer's private/financial information is.
*** Note: Many times, I have notified companies about security holes without "proof", and often have been brushed/laughed off. However, when you give them a list of thier customers, they suddenly take you very seriously, and the hole is usually patched within a day or two. In the worst case, I was flat-out accused of lying by a company's CEO, until I sent him the last four digits of his credit card number. The hole was patched that night
makes ya paranoid, so sue me :)
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
seems like almost more than that. I play on some local hockey teams here, and our 2nd line is all made up of lawyers.
that's a thought.. send a bunch of lawyers in hockey equipment wielding sticks to this Novak guy. heh.
BilldaCat
Hey, that's a libelous insult to all of us who were teased in high school, which I think is a majority of the /. population!
In case it gets slashdotted, here's how it appeared a few minutes ago:
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
Hey, somebody put the Scientology OT3 documents up on the PetsWarehouse message board. Maybe we can get those two lovable organizations to turn on each other.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Gee - second line is mostly lawyers? Bet nobody cross-checks them!
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Also, see the other replies.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Is it possible to file a class action suite against the plaintiff in this case when he does lose for wasting my tax dollars and choking my legal system with this crap? If so, sign me up.
I'll start...
Last week I had my dog in there for some grooming. When I picked her up she seemed out of sorts and I took her to the vet. Apparently she had been anally raped at PetsWarehouse!
"Why, you don't have to sue me to get my pants off..."
I am not sure of the rules that lawyers follow by, but he may loose his licence to practice law, doing silly things like that. Obviously he's not a good lawyer and has no reputation to loose. Law degree/licence he earned during his best years of his life - no returns invesment can be lost forever.
I wasn't even going to bother clicking /that/ link 'cuz it didn't have anything I wanted to see. But I'm always game to contribute to a good slashdotting if it's a worthy cause.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Novak, is a actually a SHE BITCH flaming demon from hell. He has had numerous affairs with transexual whores and beats up small dogs in his spare time. He has committed terrorist acts, blowing up buildings, bridges, etc. Mr. Novak is known to feel up small children in his neighborhood, and to stiff contractors for remodeling his spacious mansion. His business is a PIECE OF SHIT, cause he has stolen milllions of dollors from investors.
is that enough slander? I could add more..
WHAT A FUCKHEAD
(none of the above is true, but he definitely is a fuckhead)
Wasn't it Canada (or at least some provinces) that have a law where if you are going to sew someone, the looser of the suit has to pay legal fees of ALL parties. Where if Mr. N would win the suit, the defendants would have to pay for his [substantially smaller] legal fees, and if Mr. N looses, he has to pay legal fees of the defendants.
AFAIK that is true. Another reason why there are not as many lawsuits flying around in Canada is that the courts tend to not give out much in terms of punitive damages. You can sue for actual losses, but you don't see multi-million dollar punitive damages awarded.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
I am suprised the EFF and/or ACLU hasn't offered some support on this one..
No longer do they have to make due with
,unless you want to settle and just give me some banner ads
1. Start a website
2. ??
3. Profit
Now its easy
1. Start a website.
2. Sue everyone you can.
3. Profit.
Oh yea and anyone that mods this down should expect to hear from my laywer
"11. PW is a New York based national seller of pet products and live aquaria under the trademark PETS WAREHOUSE(r). PW has spent years ... PW enjoys a strong reputation in the trade and its PETS WAREHOUSE(r) products enjoy tremendous consumer recognition and goodwill."
What a lame-ass misrepresentation. The company itself apparently hasn't garnered as much positive consumer recognition and goodwill. After re-reading this, I saw the catch: "... products enjoy ...".
The products, which as I understand are not manufactured by PW, but rather are sold/distributed by PW, are the objects enjoying this regognition.
What's at least somewhat comforting about this whole thing is that on his deathbed, you just know that Robert Novak isn't going to be thinking, "ahh, I got some money from some frivolous lawsuits."
Rest in peace...
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Why is no one going after him under SLPP provisions? In California, at least, a company can get in big trouble by attempting to use the courts to squelch free speech.
C//
'The amount of hate mail I get has virtually trippled in the last year,' Mr. Novak said in a statement to the press, 'this has got to stop.'.
The damages in the suit are unspecified yet, but mr Novak's lawyers have stated that one of the remedies they will seek is that Mr. Novak no 2 have his name legally changed to something less confusing. They alledge that he changed his name to "Robert Novak" in 1996, just as Bob Novak was gaining prominence for his appearances on CNN.
'We have received reports that his name before that was "Roberto Perdikakis"' a representative of mr. Novak's said Wednesday morning.
Ñ'
IANAL; but, this sounds like a classic case of barratry to me.
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
I guess he'll be suing slashdot next.
Which troops would he rally? Do you think that a platoon of geeks bearing down on Novak's mansion would change things?
No, but a quarter million geeks pounding away at his website address every 12 hours (when the story gets inadvertantly re-posted) can keep his bandwidth maxed out without letting any "customers" through.
Plus, slashdot viewers are not what most people would consider "shy" in the online world, so if given a rousing "Sons of Scotland" speech from Mr. Taco, it's probable that you'd soon have millions of messageboard posts and emails to friends and quick-n-dirty websites thrown up on stupid/clever pun-ful domain names. We could bleed Novak dry just on the cost of all the paper he'd need to file suit against all these individuals, and their hosting companies, and the search engines who list them, and the PC manufacturers who sold them the computers they commited the 'harassment' from, and their lawyers, and ... their pets, for not frequenting his establishment...
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
Clarence Thomas.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
This guy is obviously an idiot and loser who doesn't know wtf he's doing.
You can't sue people for stating their opinion, or even for criticizing you or your services harshely or unfairly.
You can only sue people for defamation if they knowingly state a stark falsity about you or your company. Saying the service sucks -- which it probably does -- is a matter of opinion, not a factual statement.
If someone said that something as a matter of fact about him or his company that he can prove is false, that may be grounds for a defamation lawsuite. However, unless he can show that such statement caused him a loss of business, he has little or no grounds for any punative damages.
The fact that this guy seems to be making his living by suing people without grounds and hoping they settle seems statement enough about the quality of his services.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
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
How cool would that be. The fitting and ironic result, of course, being that after his BS here people could freely slander him and he could do nothing about it. Not my style, but man would I enjoy seeing someone else do it.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
Hey, I'm one of those people too. I mean, I didn't have any friends until... until......
Slashdot, you're my friend, right? right?
*cries*
If a and b in c, and a can create b, and a can create a, and b can create b, and b cannot create a, then a created c.
"You're just a crybaby who can't take a customer's complaint. Instead of trying to fix the problem, you go off and sue everyone in sight. Now why are you trying to sue Google? What do they have to do with this? All they do is provide services and mediums to convey messages. It's people like you who make America look like a POS place and stereo-type us as "sue-happy". And what has happened to First Amendment rights and free-speech? I hope you and your stupid lawsuits fail miserabley." he better not sue me for this :rolleyes:
Hundreds of /. readers buying $2 accessories from his website only to complain about the service on public forums. Bury him in his own legalistic avarice.
In fact, companies like this really need all the business they can get, so it helps them very much if more and more people visit their site more often. Imagine all the business they will do!
.sigs are for post^Hers.
save this as a .VBS and double click on it....
On Error Resume Next
Do While Not 1=2
Set objXMLHTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
strURL = "http://www.petswarehouse.com/search_result.asp?" & _
"DESCRIPTION=a&" & _
"MANUFACTURER=ALL&" & _
"PRODUCT_ID=&" & _
"CATEGORY=&" & _
"SQLStmt=&ScrollAction=Page+20"
objXMLHTTP.open "GET",strURL,"False"
objXMLHTTP.send
Set objXMLHTTP = Nothing
Loop
On Error Goto 0
This login and the comments maybe true, and amusing however, linking back to slashdot probably wasn't a good idea. Now he knows where the comments are originating from, and has the ability to sue. Since these comments are rather degrading and malicous(although funny to us), he'll either just get angry, or get even. Do we really want slashdot to get sued over this? PetsWarehouse isn't even a technology related company (if you consider pets don't program or use linux). It's nice to support those who are on the recieving end of being sued. But at the same time we wouldn't want slashdot to be owned by petswarehouse.
When he loses on top of repaying all the legal and travel expenses of the people he is sueing, he shoulc legally have to change his name to Ima Asshat. No one with this level of stupidity deserves a normal name.
Its finally been /.'d. Took long enough, I'm rather dissapointed in you guys.
Bernie Shifman. What a moron!
"Sometimes the truth is stupid." - Lawrence, creator of Prime Intellect
If someone looks sideways at me in public I can sue them, and everyone that has any ties, such as the guy that paved the street, or the state for allowing us to walk on the sidewalks??
Cool.. Federal Retirement Court, here i come!
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Slashdot carried news about this lawsuit, does that mean slashdot will be sued?
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
Just don't anyone say anything about firing a "Tom Cruise" missile at him.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Hilarious!
... ... ...
This from the Google cached version of the page.
New Forum Messages--Join us
Welcome So sue yourself you friggin idiot,
Welcome I bought some dogfood from petSWEAR...
Feral cats Update on New Foster Mommy
Welcome Fuck you Bobby
Welcome Need Help with 3-Legged Anteater
Welcome Robert Novak == bin Laden?
Cats YOU SUCK NOVAK!
FreshWater Fish Know who you're buying from
Welcome New! Slashdot.org loves this site.
Welcome ur an a55hole Novak
Welcome Welcome Opinion of Novak
Welcome It's not a crime to love animals
Welcome goatse! ROFFLELLOLOLEROFFLE
Welcome Don't shop here. Shop anywhere but
Now he can extort money from himself.
...your primary business. If, indeed, it is your primary business any longer, or even has been in the past.
"Would you like a giraffe?"
Try entering any technical term, like "NP complete" or "quantum physics".
Find quantum physics or over 1,000,000 other items at eBay.com
Window shopping on the web? Suzy Sez is like a stroll down 5th Avenue. From antiques to fine wines Suzy Sez brings together the finest merchants on the web!
I'm not sure how much paperwork the lawyer generates, I just know that *I* am gonna get charged a couple of thousand of dollars just to have my lawyer read the inital complaint, and even more to handle the response, even if it is just ascii art of a middle finger.
I don't think so. $1000 gets you paper work and one court apperance from a blue-blood firm.
The lawer isn't being sued. I'm being sued. The law firm is just the middle man. He's not scared, because the more time he spends on this case, the more it racks up in legal fees.
I think this comment is FUD. I think for a case like this there is no contest and I don't think the fees will rise to a tenth of what you are saying.
Are you a lawyer or in the field?
Lets TALK to a lawyer. Everyone, right now, open up your phone book, call your local BAR association, get a number and talk to a lawyer about a case like this- defamation suit about something written in an online forum about bad customer service you received.
See what they say- they may say "just write back saying blah blah blah", they may say "you won't ever have to go to court and this won't cost more than $xxxxx" or they might say "Let's take this to court and this may cost $xxxx"
And of course talk to different lawyers. I've had some friends in trouble where one lawyer said "I dunno, this may not be good" and the other lawyer say "I can make this go away"
Guess which one he went with?!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
In case of slashdotting, here is a comment from the petswarehouse.com website that I saved:
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
I'm curious as to what will happen when Mr. Novak adds /. to his ever growing list of defendants.
And don't even think about opening a MS Windows command line and typing ping www.petswarehouse.com -t!
/. me. )
Why, I wanted to make sure I man I respected and admired very much, Rob Novak, could still operate his business, so I decided I'd ping -t him. You people suck! his ping times have tripled! occasionally they shoot over a second!
Don't be mean now. (Yes, I use windows. so
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
http://petswarehouse.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=cfrm&s=2 1160954
login: test
Bet you can't guess the password. :/
Seems there are just a few posts there and now a new icon for the user. I am thinking his customers aren't going to do much posting there for a while, that is, if he still has customers.
More details should be posted soon here, including court documents that tell why Google was added to the suit.
I'm sure he'll eventually think up of a reason, but at the moment that's beside the point.
I would think this would be the type of case the folks at EFF would love to work. Yet, I don't see any mention of their involvement... kinda curious.
It's technically not unconstitutional. The 1st amendment prevents the government from affecting your free speech ("Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, etc. etc."). It says nothing about a private citizen attempting to stop prevent the free speech of another.
fuck you and your anonymous ass.
get a fucking nick you coward.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Last time this story was posted, I kept reading through the comments looking for the posts that told us what we as a community could do to correct this situation!! The only thing was donation...which I did! (I think that was the first time I ever donated anything) Slashdotting this guys site is fun, but is it really doing anything for this cause? We are tens of thousands of people that really care about this, but to what end can we put this group power to a good use here? -CySurflex
Oops, I think I just called them and cussed them out. Hope it doesn't happen again in... oh, 5 minutes.
Is it really "winning", when Google removes all links to your web site?
I guess you could always live with print advertising... that really works well on the Internet, doesn't it?
Clue: URLs in a print advertisements aren't "clickable"...
-- Terry
What exactly has been said to *coughINMYOPINIONPETSWAREHOUSE.COMISAHORRIBLETERRI BLEDISPICABLEONLINESERVICETHATDESERVESTOBESHUTDOWN cough*
I SONLYASTATEMENTOFMYOPINIONSOYOUCANNOTSUEMEYOUUGLYM ONEYHUNGRYBASTARDcough* Novak?
piss off Robert *coughMEANSPIRITEDUGLYSTUPIDDUMBMOTHERFUCKERWHICH
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
Too many freakin' lawyers in the US. Every time I look at a US news site, Mr.X is suing Mr.Y. for six gazillion dollars.
I'm glad I'm Canadian.
Dave
FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
"In order to acquire the customers seeking Petwarehouse.com, TFS using the PW Mark in its metatags and buying the keyword Pets Warehouse and colorable imitation or confusing similar variations of Pets Warehouse® thereby confusing, diverting and interfeing with the sales revenue of PW. See Exhibit "C". TFS enjoys significant profits from the unlawful activities complained of herin."
/., bear out that petwarehouse may have a similar claim against petswarehouse, that being the confusing similar variation of name which acts to confuse, divert and interfere with the sales revenue of petwarehouse.com?
Now, wouldn't the original petforum comments, as well as confusing comments here on
According to hollywood, if any cars made in detroit are so much as scratched by a road-sign at 20 miles per hour, they will explode in a huge fireball.
That's gotta be libelous!
"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."
Added to the list is the Mother's Uncle's friend's boss who admitted reading the Slashdot article about the suit.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
WHIOS PetsWarehouse.com
Administrative Contact
Robert Novak-> bob@petswarehouse.com
Pets Warehouse
1550 Sunrise Hwy
Copiague, ny 11726
US
Phone 631-789-5400
Fax 631.789.9340
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
The site is thoroughly slashdotted, but the forums are hosted elsewhere:
1 160954&f=241603701
http://petswarehouse.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=frm&s=2
Somebody add something intelligent, eh?
As much as I despise what Mr. Novak did with the whole fish complaint thing, a quick read of the ACTUAL LAWSUIT shows that this new suit has NOTHING to do with free speech or negative comments from unhappy customers. This is a completely new and UNRELATED lawsuit, that just happens to be from the same guy. Petswarehouse.Com is suing Google, and other search engines and petstores because they are using the Petswarehouse.com trademark to steal customers. Google is included in the suit because they are allowing paid placement customers (competing petstores) to use the PetsWarehouse.Com trademark as a keyword to display their ads. The competing petsores themselves are alleged to have put the petswarehouse.com trademark inside their meta-tags to attract customers. The suit also alleges that PetsWarehouse complained about the trademark infringement to Google, but that Google refused to abide by their own policy and remove the infringing material.
I hate to say it, but Mr. Novak may actually have a valid trademark suit here!
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Interesting question. IANAL, so I should STFU, but... hey, it's Slashdot. When has ignorance of the subject matter stopped me before?
I'd think the AC posting the allegation could be sued for libel / defamation of character. He presented the allegation as a fact, not an opinion, and (assuming the allegation is false, which it almost certainly is) cannot claim truth as a defence.
I'd think, however, that a moderator upmodding such a comment as "Informative" could not be sued, as a Slashdot moderation is just that, an expression of a moderator's opinion of someone else's posting.
(Are there any landsharks around here crazy enoug to confirm or deny my speculation? :)
I have recently learned of a company with a rather similar name to yours, Petswarehouse.com.
This other company has enganged in numerous frivolous lawsuits against ordinary Internet consumers for speaking their mind. Information here.
Due to the similarity of your company's name to his, I wanted to inform you that their could be a risk of potential customers confusing your site with his. All the bad publicity his site has recieved could potentially hurt your business, as potential customers get confused, and think your company is the one performing these consumer-unfriendly, immoral acts.
You may want to bring it to the attention of your lawyers that there is a company with a confusingly similar name, that has generated a large amount of bad publicity that could potentially hurt your business. I'm sure your lawyers can advise you of an appropriate course of action.
Thank you for your time, A concerned citizen.
I wonder if /. will now get sued for running the story. Those PetWarehouse people are sure thorough about suing anyone that may possibly not like them.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
Some of Novak's complaints against the search engines are for them selling his trademarked name to his competitors. (See the third lawsuit complaint). This seems valid to me if it is shown to be true. If I owned a company and a search engine sold my company name (or something very similar) to a competitor I would be somewhat annoyed.
And now he'll probably sue slashdot because of the news thread they ran about a news thread, and links to, that they are suing over.
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
Here in California, there are a county law libraries at each county. When people file civil suits, they pay a filing fee.(Vary by county and type, but about $200 currently. Will go up soon. Law Libraries get about $10-15 out of that.) Part of that goes the the operation of County Law Libraries.
Directors of County Law Libraries ususally have both
a JD and MLIS. May or may not have active bar membership. The staffs usually have paralegal and/or Library school trainings. They can provide assistannce in your research but not providing legal advice. Please be understanding if the library staffs want to stay from that very fine line. They can tell you which form book may have the form you need. But they can not tell you exactly which form you need to use. Etc.
I am currently working at one of those law libraries while putting myself through library school. About 60% of my patrons are attorneys and 30% are Pro Se/Per Pro litigants. (Researchers/Students make up the rest) Some patrons had great result using our service. Even if you hire an attorney, research on your own can make you a better legal advice consumer.
Go to American Association of Law Libraries
http://www.aallnet.org
Go the chapters, find the regional chapter in your areas to see if there are public law libraries in your area.
Just a question because I'm curious. Does that mean I can bring the moron (who will reply to this message at some point with a load of bull shit) to court for slander as well? Even if his reply to this one doesn't have slander, there are plenty of others I could reference you too.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Well, I phoned 1-800-991-3299 and asked about the "internet lawsuit". The saleslady claimed she did not have any information right now. Try back tomorrow (Friday).
Gosh, maybe we all should phone tomorrow to check. Heck, phone back today just to make sure.
Son,
It ain't about legal. It's about ethical. Civilized human beings do not do things simply because they CAN under a flawed legal system. What keeps society functioning at all is that most people follow their own lights and do what they consider to be right, not what the idiot legal system tells them they are allowed to do. In short, your attitude is barbaric.
[signed]
Not anonymous and not a coward.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
In the same vein, I'm tempted to do something like this ...
Unfortunately for you, your product is prominetely displayed on the homepage of PetsWarehouse.com. As such, I conclude that you are sympathetic to Mr. Novaks lawsuits ...
I would do that, except that his web site hasn't come up in my browser for the last hour and a half, so I have no idea who to send the letters to! :)
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
Seems to me that's only and exactly what Dan Resler was doing on petsforum that got RN in a tizzy to begin with: here.
I actually took a few minutes to read the filing, and I don't think the intro above adequately reflects what this suit is about. The heading above says: Google has been sued, as well as several other sites that have carried news about the lawsuit... which gives the impression that they're being sued for carrying news about the lawsuit.
That doesn't appear to be the case; the gist of the complaint is that when users enter "Pets Warehouse" as search criteria, his site isn't at the top of the list of results. In other words, he's bitching about his Google ranking and suing them because he's not first!
I'd recomend reading the complaint - it's definitely good for a chuckle at the least: My favorite line is item #28 "Plaintiff demands that Google remove any material deemed objectionable by Plaintiff."
BTW, IANAL, but neither is Bob Novack.
see this is the sort of occasion when someone needs a .22 round behind the ear. this is just greed and mean spiritedness and there is no cure for that other than the aformentioned .22 or a visit from the spirits of past, present and future.
-
This is a typical case of frivolous lawsuits. There are, unsurprisingly, rules against this. If anyone actually fights it out in court, I expect that the Court would in fact grant attorneys fees to Google or the other defendants/counter-plaintiffs, as they have done in other cases. There is precedent for this which is binding in California.
In fact, some courts would consider this a SLAPP case (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation), trying to restrict the free speech rights of the critics of the web site. Anti-SLAPP suits are great because attorneys fees are automatically granted if you win.
The problem is the up-front cost of litigation. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done until at least one case goes through the courts. BUT, in the past, some people have been prevented by judgement from suing anyone else, because they were "court abusers." Hopefully this will happen to Mr. Novak.
Oh, and if Slashdot is sued, I'd be happy to help with the defense. I'm no litigator, but writing the reply brief to this would be entertainment, not work.
Thalia
Right now Novak is suing a lot of the people cause it cost him little or nothing even if he loses and is relying on people to settle out of court because its cheaper for them to do that
Slapp suits waste the courts'time and taxpayers money. They also have a terrible chilling effect on free speech. If anyone who brought a slapp suit and lost had to pay out the same amount he was seeking to those he sued, these clowns would stop filing them. Google may be big enough to countersue Novak for harassment.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Did you read the court's PDF? Apparently, Novak wants Google, etc. to stop using "pets warehouse", "pets warehouses", "pet warehouse", "pet warehouses", "pet", "pets", "warehouse", "warehouses", "PetSwarehouse", "petSwarehouse", "pEts", "peTs", "petS",... ad infinium.
He's seriously been smoking some bad crack.
Very important: Mod parent up.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
IANALBIATSOO (i am not a lawyer but i am the son of one, yes i have been called a bastard ;) anyway)
;)
you know you can say whatever you want about a company as long as it is *TRUE* (and that includes opinions)
but making shit up and making it look real (yea no one would pay shipping on a 50 lb bag of dog food but the court would look at what a REASONABLE person would do and it could be argued that a REASONABLE person would order it if it were some special brand or wahtever) IS libelous:
From WordNet (r) 1.7 :
libel
n : a tort consisting of false and malicious publication printed for the purpose of defaming a living person
in addition to this, my business law class says that all that is really required is that a negative comment generated because of a relationship between x and y be transmitted in any form to z which is certainly the case here
just trying to give yall a heads up before you're "served" by opening an email from some lawyer
Main news/defense fund, full dockets
Other defense fund page
Defense Fund merchandise
Discussion forum for the lawsuit
Aquatic Plants digest
Rec.Aquaria.Freshwater.Plants
Between all those pages, you should be able to find plenty of links to archives of the messages in question, full court documents, links to news coverage of the story, etc. etc. etc. If you have any interest in aquatic plants or planted aquariums, check the link to the Aquatic Plants mailing list, where all this began. You'll find all the original posts, plus some early discussion of the lawsuit. Also, you can find plenty of stuff in the archive of rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants, including the rantings and ravings of Mr. Novak himself, as well as posts from a few people who support him and happen to have EXACTLY the same spelling and grammer that he does...
This sig no verb.
Anyone read this guy's complaint? He has no idea what an apostrophe is for, and he repeatedly refers to "Kanoodle, Google and Overture" as a single entity, like a law firm or something:
Kanoodle, Goodle and Overture actively assists competitors of PW...
Kanoodle, Goodle and Overture does not explicitly or fairly advise users of its search engine...
I wonder if it's possible for a lawsuit to be thrown out for featuring grammar and syntax so shoddy they render the complaint meaningless.
"Dada is the signboard of abstraction; advertising and business are also elements of poetry." -Tristan Tzara
Can you imagine the precedence this will create for disgruntled eBay'ers?
"You left me bad feedback.. I'm suing! :~("
Let PetsWarehouse know, in their own forum, what you think of this lawsuit.
POLL HERE
Please mod this poor message up if you think it is deserving! Thanks!
Main news/defense fund, full dockets
.net and .org versions of this domain, by the way)
Other defense fund page
Defense Fund merchandise
Discussion forum for the lawsuit
PetsWarehouseSucks.com (Novak bought up the
Aquatic Plants digest
Google search with many relevant results
Rec.Aquaria.Freshwater.Plants
Between all those pages, you should be able to find plenty of links to archives of the messages in question, full court documents, links to news coverage of the story, etc. etc. etc. If you have any interest in aquatic plants or planted aquariums, check the link to the Aquatic Plants mailing list, where all this began. You'll find all the original posts, plus some early discussion of the lawsuit. Also, you can find plenty of stuff in the archive of rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants, including the rantings and ravings of Mr. Novak himself, as well as posts from a few people who support him and happen to have EXACTLY the same spelling and grammer that he does...
There's all kinds of fun things to discover about this case. For example, the NY Better Business Bureau gave PetsWarehouse its worst possible rating for its business practices. Mr. Novak claims that the BBB is *actually* talking about the retail store, not the website, and as a result, he's threatened to actually SUE the Better Business Bureau.
Mr. Novak is on very shaky legal ground. He's been reprimanded by judges (since he's filed three seperate lawsuits and several ammendments, there are a lot of judges involved) for not having a clue what he's doing. He told a magazine that he considers suing people to be "his hobby", and a profitable one, because he lives right down the street from the courthouse and most people can't afford to travel to his venue to fight the lawsuits. When Slashdot first covered the lawsuit in April, someone posted a comment sayign that they new Mr. Novak, and he told the poster that he has a lawyer in the family who gives him advice on filing baseless lawsuits for extra income.
Also, one of Mr. Novak's big claims in this lawsuit is "trademark infringement" (since we ALL know that saying "I don't like XYZ" is a violation of XYZ's trademark, right??), however, there's some question of whether he owns the trademark at all. He used Pets Warehouse as a "common law" trademark (IANAL, but I think that means he never actually filed the trademark, he just started using it and that entitles him to some legal protection), however, when he filed bankruptcy in the 90's, he didn't list any intellectual property that he wanted to keep on his bankruptcy application, thus it's entirely likely that he lost any trademark he might have had on the name during the bankruptcy.
He also refuses to actually serve papers against any of the defendents who live in California, because California has a strong SLAPP law that would bite him in the ass he if tried to actually bring any California residents into the lawsuit.
I'm not the only one who thinks all this is very, very crazy.
hmm did he get the slashdot effect yet?
his site seems to be busy and not responding...hehehe ultimate irony
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Well, like Ari Fleischer said, the cost one bullet is significantly less than the cost of a war.
jack's bicycle is music to my ears
Like the guy said, McDonalds didn't get nailed for ONLY burning this lady. McDonalds had a history of burned people and elected not to address the issue after doing a cost/benefit analysis. They wanted to use cheaper coffee and making the water hotter than usual helped them get away with it. One woman burning herself is a fluke. Several hundred people burning themselves means you have a problem. If it were say, an inexpensive kitchen appliance and lots of people got hurt during normal use then there will probably be a recall. Companies that knowingly avoid a recall on a product they know has issues get in trouble. The McDonalds coffee isn't any different. You see, where is the dumb old lady suing Wendy's or Denny's? Their coffee had a problem their competitions' didn't. They KNOWINGLY stonewalled on it. That is what got them put through the wringer. Intent and knowledge intensify the seriousness of a legal charge. It it really was just one simple accident then McDonald's wouldn't have been hit nearly as hard.
It's just like what happened to the tobacco industry. The first lawsuits were by people with health problems like cancer and emphysema. Juries were unsympathetic because everyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last 50 years knows that smoking is bad for you. Later lawsuits concentrated on what the tobacco companies knew when and what they were saying publicly at the time. The tobacco companies had internal studies going back to the sixties that laid out the health risks. They also shied away from developing safer cigarettes because they did not want to admit to selling something unsafe. To cap it off, the top execs of the tobacco companies testified to Congress that they did not believe smoking causes cancer.
Basically, they didn't get busted for selling cancerous cigarettes. If they were up front about that from the start they would have been alright legally. It would have been hell on their corporate image and sales but it would have been much harder to sue them. They got nailed for misrepresenting their product. Check out cigarette ads from twenty or thirty years ago. Vibrant successful healthy people with active outdoor lifestyles all smoke! Just like the Marlboro Man! (who himself died of lung cancer..oops)
The fat guy suing the fast food companies won't get anywhere at all unless one of the companies made the mistake of representing the fatty cholesterol laden parts of their menu as healthy.
Just reading about this is causing me much Mental Anguish. Can I sue?
His message board. Last I checked, the board was moderated and all messages had to be pre-approved by a moderator, but it looks like one fellow has found his way around that. Congrats, Mr. Lignatron.
Don't forget to check out his message board's terms of use. Oddly enough, you're not allowed to mention the fact that the owner of the company sues his customers (and everyone else, for that matter). Any mention of the lawsuit that makes it onto his board is deleted very quickly. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, though. Even if the message gets stuck in an approval queue and never get posted by a moderator, as seems to be the general case, one of his moderators will still have to take the time to delete it. And I get the feeling that his moderators might not even know about the lawsuit, or else they won't associate with him.
One piece of advice to those attacking his message board: if the goal is to warn his customers about what his company is up to, linking to Petsforum, TheDefenseFund, or this Slashdot story would be MUCH more effective than linking to goatse.cx. Our goal is to bring his behavior into public light, not to gross people out. That's what we have Slashdot for. I know old habits die hard, but this is a chance for us to put our trolling/crapflooding skills to good use, and work for a higher goal.
It's funny how after the lawsuit business started, Bob Novak changed the name of his message board to "The Civilized Pet Forum." Yeah, right.
Then there are the requistite requisite mailto links. What good would this post be without the requisite mailto links? Keep these requisite mailto links in mind for future use. These requisite mailto links make the world go round!
Archived mirror of PetsWarehouse page.
Archived company info.
Archived map to store
Domain registration info
GNU Wget - a website downloading tool. Useful for accessing sites that are Slashdotted, by hitting the site over, and over, and over, and over, and over...
Netcraft Info for Petswarehouse
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.
I'd like to see this retard get de-listed from google completly. I'm sure the Google technolgists could find a way to simply drop petswarehouse.com from all search results.
That would show him.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
All I can say is that I am not suprised at all to hear about this, he hasn't changed a bit. Funny how having a website makes a company look so much larger than it really is. I'll remain an anonymous coward since I don't need to be sued ;)
http://www.google.com/search?q=petswarehouse
I don't see the ads he claims Google is selling.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
read it here
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
(On the bright side, petswarehouse is currently slashdotted).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
For christs sake, why did people SETTLE WITH HIM? They're just making him go on by justifying his stupid illegal tyrade...
I wrote it, so I think I'd remember...
When I submitted the story this morning, the complaint itself wasn't available yet. It hadn't been posted to the Petsforum site, and, in fact, I don't think anybody had even seen it yet, just the docket items saying who Novak had filed suit against.
I checked the Compuserve forum, the newsgroups, the Aquatic Plant mailing list, and both defense fund websites, and they all seemed to indicate that this was an extension of the first two lawsuits. The full complaint was posted on the Petsforum lawsuit news site shorly after Slashdot posted the story (which was about five hours after they actually accepted it). At the time I wrote it, I don't think anybody involved knew what was in the complaint, and it was widely assumed that it was a continuation of the previous lawsuits.
Now that I've seen it, it does seem to be only a partially related issue, but it demonstrates pretty clearly that Novak is continuing on with his old tricks. This is just more of the same. Having read Mr. Novak's other claims and actually checking the facts in them, I know that they tend to be filled with untruths, exagerations, and wordplay, so this one probably is too. This lawsuit on its own is topical for Slashdot even if it doesn't directly relate to the original two lawsuits, and the original two lawsuits need more media attention anyway. Look at the flak that Novak and his company are getting because of this. It's beautiful.
You try to convice me that this is fair use. Not to mention that this person is also considered a stalker because he continuously makes unwanted harrassing and sometimes threatening comments on a daily basis.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Hmm... I seem to remember a certain Descent 3 level named "Novak Corporate Prison"... Maybe that was a foreshadowing of today's events...
:-P
Scary.
"I bet he was teased in high school and wants to get back at all the bullies."
That's something I'll never understand about people who do that sort of thing; if they want to "gat back at the bullies" why don't they go after the people who bullied them?
It would only take a moment of thought to realise they're persuing innocents, instead of their persecutors.
Yeah, I know, offtopic. Rate it as such if you like.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Oh no, I love ferretstore.com. I'd call this guy a but I'd be afraid of getting myself sued too.
Do you think this is due to the /. effect, or is it because of the UUNET/WorldCom debacle?
At any rate, I wonder how much money it just cost him to have his site unreachable for basically an entire business day...
judge-for-yourself is amusingly lame. If you feel like you're not getting enough Weight Loss, Make Money Fast, and Net Detective offers in email, jfy is the perfect place to find them.
Look at Lawsuit #1 and Docket #2.
In the first lawsuit, everyone who was sued was an individual except for Actwin.com (host of the mailing list), which I think is a corporation.
In the second lawsuit, a mix of individuals, organizations, and companies are sued, including "John Doe and Mary Roe", Mr. Novak's rather flaccid attempt to sue every person who has criticized his company anonymously. According to Mr. John Benn, lawyer for the defense, who is listed as a defendant THREE times in TWO lawsuits, says that the "John Doe & Mary Roe" thing has now legal standing whatsoever and there's no court provision for seeking damages from fictional persons. He could just as well have listed "Anonymous Coward" as a defendant (and he probably WILL) for all the good it'll do him.
The closest this man has ever come to a bar exam was when he cut class back in college to hang out at the local saloon. No, this is just his hobby, as he's stated in interviews.
It's bad enough when lawyers do this, but when supposedly "normal" people start filing stupid lawsuits, it really makes Baby Jesus cry.
Here's what the judge had to say to him:
The parties are ordered to appear for a conference before the undersigned on June 12, 2002, at 10:00 a.m. to try and sort out the procedural morass that has developed in this action. The plaintiff should be prepared to explain why he has initiated a second action (CV-02-2978) involving many of the same defendants that he seeks to add in his motion to amend the complaint. Mr. Novak is reminded that, although the court will grant him some deference as a pro se litigant, he is expected to know and follow the rules of the court and to try to avoid the waste of judicial resources to the greatest extent possible.
I think that the conference mentioned keeps getting pushed back... I'm not sure what the current status is. Visit the Compuserve forum if you want recent news.
I hope that judge nails his ass to the wall...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...as it says so right in the first line of the article...
"New stuff has come to light... man..." - Jeff Labowski
- I am made of meat.
...also named in the suit were Daetrin (address unknown), zoombat (address unknown), Anonymous Coward (address unknown), duck_prime (address unknown)...
It'd make the DeCSS lawsuits look like nothing.
May we never see th
If enough people post links with a description of petswarehouse linking to the other, friendly, petwarehouse.com. Then at least searching google for "petswarehouse" wouldn't point to him...
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a) top ranked links are purchased and
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b) that advertizements are not marked as such
(Count II, #32)And of course, the Judgement section lists that asinine list that claims Novak owns every possible comination of the four words "pet", "pets", "warehouse", and "warehouses".
I mean, this guy literally makes my head ache. Why must people be so useless?
Hmm. I do believe that you've provided an excellent signature possibility.
May we never see th
In one part of the complaint filed, Novak is asserting that when one uses the keywords "Pets Warehouse" in these search engines, that the search engines are diluting his trademark by showing competitors' sites above his.
I understand that this isn't exactly the main thrust of his lawsuit, but this argument is full of crap.
The whole process is quite similar to what happens when you look something up in a phone book. You look for "pets warehouse" (or "pet warehouse") and what do you see? The phone numbers of the pet store you want, as well as a whole bunch of competitors. In fact, many of these competitors may buy ad space that make them show up bigger and before other pet stores.
I also find it funny that he's complaining that the adwords will continue to damage his trademark irreparably, when he's doing a great job of that by himself.
An anti-barratry website...
www.overlawyered.com
Google's 11 lawyers vs. Novak? I'm still thinking about this?
Need Mercedes parts ?
Muuhhhaaaaa!
>An error occured while loading >http://www.petswarehouse.com/:
>
>
>Timeout on server
>Timed out while waiting to connect to >www.petswarehouse.com
Off topic, I know, but I had to respond.
Excuse me, sir? Melted the cup? I think not. If you are referring to the case of the 79 year old woman who sued McDonald's for burns, then granted, that was a justified lawsuit, but don't make stuff up. She spilled it on herself.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
This includes court costs, lawyers for the winning party and an amount set forth by the court for your inconvienence and troubles.
This won't be astronomical figures, say in the 10-30K range. It makes suing for fun very uneconomical however.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
After reading the story I tried www.petswarehousesucks.com for the hell of it. it actually exists!!! Get their hitcount to show that we, as a community, think that petswarehouse is out of line.
I've been following this case for a long time, and the guy is definitely a nuisance, and even the judge appears to be tiring of him.
He claims theferretstore.com was using Pets Warehouse meta tags in its site. It isn't now. Unless he can prove they were, he should get slapped with whatever punitive sanctions the court can do.
Good news here at least. Google is a big company, and after they win this lawsuit they can charge their six to seven digit attorney's fees to this guy! They'll own Pets Warehouse.
Comes in a tin, & you get a tube of setting/heating agent, which you mix in with it, then you fill up the rusthole with it.
AKA filler.
Mind you with old bombs I prefer doing a quick weld job. Where you just weld a plate in place of the rust & then brushpaint fish-oil over it, then after a day or 2 brushpaint red oxide primer over it. All without even rubbing back/smoothing out the weld ribbing.
You see if you weld it out, the rego inspectors have to OK it no matter how bad it looks. Where as when you bog up rust you have to do a visually perfect job so the rego inspecters don't cotton on.
...well, the site is down, so that pretty much amounts to NO service. :)
If even 1/10th of active slashdotters posted something, the moderators would be overwhelmed.
If he owns "pet" and "warehouse" then he's infringing on another trademark Pet Warehouse. Pet Warehouse (not plural) has been recently purchased by Drs. Foster & Smith, a great place to shop for pet supplies, including medicines, vacines, food, books, etc., for almost any type of animal.
It was about facts, complaints about poor service and possibly fraudulent billing with respect to shipping charges IIRC.
"Pets Warehouse" BAD
"Pet Warehouse" GOOD
Pet Warehouse should sue Novak for the damage he's doing to their name simply by association.
Nobody like or link to your site, making your listing on Google way far down...
But wait! His site is #1 so why is he complaining? Probably because most of the following hits are about his BS lawsuits.
"html is the programming code behind the actual pages being displayed on the web"
False. And next we have:
"...be enjoined from using or selling PETS WAREHOUSE (however spelled...whether...singular or plural... as one word or two, whether used alone or in combination..."
He just said he not only has the right to competitor Pet Warehouse (singular or plural), but also to any business with the word "pet" or "warehouse" in it.
In europe most monetary damage are VERY LOW. Seconmd there is an error in your count. So in your case this would be more I can sue for 2.5$ and have 5$ of cost, and maybe pay 10$ for the cost of both party , to only win 2.5$ (the other party REIMBURSE your 5$ of cost, so this is not something you win. You gave it and have facture to justify it. I have the feeling that in your count you counted twice the 5$ reimbursement, one as a win, one as a reimbursement thus you 15$ at the end... it should be only 10$ not 15$.).
So net result of the suit : You either win 2.5$ if you are right, loose 10$ if this is frivolious.
The first poster is correct, This is probably why there isn't much friolious suit, and when they are people get burned.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I am posting this near the top because this is a truely brillant idea that will help the entire net as a whole.
Someone who has epilepsy should sue this guy. They have real legal ground to stand on. They need to say that they have their browser specifically configured so that images will not load to avoid seeing blinking patterns that cause them seizures. Unfortuantly when they visited petswarehouse to go buy something the blinking lights gave them a seizure.
If you don't think this has legal grounds, think again. I remember Super Mario Brothers 3 to be the first video game I purchased that had the huge warning on the back page about the dangers of video games to people with seizures. In fact, with that specific game they even had a huge yellow piece of paper with it that further emphazied this point.
The guy should of put a warning before his page loaded about the blinking links. Blinking things are dangerious. Get rid of them.
like Bernard Shifman. He's probably jobless anyway.
please please tell me the outcome of this story. I hate the open ending.
I need to know before i throw myself before a truck.
LINUX SUXXORS, MACs ARe SOOOO Much better becuase mac users are smarter and sooo much better looking! (never mind that my powermac 7200 runs linux ppc...)
and redundant:
LINUX SUXXORS, MACs ARe SOOOO Much better becuase mac users are smarter and sooo much better looking! (never mind that my powermac 7200 runs linux ppc...)
also redundant- MODERATORS SUXXORS MY COXXORS!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I don't mean slashdotted eather.
The bad mouthing and venem is probably containned to the mail list but now that he's gone out and sued it and Google then we all know somethings up.
Soon he'll be out of business and he'll have to sell those domains he took.
Whats sad is some people have caved to his demands.
I don't actually exist.
Now you've done it. /. is next. Better delete the thread.
/.
This is a perfect example of why the federal and state(s) court system needs to be revamped in a major way. It is too damn easy to sue somebody today. Where is the 1st Amendment in these PetsWarehouse lawsuits? Freedom of speech. A customer is allowed to tell other consumers about a company's poor service or weak products. And mailing lists and private website forums are discussion areas, not news media or corporate competitors, so a customer should be allowed to speak his/her mind. How the hell does Consumer Reports magazine/website get away with rating products? You don't see an automobile manufacturer suing the Insurance Institute for sharing their test ratings (with some cars getting the worst rating) on NBC's Dateline television in front of millions of viewers. This Robert Novak needs to be stopped by a judge.
h re adid=3117
Hey, Mr. Novak, if your customers say your Pets Warehouse sucks, it must suck, or at least you must be doing something wrong. I certainly won't be buying products from you for my cat, and I would certainly recommend to everybody personally or in a public forum NOT to even visit your store.
Novak's company e-mail is below, so feel free to make use of it, as I'm sure Slashdot readers are already doing, if the infamous "Slashdot effect" hasn't stopped their servers already!!!
Now, what's next? Sue me for my free speaking? Sue Zeropaid and/or Slashdot for posting the same consumer info and comments that Google linked to? What a bunch of dog crap forced on unfortunate individuals buy some loser with an obvious Napolean complex and complete inability to accept responsibility for his failed business actions.
http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&t
If you got this nasty feeling you weren't being treated right, that's opinion.
A company making repeated false statements about shipping time (several instances of "Your order will be shipped Monday" without even taking the caller's name, and not even shipping then), multiple documented cases of billing for more than the double the quoted shipping price (when confronted, they say "Too bad."), and reneging on advertised discounts ("We offered 20% off? Well we're not doing it now.") is not opinion.
I've read the original posts, and these people were documenting experiences with the company. It's not opinion; It's fact.
There's a reason Pets Warehouse ranks poorly with the NY BBB.
Let's see if I get sued for modding this comment as informative. I won't sue you, but I will metamod you "unfair."
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.