Slashdot Mirror
Novak Loses petswarehouse.com, Files For Bankruptcy
An anonymous reader writes "Remember Robert Novak, the person who has filed several frivolous lawsuits in order to silence people who criticize his business. Well, Robert Novak has lost his domain (see here)in a countersuit filed against him, and has just filed for bankruptcy ."
Once the dust settles on this, will these cases ultimately serve as a positive precedent for sanity in domain-related and free-speech cases? Or is this just a decision that any lawyer could predict, but was a long time in comming?
Cool...
Though, it's too bad that filing for bankruptcy doesn't mean that the frivolous lawsuits will end.
I don't think we've heard the last of Mr. Novak somehow.
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
Seriously. This was one of the more common reasons he would sue. People would order fish, aquarium plants, rodents, etc. and they would arrive dead, not marked for paid-for weekend delivery, sent at slower than safe shipping speeds, not packaged to protect from temperature and normal handling, or even not delivered to the carrier the same day they were packaged!!!
It may happen rather soon to SCO.
Actually, assuming that SCO dies [which is not by ANY means certain], it is signifigantly more accurate to say that their legal strategies are more of a dying gasp, instead of saying that their defeat [if they are, in fact, defeated] is a "deathblow".
In short, if SCO dies, it's because no-one bought their shit, not because they lost in court.
Think of all the hilarious hate mail this guy must get on a regular basis. I want it!
Game... blouses.
Don't think for a minute that this means this guy is broke. He's likely just using the bankruptcy laws to shield himself from paying his obligation. The guy apparently abuses the legal system to sue everyone he can to make a buck, then when a law suit catches up with him he does this to not pay on the judgement against him. Pretty typical.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
... that I could care less if something horrible happened them. He's on the list. Suing people who contributed to the defense fund? Insanity. The guy deserves whatever bad things happens to him. He's got a mighty huge karma hammer swinging towards him.
Pets Warehouse.com
1550 Sunrise Hwy, Copiague, NY 11726
Phone: (631) 789-5400
I called, they're still open. The lady was kind of rude on the phone though. Anybody up for a class-action?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
It's actually not that hard. All you do is not own anything. Make sure that all your assets are actually owned by someone you trust (your SO, spouse, sibling, etc.). Then, you declare bankruptcy, and let the courts take everything you own (which is nothing).
Also, you live hand-to-mouth. When the money is rolling in, you buy expensive cars, live well, and lavish gifts on all people who are close to you. You don't save it, 'cause you know that the courts are going to take away your savings later. When the money stops rolling in, then you depend on your friends, SO, siblings for a while, as you dream up a new scam (business).
Basically, once you've accepted the fact that you aren't going to have good credit, then there is no fear of declaring bankruptcy.
For a certain kind of businessman, declaring bankruptcy is sort of like a fisherman deciding "All the fish here have been harvested, so it's time to pull up anchor and go somewhere else." In their minds, there's nothing immoral or embarrassing about it, it's just how they put food on the table.
I hate it when I make a joke and I get modded "+5 insightful". Mod the stupid comments "funny", not "insightful", pleas
Perhaps some form of "3 strikes" approach? Small fine the first time, big fine the second time, jail time the third?
I mean, if it's just a fine, and they manage to pressure most into settling out of court, it's still financially sound for them.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
...for a judge to order him to never file another civil suit again? It really angers me to see someone abuse the system like this with no real repercussions.
What definition of sentience are you using? m-w.com says:Animals aren't aware? Animals don't respond to sense impressions? More to the point, if animals don't have human-like emotions, they certainly are faking it really well. They're probably not exactly the same as human emotions, but they seem pretty close.
mods metamodded as "Unfair"
First- disclaimer: IANAL, my wife is. What does that make me and my legal advice? WORTHLESS!
That being said:
At the discretion of the judge, based upon how frivolous the suit was, they can award attorney's fees.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I meant to say "other animals" or something like that.
Second, we need a clear definition of what is sentience. Let's toss out the PETA definition since using their rules would include insects and possibly even plants.
So what is sentience? My personal definition is the ability to ask a simple question, "why am I here". Note that the ability to answer this question is not necessary (humans have been arguing this point for a rather long time without success). Sentience is the ability to wonder about things beyond "food, shelter, reproduce" - sadly, a large number of humans haven't evolved beyond this.
A few members of the ape family have shown some rather interesting sentient-like behavior, but as I said in my previous post - it is only hints.
Despite my arguing against animal sentience, I am not promoting cruelty to animals. I am very much against any type of cruelty to animals of any sort. I stopped eating veal after learning of the conditions in that industry (and I love veal!).
-- Will program for bandwidth
This guy it nuts and way out of his mind. As I recall, one of the big differences between the DSM III and DSM IV was the omission of the Passive Agressive Personality Disorder. Here are the criteria I could find:
o Resist fulfilling their given responsibilities through procrastinating, "forgetting," sulking, or being argumentative
o Protest, without justification, that unreasonable demands are being placed on them
o Seem to work deliberately slowly or to do a bad job on tasks that they do not really want to do
o Obstruct the efforts of others and fail to do their share; are uncooperative
o Resent useful suggestions from others concerning how they might be more productive
What I am getting at is Novak's actions are the most extreme example of passive agressive behaviors I have ever heard of. Maybe he has a personality disorder is is Psychotic out of his mind. He is using the court system as part of his psychopathology. Because of the grand scale of this, his case could easily be published in a major Psychiatric journal. Is there any way to force him to undergo a Psych eval ???
What does Novak immediately do... attempt to dodge payment by declaring bankruptcy. If you look at the last page of the 7-page PDF file, there's John Benn listed amoung the creditors, and if you flip back to page 1, on the bottom the $50,001-$100,000 box is checked for the estimated debt.
Let's hope Johm persues this asshole further get gets a the court to impose a payment schedule so Novak doesn't weasle his way out of this one.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
you are absolutely correct... there are bad docs out there.
The question becomes this: What do we do? Are you going to "profile" all doctors because a few are bad? Do you justify punitive actions against the whole group because of a few bad apples? Of course not... to say that good doctors "deserve" the collateral lawsuits is not justifiable.
Doctors do police themselves to a degree... ask for the yearly minutes of any state's medical board, and look at the number of licenses they suspend/sanction/revoke every year; there's pages and pages of them. Usually, they are for gross breach of the standard of care, drug abuse, inappropriate relationships with patients, etc. I get those minutes sent to me every year, and sometimes I just shake my head at the stupid behavior that people jeapordize their career over... but there's often more to the story in even those cases. I've seen some cases in those minutes that I had personal knowledge of, and the punishments were totally undeserved (while others were richly deserved)... the system is far from perfect.
The reality is this: unless the care is unbelievably substandard, it's hard to justify taking somebody's license.
What more do you want us to do? If you are going to try to take away somebody's medical license that they've worked 12 years for, you'd better have some pretty solid proof. I can't go around in public saying what a "horrible" doctor somebody is (because one patient I referred to them had a bad result)... I'd get sued for slander... particularly if I didn't have a truckload of cases, complications, deaths, M&M minutes, etc to back it up. It takes a while to build up the kind of evidence that taking away a license requires, particularly if the care is only a little below par, but still objectively reasonable. So much of medicine is a judgement call that it can be pretty hard to simply point a finger and say "Bad! Bad doctor!."
Yes, I realize it's not good for the patients that a "bad" doctor continues to practice while they gather data about his care... but there is little alternative. You protect patients, but you also have to protect the doctor from character assassination and slander.
Yes there are bad doctors... but they are few... and are far outnumbered by the honest, hard-working, give-a-damn doctors.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
good question... I'll try to answer it, but I'll have to plead ignorance on what the hospitals pay for malpractice, because I honestly have no idea.
Malpractice insurance is very regional, and depends almost entirely on what state you practice in (Bad states include Florida, West Virginia, and others). It also depends on amount of coverage, and type of coverage (occurrence, versus "Claims-made"). Without getting into too much detail, my malpractice insurance as an ER doc is 35,000+ per year for average coverage, with no suits in my past. OB/GYNs have it even worse... some of them pay 100,000+ per year.
100,000K seems like a lot of money (and it is), but believe it or not, they're the lucky ones; some specialists, like neurosurgeons, can't even GET insurance. They have to "go bare" and try like hell to protect their assets, such that if they are sued, they don't end up broke and without a license... (kind of a kick in the teeth after 15 years of training).
I honestly don't know how much it would decrease the cost of medical care. So much of the cost of medical care is out of the control of physicians, and hidden from consumers, that it's extremely difficult to get accurate figures.
I always ask people if they are paying less for their healthcare than they used to, and they inevitably say they are paying more. And yet, physican incomes have actually dropped in recent years. Not kept pace with inflation, not stayed even... dropped. Where did the difference go? Some would say newer/more-expensive treatments, others would say treating the uninsured... I think part of the answer is administrative overhead. More HMO employees, more office staff to file claims, more people to refile those same claims after the insurance company's routine first denial (lather, rinse, repeat). Larger salaries for HMO CEOs... there's an enormous middleman in the health care industry, and I'm not sure malpractice savings wouldn't get added into the bottom line and reappear as a stock dividend.
Yikes... now I'm starting to sound like some of slashdot's anti-corporate anarchists.
I think tort reform would save substantial cash, not only in premiums, but in defensive medicine costs. I know some docs that do a CT scan on every headache, just so they don't get sued for missing that 1-in-a-million 18yo stroke victim, or the early brain tumor. It's horrendously expensive to practice medicine that way. Even so, I understand why they do it... it only takes one weird case to get scared. I've seen people walk into my ER with normal neurological exams, only slightly sleepy, with half their skull full of blood. Scary thing is, by most standards, you could easily justify not scanning that person... (I'm damned glad I did the scan). and that's just one example. I try not to practice defensively, but it can be hard when the patient threatens to sue you before you even find out their name, or they are on the phone with their lawyer from their ER bed (both true stories).
Does that sort of answer your question? I think it would help, and it would go well beyond simple premium savings.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Any business when too risky, reduces entry into the field. 10 years ago the concern was who is delivering babies in small towns? This was due to excessive malpratice lawsuits for less than perfect babies. It had to be the doctor's fault, make him pay, he has insurance, yada... Doh, the insurance rates went out of sight to cover the increased risk. Small physisians simply could not afford it and left the small town practice, or simply stopped delivering babies to drop the high insurance premium.
The problem has not improved. With managed healthcare, not only is the risk high, but the potential earnings are down with extreme workloads.
This is one of the great reasons I went into electronics instead of the medical field. A failure is limited to replacement cost, not pain, suffering, potential income over lifetime etc. The pay is better for a surgeon, but the risk kept me out of the field.
So tell me, where is the next generation of doctors comming from?
The truth shall set you free!