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CPA Googles For His Name, Sues Google For Libel
fbform writes "Mark Maughan, an accountant, searched Google for his name on March 25 2003 and found some 'alarming, false, misleading and injurious' information about himself and his firm. Therefore, he is now suing Google, Yahoo (which used Google as its search engine at the time), AOL (for using Google to enhance its search results) and Time Warner (because they're the same company as AOL) for libel. Specifically, his lawyer John Girardi believes that Google's PageRank algorithm takes known good information and twists its context when displaying search results."
Although, GW and Michael Moore are still planning their miserable failure lawsuits!
Free XBox, PS2
Wonder if this will add strength to his case?
I think you meant litigious schmuck
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Don't laugh. I did.
I requested, was charged for and I paid for an unlisted number. The phone company published my number anyway and I filed suit on them in small claims court. The phone company did not show up in court and I won a default judgement against them for $1,000.
They never paid me. And when I called them and demanded satisfaction, they began screwing me on my phone bills. My $29 a month phone bill suddenly exploded into $600 a month bills for bogus charges, bogus equipment, bogus repairs, bogus services and bogus installations. The more I complained the worse it got, when I refused to pay the bills they cut my phone off then charged me hundreds of dollars to reconnect it and HUGE deposits.
Fucking thieves SBC is.... I cut the wires at the pole and the house and rolled up the wire and kept it. I now use only a cell phone.
I will NEVER have a land line again.
BTW, I had previously had an unlisted number for over 15 years.
I think it may be time for the US to seriously consider implementing a "Loser Pays" system in civil court. Basically, if you, as a lawyer, pursue what is found to be suit with insufficient legal merit, then you are liable for all the costs of the case, including the other sides fees, plus any penalty the court finds suitable.
If you as a lawyer don't believe that a case has merit, but the client wants to pursue the case, the lawyer can draw up a contract noting that the client has been advised that consuel believes the case does not have merit, and that they, the client, will bear the liability for all costs and penalties in the case.
The first thing that happens in a civil suit is that it is analyzed for merit, and if it found lacking, liability and fines are assessed.
Basically, it takes the profit motive for pursuing crappy cases out of the system. Why shouldn't lawyers pursue any case? Money is money.
And this still allows for anybody to pursue a case, but they have to assume the costs if the lawyer doesn't find any merit to the case.
You're quite right. When I worked at Oldsmobile the stock advice for getting ahead was to wreck a company car. Your name would appear in the monthly safety report sent to all managers. Later, when your name came up for promotion, the managers would remember that they'd heard of you, but not remember where.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I have no idea about the state of gay marriage, but as for this guy, I found this info via Google.
:P I'm just reporting what I've found, verbatim, from Google. I didn't write up any of this information, I've just pieced it together and I have no idea how true any of it is.
By reading this, you agree not to sue me and not to use this information unlawfully
Of course, *since* I found it via Google, it may well be the same "false and misleading" information. Hell, I don't even know if this is the right guy! However, it is a CPA with at least the same first & last name as him, who I *think* is in the right area. It's apparently old info (from 2000), and when I looked under the accountancy firm he does business for, this was the business' only citation listed (this is also the only citation listed for him).
Interestingly, a citation for someone with the last name McBride is right next to this guy's (no known relation to Darl, but I don't have those Mormon geneology databases to work off of, either)
The citation is at the end of this post for formatting purposes. As for the email/address/info of this guy, if my research is right, his web page appears to be:
http://www.markmaughan.com/
Which lists the following contact information:
Contact us at:
10221 Slater Avenue, Suite 104
Fountain Valley, CA 92708
Ph: (714) 962-1600
Fax: (714) 962-8598
E-MAIL: taxxbiz@aol.com
What follows is the citation, exactly as listed on some California government server's webpage. I didn't make this up, I'm just quoting exactly what I know, without any expressed or implied endorsement of what they've said. Clearly, this person seems to feel that this information is "false and misleading," so... Anyhow, the following information is taken from http://www.dca.ca.gov/cba/discipline/ma-me.htm
MAUGHAN, MARK G. (CPA 38184)
BROWN & MAUGHAN, AN ACCOUNTANCY CORPORATION (COR 2529)
Fountain Valley/Rolling Hills Estates, CA
Revocation stayed with three years' probation and a 30-day suspension, via stipulation settlement.
Probation terms include:
30-day suspension from the practice of public accountancy.
Renewal of the CPA and corporate licenses, respectively, within 30 days of the effective date of this order.
Compliance with the citation order which contained administrative fines totaling $1,500.00 and an order of correction and abatement. Payment of $1,500.00 is due within 30 days of the effective date of this order.
Reimbursement of $4,360.17 to the Board for investigative and prosecution costs.
Submission of a sample set of financial statements, representing the highest level of service rendered, between August 1, 1995, and July 31. 1997.
Completion of a Board-approved ethics examination with a score of 90 percent or grater, within the first year of probation.
Other standard terms and conditions.
Effective December 27, 2000
For purposes of settlement, Respondent admits the truth and accuracy of the allegations and charges in the Accusation. Respondent and his accountancy corporation engaged in the practice of public accounting with expired licenses.
Respondent additionally failed to pay an administrative fine imposed by the Board for failing to supply the Board with copies of a financial report representing the highest level of service rendered, in accordance with Section 89.1 of the California Code of Regulations. Respondent's failure to pay the administrative fine caused the Board to withhold renewal of his CPA license.
Business and Professions Code, Division 3, Chapter 1, 5050, 5100 (f) and 5154; California Code of Regulations, Title 16, Division 1, 89.1.
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For reference, here is all the information you could want on Darl McBride, as has been posted several times to SlashDot before:
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
S
I would think that it wouldn't be slander/libel if the person providing the "information" believed it to be true, or did not know it to be false. It's not illegal to be wrong, but you can sue someone for willfully presenting as true something they know to be false (lying,) for the purpose of injuring you in some way (defamation.)
As far as I know, you can't sue anyone for simply lying. (Holocaust denial, for example?) Truth-in-advertising is close to that, though it does contain a sense of profit/interest in the matter. (Defamation being assumed to provide advantages to the person lying.)
Yeah, you make a valid point that the next step would have been going back to the courts to complain about the judgement going unpaid.
But you don't find it believable that people at SBC would alter your bill in retaliation?
I'm sure it happens more often than you'd think. While SBC makes it incredibly tough for employees to add new services to an existing line (upgrading your DSL to a faster speed, for example, requires approval of several levels of people), it's shockingly *easy* for 3rd. parties to add charges to a monthly phone bill.
Anyone can create a bogus "shell" company that claims to provide long distance services, and proceed to bill customers for usage. It's part of SBC's job to pass these 3rd. party telco charges along on your statement - and good luck getting them removed if they're incorrect!
I've known several people (and companies) that had this happen to them before. Sometimes, people even call pretending to be a well-known service like Sprint, when in reality, they're just a Sprint reseller who tacks a big profit margin onto Sprint's normal rates. Sure, they give you "Sprint" long distance, but not at Sprint's normal prices.
A dishonest employee could easily find some way to mess up your phone bill, without resorting to the difficult-to-implement method of upgrading the services you already pay for on your line. It only takes a few seconds to check-mark a few things in the computer and you might be paying a monthly "line maintenance fee" you never requested, or a change to your preferred long distance calling plan that costs you many $'s more than before.
Put aside the joke and you have arguably one of the most powerful information tools in the history of internet (and the world?) being hijacked by it's own algorithms.
There have been numerous stories here and else ware lately about tricking Google. Things like this and those search engine Spam sites are seriously starting to skew the intent of a search engine (i.e., provide links to relevant pages)
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
and thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
with windlasses and with assays of bias,
by indirections find directions out:
so by my former lecture and advice,
shall you my son.
You have me, have you not?
--Polonius, from Hamlet Act II Scene
Whenever I acquire the use of an attorney, doctor, or an accountant, I google their name first. I googled (searched outside of google as well) the names of my professors to determine their research interests and teaching style. I can understand this man's complaint. However, I believe his complaint is with the website owner (in this case the state of California).
Although this does bring up an interesting legal question. Does Google have the same responsibility that say the New York Times (haha, I know) of providing context for their reporting. Matt Drudge has demonstrated the power of the internet. Heck, I've recently run into two cases where people in our justice system have been disbarred|fired for misconduct based solely on their internet postings.
There is a deeper precedent here.
Imagine a future in which programmers are hired to place data to throw off intelligent agents parsing for good information. Do you have a bad credit history? You need to call a data munger. Did your business get a bad review in the local paper and it's now been preserved for all of history on the Wayback Machine and Google -- get a data munger. You see a data munger won't hide the information, but he will surround it with so much spamorific tripe as so to make it unparsable. The Orwellian future is now. Are you a struggling musician wishing to create some word of mouth for your band -- hire a data munger. Perhaps we should all jump on board the new field of data manipulation for profit.
A case study of the church of scientology newsgroup
I've created a simple business plan:
Step 1: Spam|Parse the internet at large
Step 2: (Blackmail|Obfuscate data for|plant news for) clients
Step 3: Profit
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....