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Jack Thompson Sues Florida Bar
Gamasutra reports that Jack Thompson has sued the Florida Bar Association, for "hector[ing] plaintiff Thompson for 19 months with SLAPP Bar complaints filed by opposing counsel (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participants). Continually, during that time, Thompson and his counsel in these Bar matters have repeatedly asked The Florida Bar to sit down with him and his counsel to try to resolve, once and for all, this dispute, which goes back more than 18 years when other baseless SLAPP Bar complaints were filed, resulting in the payment of money damages to plaintiff Thompson."
I find it difficult to read anything involving Jack Thompson seriously at this point. The media coverage he has gained just makes him look like the lead act in a ridiculous circus. While it may have even been funny in a stomach-turning way at one point or another, it's essentially just pathetic to see news involving him.
I can only hope that he learns his lesson sooner or later, or at least it'll get to the point where nobody cares about Jack Thompson. At this stage in the game to say otherwise owuld be an exercise in futility.
Fun Zoid RPG
I personally know someone who filed one of those 19 complaints and I can tell you they had nothing to do with "opposing counsel" of any law case at all.
Go figure. Someone breaks the ethics rules of the Florida Bar. A number of people nationwide respond by filing complaints with the Florida Bar noting these breaches of ethics rules. And the guy's response? Is to sue the Florida Bar for allowing people to file these complaints in the first place.
Jack Thompson's suit is the exact sort of thing the term "SLAPP" was designed to describe in the first place. It's disgusting he is able to get away with things like this. And the worst part? In the end, he probably won't have any consequences. He'll get the publicity he craves from this spat with the Bar, but what with the pressure he's applying by gaming the system, the Bar will probably back off on actually doing anything about his ethics violations.
Jack Thompson sues U.S. District Court of Southeastern Florida over Florida Bar decision? I wonder if he'll stop when he gets to suing Jesus, or whether he'll go the final step up to God...
He's been doing this since 1989. You just haven't heard of him until recently because before he was attacking video games, he was attacking rap music.
17 years. And he hasn't faded away yet.
Really, some things don't go away when you stop paying attention to them.
These days it seems the only difference between a layman and an expert is the title...
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
Two men enter! One man leaves!
Jack Thompson's behavior is easier to understand if you remember his origins
claiming one million dollars in damages, based on what he claims are vindictive complaints filed against him by other lawyers
And encouraging families to sue game makers is not vindictive?! The man has been abusing the legal system filing frivolous complaints against game makers for years.
The ways of gods are mysteriously indistinguishable from chance.
You know, there ought to be some status in law, where a person's opinion is no longer regarded as more meaningful than purely entropic noise. Lets call it cum granum salis. A person having this status could neither be sole plaintiff nor sole witness in a legal case. If they wanted to bring suit, they'd have to have a guarantor willing to swear to their truthfulness - who would risk having their own opinions taken cum granum salis if the case were subsequently thrown out for lack of merit.
The first recipients should probably be Jack Thompson, and SCO.
"I enjoy doing what I do and I think I've got a First Amendment right to annoy people and participate in the public square in the cultural war," Jack Thompson.
Explains why he keeps evading bans on Gamepolitics, and spewing his usual retarded drivel there. For someone who is "wining", he sure spends a lot of time posting and obsessing over GamePolitics. But what else can you say about someone who, among various absurd things, feels blogs are for losers(but not LiveJournal accounts to post PR pieces, trash talk, etc), whines when someone calls/mails him, and has non-existent/default "no page here yet" web sites? Guess the place holder is better then his text only Florida Bar attack site(which is now "no page here" humm....).
You know, a bunch of people have been wondering if Jack suffers from some sort of mental disability/defect. Given how he acts like some Usenet kooks I "know"(taking things to real life, being very hypocritical in their actions, claming credit for the work of others, claiming any darned thing is a victory for them, making absurd claims, etc), I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case. HELL, this makes a lot of sense, his last issue with the Florida bar in the 90s was over their forcing him to undergo psychiatric testing!
While he did pass and was awarded a $20,000 settlement, I have to wonder with all the advances in psychology and diagnosis of mental disabilities, if they will find something this time. And that is what I think is a good reason for his current mental breakdown, with the constant losing streak, inappropriate behavior, legal antics, and now the Florida bar, things are not looking too good for Jack despite his poker face & "I am going to win" attitude. He faces to lose a lot of creditablity, his profession, and greatly damages his "muder-sim p0rn0 games made them kill, they should be banned" cause.
He is at the end of his wits, grasping at straws, running out of time and deep down realizes that he not going to get anywhere in terms of what he wants. Thus like kooks he takes the safe route of all talk, little to no real action.
Which unfortunately means the battle is only 50% effective.
Poor defendants. I wonder where they're going to find a good lawyer.
What's even more hypocritical is that any time anyone he disagrees with emails him, he's quoting the federal law that makes it illegal to anonymously send annoying emails. He quotes this law even if the emails are sent using the sender's real name. But then again knowing the law hasn't really been his strong point, ever.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I wouldn't underestimate the veracity of the bar when it comes to ethics violations. Suing the bar isn't going to get them to back off, it's only going to make them more frustrated and willing to pursue you.
Yeah, that worked really well averting WWII and the oil crisis in the 1970's. Ignore them and they'll stop bothering us. It's a historically common way of dealing with everything from dissidents to economics, and it almost universally bites you in the ass in the end.
So, ignore him. He's still on CNN, Fox news, whoever will listen to him on a weekly basis. The family protection groups are still throwing his name and words around - even the ones that publically renounced him a while back have made friendly again. What you have now is the same guy running unchallenged. This is the situation he had when he ruined many businesses in the porn industry. Nobody stood up to him, and the industry itself just ignored him and hoped their studio wasn't next. So a lot of people lost their businesses - some of whom hadn't actually been making pornography, but he figured it was close enough.
Then he went after music. Ruined a few artists, got a few CD's taken off the market - to this day he loves to tell anybody who'll listen that he's the reason Ice-T's career ended so suddenly. By and large, no opposition. The artists ignored him, the labels didn't really care, and the listeners didn't even know what was going on in most cases.
A decade running unchecked. He finally picked on an industry with a lot of fans who spend more time on their computers than anywhere else, and fighting back is easy online, so a lot of people are fighting back now.
And what happened? He's lost cases, he's been thrown out of court, he's been made a monkey of repeatedly, and right now he's in danger of losing his ability to make legal war on the media for good.
Just ignore him. He'll be back.