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RIAA Balks At Complying With Document Order
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "When the RIAA was ordered to turn over its attorneys' billing records to the defendant's lawyer in Capitol v. Foster, there was speculation that they would never comply with the order. As it turns out they have indeed balked at compliance, saying that they are preparing a motion for a protective order seeking confidentiality (something they could have asked for, but didn't, in their opposition papers to the initial motion). Having none of that, Ms. Foster's lawyer has now made a motion to compel their compliance with the Court's March 15th order."
I think that they are afraid because its such an embarrassingly big amount of money.
I don't know how much they were trying to get, but if they spent more then they were after, then thats a problem.
Especially because it went so far. But I'm sure that they could sue other people to make the money, or even drop out of litigation and get a paper route. I'm sure that someones Mom might be able to cover the court costs, until they can pay her back.
Sweeeeeeeeeet!
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
IF they must pay fees based upon their expenditures,
so be it. Hiding from the public record should be a
death penalty offense for all officers of the
corporation. A corporation is merely a documented
conspiracy. END CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP - It never existed.
Shortly after the "well, after a 25% packaging deduction, minus tax, as a percentage of the wholesale price, after returns, shrinkage and overstock, minus proptional copies and production expenses, hire of session lawyers to overdub documents, and advertising/video expenses etc. ... our lawyers have failed to recoup and don't actually get paid anything" card, if the way they treat artists is anything to go by.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
The RIAA's argument against paying "attorney's fees" boils down to this-
The defendant should've just let the RIAA win. She didn't *have* to go to court, and hire a lawyer. And so, they shouldn't have to pay her fees. Even though the judge said they *did* have to pay her fees.
Unbelievable. If that isn't enough to get the Feds to start investigating the RIAA for RICO violations, I don't know what is. They really *are* trying to blackmail people.
Compliance with a judges orders or even the law is for the sheeple.
It does not apply to our betters.
Nothing is foolproof, fools are too ingenious. - Murphy
A link to a Slashdot article that was referred to. A link to a list of PDFs for all the motions and whatnot. And a link to the pdf for the specific motion. Are you complaining that they didn't link to a biased news story?
http://www.skullsecurity.org/blog/
Is about as exciting as watching Bobby Fischer put away his chess sets at the end of the day
I disagree... when RIAA litigation starts to show unexpected financial consequences is when it really begins to get interesting. The "seeing who wins" portion of most of these cases are nice and all, but in the end, the RIAA spends whatever their budget says they should spend on litigating, and the defendant goes broke. Maybe they settle and go broke that way, maybe they lose and have to pay the RIAA, maybe they win a Pyhrric victory but spent their life savings on legal bills. When all is said and done, the RIAA manages to send the message that once they come after you, you are in for financial ruin.
Where things get interesting is when they begin not to go according the the RIAA's plan. You get situations like the Santangelo case (the case is no longer furthering their interests, but they don't have the option to fold) and this one. There could be a lot more light shed on the financing of these RIAA witch hunts than they would like to see. They would much rather leave things at "We have enough money to drive you into bankruptcy if you cross us, that is all you need to know". They might not get to do that this time, which makes it more interesting to follow.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Of course, this is the same Administration that, when we complain about the PAT RIOT Act, tells us, "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear."
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
In a situation like this, it's not necessary to enforce an order that way. In these types of situations, if they don't comply the judge will just penalize them. If they don't comply with the order, the judge will just award Ms. Foster every nickel she asks for.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
-there was 1 link, not 2, to the original article
-why do you refer to the collection of litigation documents as a "link farm"? some people actually have the brains to want to read the documents so they can know first hand what is going on...
-the whole article and all of the links relate to the title
so all i can ask is: who do you work for?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
yes. But if the RIAA had silently paid what the judge had originally ordered, then the defendant's lawyers would not have asked for RIAA lawyers fees.
However, RIAA refused to pay the bill presented to them stating it was too high. "Too high relative to what?" asked the judge. "Too high according to the fees we normally get" replied RIAA. Next the judge asked 'OK, if so what are your fees?"
RIAA: Doh!"
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Because the RIAA is disputing whether the defendant's legal fees are reasonable. So the defendant said "OK, let's see what you consider reasonable then.", and the judge said "Yes, let's.". The basic argument behind that is that if the plaintiff spent 500 hours on the case, then the defense claiming 550 hours on the case isn't unreasonable. Similarly, if the plaintiff's lawyers are billing $500/hour, a defense lawyer billing $550/hour isn't unreasonable. After all, if plaintiff really thought times and rates of roughly the magnitudes it itself spent really were unreasonable, why did they spend that?
It's only one rule, though. There's another that looks at the rates the majority of lawyers in the jurisdiction would charge and the number of hours they'd take on that type of case, so if you found a really really cheap lawyer you couldn't stop the defendant from claiming fees at a more normal rate.
Administrative law is the most fleeting of all... it is ill-written, and often times unenforceable. It can be challenged in numerous ways, although it takes more time and resources, as you have to exhaust your administrative remedies before you can file in a "normal" court.
As for the executive taking over, I think there was an argument to be made when the Legislative and Executive branches were controlled by one party, but that era is done for now.
I think this issue is emblematic not of the Executive taking over, but the fact that the Judicial branch is finally being stood up to. It is about time. I would say they were on the verge of taking over more than the Executive.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!