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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 wonder when they'll play the "we don't pay our lawyers because pirates stole all of our money" card.
This is something I don't understand about the US judicial system, and maybe NYCL can help explain it. If a judge orders someone to do something, and they refuse, isn't it then the justice department's responsibility to enforce that judge's order? Why do we so often see a judge's orders ignored, challenged, appealed, ad nauseum?
As an example, I heard on NPR yesterday President Bush's counsel inform the reporter that, should the House vote to subpoena Rove et. al., the White House would be refusing that order. He flat out told them, "No, we will not comply with a judge's order." Now, I understand there is a stickler here with Executive Privilege, but this seems to me to be a growing trend. What happened to the good old days when a judge would give an order, a person would refuse, and they would be thrown in jail for contempt until a) they complied, or b) an appeals court overruled the judge? Am I just naive in my belief that the judicial system was supposed to, I don't know, be able to actually enforce their decisions?
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
The court has ordered the RIAA to pay the defendant's attourney fees in this case. They want the RIAA's documents so that they can determine what "reasonable attourney fees" are.
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a) Why does the defendent care about the plaintiff's billing hours?
i tol_foster_070221MotReconsider , page 4)
The defendent doesn't care, the judge does.
One of the arguments the RIAA is using to say they don't need to pay Foster's legal fees is that the cost of their legal team would have exceeded the amount Foster would have needed to pay them if the RIAA won. ( http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=cap
The judge is now saying "put up or shut up."
b) Why does the plaintiff care if the defendent finds out?
Two possible ideas I can come up with...(disclaimer, IANAL, so these may not even matter)
1, it's a disgustingly high amount which is now released into the public record, which could bode badly in future cases
2, it's a stall tactic, plain and simple.
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
a) Because the plaintiff complained that the defendant's billing hours weren't reasonable. Apparently when you are suing for attorney's fees, if the other side claims they are not reasonable, it is apparently allowable to take the defendent's billing hours and hold them up against the plaintiff's billing hours to see if they are reasonable. If the plaintiff spent 3 hours on a case, but the defendent spent 3000, then that would probably be considered "unreasonable". But if the plaintiff spent 3000 hours and the defendent 4000, it would probably be considered reasonable. Basically, the RIAA lawyers sued a lady and was rejected (or whatever) with prejudice. She then sued them for attorney's fees (since it was thrown out with prejudice, this is allowable). The RIAA then claimed the attorney's fees were unreasonable. It is apparently common practice for the courts to judge the reasonableness of a defense by the amount of hours the (former)plaintiffs had put in, so the judge ordered the billing records turned over. b) Because either the plaintiff DID spend 3 hours on the case, making it look like they weren't doing due diligence, or they spent 3000, which makes them look crazy (and not like a fox). So they probably don't want this getting out - and it will, becoming part of the public record. Which means their anti-RIAA foes will have a field day with their spending on these law suits. - - - - - Keep in mind, most of this I gathered from *seemingly* respectible slashdot posts. On the one hand, it could all be right. On the other, it could all just sound right, but be horribly, horribly wrong. So take it with a grain of salt. Or an entire salt shaker.
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.
As I understand it, the court ordered the RIAA to pay for the defendant's legal bills. The defendant presented the plaintiff and the court with a detailed invoice. Then the plaintiff complained that the bill was "unreasonable." The defendant then responded with a motion for the plaintiff's bill pretty much saying "if it's unreasonable, how much did you spend?" Basically if the RIAA never made the argument that the bills was unreasonable they wouldn't have to be forced to prove what is reasonable. The court granted the motion agreeing with the defendant and is only trying to determine what is a reasonable settlement. There is precedent that a party to a court case cannot spend as much as they want on a case and then complain about how much the other side spent when they lose and have to pay the legal bills.
Normally the plaintiff wouldn't care . . . if they didn't have something to hide. My best guess is that these suits en masse would show that their lawyers are not spending enough time on each case and just filing against people without really researching the details. In other words, they are abusing the system.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
> The Plaintiff(the riaa), was found to have no case.
>
> The defendant was allowed to get the legal costs.
The defendant asked to get legal costs, but the plaintiff said the defendent's costs were unreasonable. The judge ordered the plaintiff to reveal *their* legal costs to see what the plaintiff considers reasonable.
Then the plaintiff replied with, "Um,...what?"
The artists pays for everything, including pens, pencils, paper, toner cartridges, phones, then all the marketing, and on and on. The record companies only loose if the artist make no money and can't pay for those things in which case they sue the artist to recoup those costs. You can eliminate everything except the lawyer costs involved directly in suing their customers.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
But the lawyers for the RIAA are complaining that the amount of the fees is unreasonable. If they're going to make such a complaint, then their own fees become relevant.
If the RIAA spent $100k on the case, they can't complain that Ms. Foster's attorneys' $55k in fees -- fighting them off -- was unreasonable.
If they stipulated to the reasonableness of Ms. Foster's fees [which were, in my opinion, eminently reasonable, if not 'dirt cheap'], then this issue would go away.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Isn't a high 6 good? That means your other 4 cards are 2-3-4-5. Means you have a straight. :-)
(Man. I've got to stop those Saturday nights out with the guys...
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