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RIAA Receives Stern Letter, Folds
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG v. Merchant, in California, the defendant's lawyer wrote the RIAA a rather stern letter recounting how weak the RIAA's evidence is, referring to the deposition of the RIAA's expert witness (see Slashdot commentary), and threatening a malicious prosecution lawsuit. The very same day the RIAA put its tail between its legs and dropped the case, filing a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal. About an hour earlier NYCL had termed the letter a 'model letter'; maybe he was right."
I'm not aware of them ever having won a fully contested case.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
The 'model letter' said "we will expect your clients to be prepared to dismiss all claims with prejudice. The pleadings may be e-filed from my office the same day. Although dismissal will not avoid your clients' exposure to attorneys' fees". What the RIAA has filed here is a notice of voluntary dismissal 'without prejudice'. This is not the same thing at all.
IANAL, so I turn to wikipedia:
"In law, the phrase without prejudice means that a claim, lawsuit, or proceeding has been brought to a temporary end but that no legal rights or privileges have been determined, waived, or lost by the result. For example, if a party brings a lawsuit in small claims court but discovers that the claim is greater than the amount for that court to have jurisdiction, the lawsuit can be dismissed "without prejudice". This means that the dismissal is no bar to bringing a new lawsuit in a court that does have jurisdiction.
By contrast with prejudice means that a party's legal rights have in fact been determined and lost. To continue the same example, if instead the court had jurisdiction, but the plaintiff did not appear for the trial, the court would dismiss the case "with prejudice". That dismissal is a judgment against the plaintiff "on the merits" of the case, and extinguishes the claim that was being sued over. However, this does not prevent an appeal or a trial de novo if ordered by a higher court."
In other words the RIAA are reserving the right to sue again. Anyone know what happens about fees in the 'without prejudice' case?
1. They were smacked down by this outstanding Visalia, CA, lawyer, whose letter will become a model for lawyers all across the country.
2. They made our country an international laughing stock as they viciously fought to take a face-to-face deposition of a 10-year-old child in Atlantic v. Andersen, invoking revulsion and derision towards our justice system in places like Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, and Israel.
3.They were smacked down by the judge in that case who intervened to prevent them from getting it.
4. They were smacked down by the University of Maine, which followed the University of Wisconsin in refusing to act as the RIAA's collection agent.
5.Under court order they turned over their attorneys billing records in Capitol v. Foster to their adversary.
And this is only Tuesday.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
4. They were smacked down by the University of Maine [blogspot.com], which followed the University of Wisconsin [slashdot.org] in refusing to act as the RIAA's collection agent.
:/
This sounds nice, Mr. Beckerman, but I'm a student at UMO and an IT monkey to boot. They didn't give the letters to the students, but they e-mailed and phoned all of the charged students and said "if you want them, you can come pick them up right here."
And my bosses, unfortunately, think it's a smart idea to keep static IPs for every student, and keep easy-to-access records for them (if you don't believe me, do a reverse DNS on 130.111.241.53). It sounds a lot nicer than it really is.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
You clearly don't know what you're talking about, and I'm not even a lawyer.
1) Investigators in civil cases do not have police like powers. If they ask for evidence and the other party refuses, they must file a Motion to Compel, which is asking THE COURT to force the hand-over of evidence. This is done precisely because they LACK THIS POWER.
2) The RIAA never asked for this hard drive, it was offered by the defendant before discovery in the case had even begun, which would be the appropriate time for the RIAA to ask for the hard drive.
3) Enron is an entirely different story. No one is saying Enron was in the right. However, Enron was under no obligation to turn over those documents the instant a lawsuit was filed whatsoever. It is the same here. An Answer hadn't even been filed yet in this case! Do you know ANYTHING about the legal process at all?
The Defendant offered the hard drive before filing an answer so that the RIAA would back off. They were under absolutely no obligation to do so. The parent poster was asking why they had to do this (incorrectly assuming that they had to, rather than that they chose to do so), and you proceeded to spew some of the most legally incorrect crap I have ever seen in my life.
Your post was so idiotic I felt it was worth it to undo all of my moderations on this discussion to respond to you. Cheers!