RIAA Accepts $300 Offer of Judgement In Carolina

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a North Carolina case, Capitol v. Frye, the RIAA has accepted a $300 offer of judgment made by the defendant. This is the first known use, in the RIAA v. Consumer cases, of the formal offer of judgment procedure which provides that if the plaintiff doesn't accept the offer, and doesn't later get a judgment for a larger amount, the plaintiff is responsible for all of the court costs from that point on in the case. The accepted judgment in the Frye case (PDF) also contains an injunction — much more limited than the RIAA's typical 'settlement' injunction (PDF) — under which defendant agreed not to infringe plaintiffs' copyrights."

Comments

Re:ha

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

The really funny thing is it cost them $350 to actually file the lawsuit... They lost many thousands of dollars on this case.

Re:I'm no lawyer, but

[ari_j]

Not really. First off, you don't plead guilty in civil cases such as this. Second, courts have held (see, e.g., Scosche v. Visor Gear) that Rule 68 judgments do not have a preclusive effect on litigating issues they dispose of. Therefore, the RIAA probably cannot take the Rule 68-based judgment and use it against this defendant in a future case to avoid actually litigating the issues in the future case. Numerous sources indicate that Rule 68 has the sole purpose of encouraging settlement.

Finally, the real issue that was raised and to which I responded: There is no precedential effect, no matter how you take the Rule 68-based judgment. Legal precedents are only as to issues of law. It seems that no interpretation of law was made here, and any issues that were disposed of by the judgment are factual in nature. There is no such thing as a legally binding factual precedent.

Re:I'm no lawyer, but

[Dun Malg]

There are other definitions of the term 'guilty' than merely the legal definitions. You'll notice the sentence doesn't even make sense using 'liable.' "True, but on the other hand it's entirely possible she was liable, knew she was liable, and thus saw this as the cheapest way out."

WTF are you talking about? It makes perfect sense.