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

Decent Resolution

[GizmoToy]

Seems like a reasonable resolution for the defendant. $300 to make a lawsuit like this go away could be worth it if you don't really have the financial means to mount a decent defense and there's no way the RIAA had spent less than $300 to that point, so they lost money on the deal. This a very low settlement amount for the RIAA, so it's possible others may be able to utilize this.

It'll be interesting to see if the RIAA accepts it if anyone else tries it.

Re:Decent Resolution

[QuantumG]

Hey, they was detective work!

Sure, it wasn't do by registered detectives and is therefore illegal, but we tried!!

Re:I'm no lawyer, but

[Nefarious Wheel]

The blog said no precedent was being set, that it was clear it was the best the RIAA could expect from the case given that the subject was not likely to give much return on the collection effort, and another high-handed collection effort from a penniless mum would work against them. There was very little that could be taken from her, being another single mother receiving housing and income assistance. I'd say that that $300 was a pretty big whallop out of her budget though, and will make the RIAA look even worse as a result.

Providing that's possible, of course...

thanks for the summary!

[Karma Sucks]

I'll be sure to ask my lawyer to translate it for me.

Re:thanks for the summary!

[hxnwix]

Someone's getting sued by the RIAA. He said to the RIAA, "look, buddy, I'll give you $300 to go away, and if you wont take it and you can take me to court instead. However, bear in mind that there are two ways things could go from there: the court could say I owe you more than $300, or they could say I don't. If for any reason they say I don't, you have to pay for my lawyer."

The RIAA crunched the numbers and decided to take the $300.

Re:thanks for the summary!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say Joe sues you for $10,000 for your kids trampling his rose bush.

You think Joe is full of shit, that his mangy rose bush is only worth $100. So you offer to pay him $100 to end the lawsuit.

If Joe accepts, that is the end of it.

If Joe turns you down, then he will have to pay all of your costs (and is some states, attorney fees) from that moment on if when the case goes to trial, he does not win MORE than the $100 you offered.

The basic reasoning is that if someone who injured you offers to pay you what your claim is worth, you should take it. If you don't accept the offer, you should have to pay him for the trouble you cause to HIM by not taking his reasonable offer.

If Joe wins MORE than the $100 you offered, he is in the clear.

It makes people examine exactly what the claim is worth, and gives both sides incentive to offer (and accept) a reasonable offer.

Re:I'm no lawyer, but

[GizmoToy]

True, but on the other hand it's entirely possible she was guilty, knew she was guilty, and thus saw this as the cheapest way out. Which is not to say that the RIAA could have proved it to the satisfaction of the judge, but rather that the defendant knew she was wrong and owned up to her mistake.

Re:Sorry for being picky, but...

[stuntpope]

Get thee to Wikipedia!

"The spelling judgment is found in the Authorized Version of the Bible. However, the spelling judgement (with e added) largely replaced judgment in the United Kingdom in a non-legal context, possibly because writing dg without a following e for the /d?/ was seen as an incorrect spelling. In the context of the law, however, judgment is preferred."

Re:I'm no lawyer, but

[Camael]

Actually, RIAA won. In simple terms her offer was "Okay I'm willing to plead guilty and pay you $300 inclusive of everything" and RIAA accepted. So the award is made against her. It's different from convincing the RIAA to "drop the matter".

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

[QuantumG]

I love the way people keep throwing around this word "guilty". Like this is a criminal case. The longer people apply criminal law terminology like "guilty" and "innocent" and "theft" the easier it will be for the copyright owners to get new criminal laws passed.

Stop playing their game.

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

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

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.' I disagree. I think it would have made perfect sense to use the civil litigation language, instead of criminal terms:

it's entirely possible she was liable, knew she was liable, and thus saw this as the cheapest way out

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.

Re:I'm no lawyer, but

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

In simple terms her offer was "Okay I'm willing to plead guilty and pay you $300 inclusive of everything" Correct, except for the "plead guilty" part. That's only in criminal cases. Well, a formal Rule 68 offer of judgment is something different than that. It's kind of a dare. It's saying to the RIAA:

Here's a judgment for $300. I'm throwing $300 on the floor. Either pick it up, or go forward.
I dare you to try to recover more than that.
If you don't recover more than that, you're going to be liable for all of the court costs from this day forward.
If you've got the guts, bring it on.
If you don't, pick up the $300 and get out of my life.

Re:Sanctions?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I notice that the settlement offer explicitly excludes any claims for sanctions that the defendant has already requested. Can you give more information on possible sanctions against the RIAA and/or their lawyers? Those of us who believe the RIAA's litigation tactics are frivolous would like to move for sanctions under Rule 11 (c), but the rule is quite limited, providing the offending party with a "safe harbor", and many judges are reluctant to invoke it altogether, as the consequences of a Rule 11 sanction against an attorney are very severe. So it is invoked rarely. I am not aware of any successful invocation of Rule 11 in the RIAA cases by a defendant. I am aware of one instance in which the judge disagreed with the defendant's lawyer on the merits of the underlying motion, found the Rule 11 motion to itself be frivolous, and has held that the defendant's lawyer should be sanctioned, based on several things he had done that irked the judge.

Re:Something Doesn't Compute

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Surely I must be missing something here. What is to stop every North Carolina civil defendant from offering a $1 judgment to the plaintiff? What does the defendant have to lose? It would seem that the worst case for the defendant is that the plaintiff doesn't accept and then the defendant is no better of worse off than he was before. But for the plaintiff, the stakes are huge. What did I miss, here? Actually, I would not be surprised to see a lot of defendants doing just that.

But there are consequences if the RIAA accepts the offer. There is a judgment against you, which shows up in a credit report, and in view of the judgment you can't claim to be the prevailing party and assert entitlement to attorneys fees.

But for many the Rule 68 offer of judgment will be a useful tool.

Re:ha

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

You would know better than anyone on Slashdot: How many lawyers does the RIAA sic on people in cases like this? Is $500/hr/atty a reasonable estimate of what they're being billed? Running some reasonable-but-very-much-guessed numbers in my head gets me to a cost of around $3,000-4,000 to the RIAA to respond to the Rule 68 offer alone. Then again, they may be acting in a more streamlined fashion than any other corporation with a major litigation strategy, or even using in-house counsel for these suits, for all I know. I know that they're spending a fortune, and I know that they're using law firms all across the country. In most cases they're using two law firms. They're also using in house counsel to direct the law firms. I don't know the hourly rates. I'll probably have a better idea after the Court issues its attorneys fees decision in Capitol v. Foster.

Re:Sorry for being picky, but...

[The One and Only]

Since most written languages in the Western world were standardized by their translation of the Bible, the Bible is a great source for this information.

I had a offer of judgment procedure

[t0qer]

One of the dot coms I worked for imploded. During the implosion there was a lot of confusion over who owned what, at the center of all this controversy was a little sun box that contained the source code for the company product.

At the time I was the IT guy for this company. I took my orders from the CEO because the CTO was just psycho. In one of the meetings between me, the CEO and CTO the CTO accused me of being on "Mind Altering drugs" at work because I had a can of get this.. Jolt Cola on my desk (This CTO was a devout mormon)

The CEO fired the CTO, then decided to pack up our office and head north from Sunnyvale to Alameda. Being the IT guy, it was my job to make sure the computers made it up there safely. A few months later the company completely imploded, everyone went off to work for different companies, and that was that or so I thought.

About a year later I got a court summons. The CTO was suing me for $15 million dollars. I was being accused of "Stealing his source code" because apparently the company didn't own that little sun box I moved. After a few initial rounds in pre-trial we were all set to go to trial.

My lawyer and I were sitting out in front of the courtroom when we got a surprise. The judges assistant came up to us and started telling us the CTO was willing to settle for $1500. He explained it like this..

"You know toq, we're really sick of this asshole. Me, the judge, the other lawyers all think he's a cocksucker, but you already know that. Just take the settlement"

Me, "But I didn't do anything wrong"

Assitant, "Well let me put it to you another way. If you don't take this settlement, it's going to mean a trial, which is going to mean jurors, and a whole bunch of menusha I don't want to get into, but it's going to cost ALOT of money. The judge is going to look at the fact that you didn't take this $1500 settlement, and wonder why you costed all these people time and money"

Me: "So the judge just wants this out of his hair, is that what you're saying?"

Assistant: "Yes"

So I took the settlement, nothing went down on my record.

I'm guessing this $300 RIAA case is the same deal. The judge probably got sick of the team of lawyers that represent the RIAA tying up his courtroom with petty bullshit, and i'm guessing the person taking the settlement got the same speech I did.