RIAA Short on Funds? Fails to Pay Attorney Fees

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Can it be that the RIAA, or the "Big 4" record companies it represents, are short on funds? It turns out that despite the Judge's order, entered a month ago, telling them to pay Debbie Foster $68,685.23 in attorneys fees, in Capitol v. Foster, they have failed to make payment. Ms. Foster has now had to ask the Court to enter Judgment, so that she can commence 'post judgment collection proceedings'. According to Ms. Foster's motion papers (pdf), her attorneys received no response to their email inquiry about payment. Perhaps the RIAA should ask their lawyers for a loan?"

Comments

Show Me the Money

[moehoward]

So where is all that cash going that they are "winning" in settlements??

Oh, that's right! Straight to the artists' pockets. Sorry for the stupid question. I was wondering how Fiddy Cent's new gold tooth was financed.

Re:Show Me the Money

[an.echte.trilingue]

They obviously have the money to pay. But the point (or one of the points) of these lawsuits is to make people's lives hell, to make examples, to discourage copyright infringement by others. Here, they are trying to make show that even if you fight and win, you still lose.

Re:Show Me the Money

[iluvcapra]

"The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly." --L. Ron Hubbard

Different end in LRH's case, but the same means. The tort system, without careful rules, is just a big harassment system that rich people can use on poor people.

Re:Show Me the Money

[HermMunster]

This is the RIAA abusing the system. Only at this time they have to pay with more than just their bad name. I"m sure the courts have a penalty system to account for the situation where the court costs aren't paid for in an effort to further attempt to create financial hardship on the defendant and their lawyers.

You wouldn't steal a car ...

[multisync]

Actually, this shouldn't surprise us. They haven't lived up to their end of the copyright bargain, either.

I for one....

[3seas]

...refuse to buy from our music industry overlords.

baffles me

[SEAL]

According to Ms. Foster's motion papers (pdf), her attorneys received no response to their email inquiry about payment.

If you're trying to collect money owed due to a legal ruling, it'd be prudent for your attorney to pick up the phone, and/or put the request in writing and send it via certified mail.

RIAA attorney's statement before the bench

[JonTurner]

"Your Honor, we ask for your understanding and leniency in this case. Rest assured my client and I are suing people as fast as we can. I mean, it's not like money grows on trees. We have to wring it out of grandmothers and college students and people who don't even have PCs and hey, those cheap bastards just aren't coughing it up like they used to. Plus, it's getting harder and harder to trick the public into buying the latest Bubblegum Boys album. So even with a crappy contract that guarantees poverty for the musician via advance fees, bills for studio time and 18th century "breakage" clauses, times are tough for us over at the chrome & glass RIAA skyscraper. We need just a little more time to get some cash together. We've got hungry executives to feed, and those Gulfstream jets don't exactly fly themselves, you know... etc. etc. etc."

Or something like that.

Re:RIAA attorney's statement before the bench

[dch24]

We've got hungry executives to feed, and those Gulfstream jets don't exactly fly themselves, you know

There's more truth to that than meets the eye. I'm sure, if all the assets in Enron were totalled, there was enough to settle accounts. That is, before the Execs cashed out, hopped in their Gulfstreams, and exited the country.

If the RIAA or the Labels behind it are about to go under, I promise you long before any of us knows about it, the Execs will bail with golden parachutes. Everyone else can scrabble over the pennies.

Do I Hear A Bid For (1) Capitol Bldg?

[cmholm]

Other than having assets seized by the Sheriff and auctioned off to settle the debt? No, none.

Which occasionally leads to an attorney for a major corporation running to the court house steps as said corporation is about to have its home office auctioned off to cover some paltry judgement. Sometimes the suits forget that the legal process does in fact have an end game, and that their team lost.

Re:Contempt of court?

[Speare]

'Contempt of Court' is a charge that comes from the Judge, not the parties. You can't file to hold the other litigants in CoC. An annoyed Judge might listen appreciatively to the complaint, but usually they don't even want to hear either party make the suggestion.

Re:Email inquiry?

[kebes]

Email is not verifiable, sure. However the email in this case appears merely to have been a follow-up along the lines of "Remember when that judge ruled you needed to send us a cheque? We still have not got it!" It was a courtesy to send the email at all. Even without sending the email, Capitol is legally required to send the cheque for the amount owed. Failure to do so is breaking the law. It's not the defendant's job to run after them, continually requesting that they pay what they were legally mandated to pay.

But an email seems to be wide open to "we never got it" or "the guy that checks that account was out the last two weeks."

I'm sure either excuse would be laughed out of court. The court ruled against Capitol, at which point they were made aware of their legal obligations (in particular, to pay a certain sum). They are now breaking the law, regardless of whether they got the friendly reminder.

The only reason to mention the email at all is that the fact that they are ignoring communication attempts is itself somewhat amusing.

not if they're using email...

[SuperBanana]

IANAL, but I think this would be a good time for Foster to hit 'em with Contempt of Court... Is that possible?

Kind of. However, you damn well shouldn't be using email:

According to Ms. Foster's motion papers (pdf), her attorneys received no response to their email inquiry about payment. Perhaps the RIAA should ask their lawyers for a loan?"

What, a letter via registered mail was too expensive? Gimme a break, guys. This crowd should know, email is easy to lose (on purpose or completely accidentally) or never get in the first place. Registered mail, someone has to SIGN for and accept. Then they have no wiggle-room...the other party is holding on to a piece of paper with your (or your representative's) signature.

Re:Maybe they really do need the money

[mooingyak]

I had thought the intent was more about fear than moneymaking on the part of the RIAA.

In other words, I had thought that it didn't matter so much to them whether or not they made money off of any given suit, but made people afraid that they might be the next target.

Re:Oh, but there is...

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

That's what the 'post judgment collection proceedings' are all about. The RIAA would be wise to just pay up before things get really expensive for them. Yes and I imagine they will have to pay the defendant's legal costs for the judgment enforcement proceedings as well.

Apathetic justice system

[jgarra23]

This isn't really news so much as it is just the result of the apathetic civil justice system in America. Our judicial system here is really only expedient with executing (most) sentences when it is a criminal trial (convict goes to prison immediately usually). When it comes to civil cases, orders and judgments can take forever to be enforced. This isn't news, just a fact of our broken system.

The worst is when an attorney for whichever side will act as an officer of the court and then you're liable never to get your paperwork from them (or judgment). These private attorneys are money-hungry and as a result over-worked and almost never bother to make sure that things get done unless it benefits them directly.

In this case, I'll bet the only reason her lawyer is pushing the judgment is so they can collect the fees for their time. If she were collecting something she'd never see it except for maybe pennies on the dollar from the collection agency.

Par for the course

[Archtech]

This is precisely the kind of behaviour to be expected of a big modern corporation. It's not quite accurate to say that they ignore the law completely. It's more that they don't have any of the emotional respect for law that some (I hope, many) of us individual citizens have. Sure, we might cut corners in a few small matters... parking where we technically shouldn't, taking some stationery from the office cupboard, that kind of thing. But we would never dream of defying a court order.

Joel Bakan explains what's going on in his great book The Corporation. Thanks to a framework of laws set up in Britain, the USA and other places in the late 18th and 19th centuries, corporations get treated as people - except that they don't have all the responsibilities of people. You can't imprison a corporation, and if it runs out of other people's money, it can simply declare bankruptcy and leave everyone else holding the bag.

As Bakan explains, while corporations are hard to pin down legally, they are increasingly compelled by law to leave no stone unturned in the search for profits. Not just profits, maximum profits. Not just maximum profits, but maximum profits NOW. That makes them liable to behave, in some important ways, just like human psychopaths. A corporation has no "better nature"; no decency, no innate or learned morality, and very little actual reason to fear the law. To it, "ethics" means a set of showy acts designed to improve its public image.

So it's hard to be surprised when a corporation behaves the way the RIAA has done. It simply compares the upside with the downside, and acts accordingly. Don't expect it to think or act like a decent human being: there's no "there" there.