New Attorneys Fee Decision Against RIAA

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has gotten slammed again, this time in Oregon, as the Magistrate Judge in Atlantic v. Andersen has ruled that Tanya Andersen's motion for attorneys fees should be granted. The Magistrate, in his 15-page decision, noted that, despite extensive pretrial discovery proceedings, 'when plaintiffs dismissed their claims in June 2007, they apparently had no more material evidence to support their claims than they did when they first contacted defendant in February 2005.....' and concluded that 'Copyright holders generally, and these plaintiffs specifically, should be deterred from prosecuting infringement claims as plaintiffs did in this case.' This is the same case in which (a) the RIAA insisted on interrogating Ms. Andersen's 10-year-old girl at a face-to-face deposition, (b) the defendant filed RICO counterclaims against the record companies, and (c) the defendant recently converted her RICO case into a class action"

Comments

Re:Precedent!

[StormReaver]

Lower court decisions, such as this one, do not set precendents in any court other than their own. If the RIAA were to bring another similar case before this particular court, then this decision could be used to argue attorney fees against the RIAA. No other court is required to consider this result in its own decision.

If the decision is appealed and upheld, then a precendent has been set for the circuit in which it was appealed. All lower courts within that one circuit would be required to apply the appeals court's decision in all subsequent similar cases.

See this article for details.

Re:Precedent!

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Lower court decisions, such as this one, do not set precendents in any court other than their own. 1. That is an overly simplistic view. Yes if there is an appellate decision in one circuit that is binding authority over all district court decisions within that circuit, and it is usually the only absolutely binding authority, other than Supreme Court decisions, on each district court within that circuit.

2. But it is very very rare that any case is ever determined on the basis of an absolutely binding higher court authority. Almost invariably, where there is such authority available, the attorneys have figured that out long ago and there is no litigation to "decide".

3. Most briefs that are submitted cite plenty of non-binding judicial authorities, and even where they are citing binding higher authority, it is usually based on vastly different sets of facts.

4. There are numerous issues in the RIAA cases that will be decided on the basis of the fact that the RIAA has both brought, and pressed, numerous frivolous cases, with no evidence that the defendant committed a copyright infringement, just as was done in the Andersen case. And in those cases it continues to try to extort a "settlement" from the defendant even though it knows it has no case against the defendant. And in those cases where the defendant hangs tough, and is willing to see the case through to its conclusion and a jury trial.... the RIAA drops the case, as it did here. See, e.g., Capitol v. Foster, Elektra v. Santangelo, and Elektra v. Wilke. This recurring phenomenon will be relevant to future attorneys fees decisions, to possible sanctions motions against the record companies and their attorneys, to the record companies' claims of a "Noerr Pennington" defense which is not applicable to "sham" litigations, to claims of copyright misuse, and numerous other issues, in all district courts across the country, and will be cited by appellate courts when these cases finally do get to the appellate courts -- an event the RIAA is trying to avoid.

So yes. This judge's recognition of the RIAA's tactics is a very important precedent.

Re:Precedent!

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Actually, this "court" doesn't set any precedent at all. Magistrate "judges" aren't actually judges: they're Article II employees, created by Congress, who serve at the whim of actual judges, i.e. Article III Judges. Magistrate Judges cannot actually do anything: their entire power comes from their parent district court's approval. 1. They certainly are judges. They are not life tenure judges, but they are judges.

2. They do not serve at anybody's "whim".

3. Magistrate decisions are ctied all the time.

4. There are many instances in which they have binding authority in the matter before them.

5. As the underlying article makes perfectly clear, this was not a binding authority, but awaits approval by the District Judge.

6. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but in 34 years of working in the litigation field I cannot recall ever having seen a District Judge reject the Magistrate Judge's findings. Usually Magistrate's "recommendations" -- like this 15-page decision -- are extremely thorough.

Re:A long way towards discouraging the mess

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Methinks they should base the attorney's fees awarded on what the plaintiffs spent on attorney and court costs. I'm sure the defendant would have been happy to spend more (yes, she won, but she obviously couldn't have known that at the onset), and the plaintiffs have clearly indicated what they believe the case was worth to try and work through the courts... I agree with you. Certainly, if the RIAA makes the mistake of challenging the reasonableness of the legal fees incurred, the Court will find the RIAA's own fees to be highly relevant. See, e.g. March 15, 2007, Order and Decision in Capitol v. Foster.

Re:Precedent!

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

The expectation by the RIAA of their attempts at extortion being protected by Noerr/Pennington probably encouraged them to start (and to continue) making them......could you give us a little insight into why the RIAA would fail at such a defense? 1. Well, last week's decision by Judge Lazzara in UMG v. Del Cid, rejecting the RIAA's attempt to rely on Noerr Pennington, gives you one of the many reasons.

2. Defendant's opposition papers in Lava v. Amurao and our opposition memorandum in UMG v. Lindor give you some others.

3. I can't here discuss with you all of the many reasons the RIAA's attempts to hide behind Noerr Pennington will fail, since the RIAA lawyers seem to read everything I write on the internet, but if you follow the legal documents filed on my blog you'll no doubt see more on the subject.

4. By the way, I doubt that they thought about Noerr Pennington when they started doing the illegal things they do; I think N-P is just an afterthought their lawyers came up with in hopes of preventing the Courts from finding out about their illegal conduct. But it will all come out. In the Napster case they lost their attorney client privilege by reason of the fact that their attorneys had lied to the US Department of Justice team investigating their digital music price fixing scheme. See "Court Finds Reasonable Cause to Believe that UMG and Capitol Deceived United States Dept of Justice", Recording Industry vs. The People, April 21, 2006.