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!

[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.