Blogger Successfully Quashes Subpoena

Ares writes "In a follow-up to Blogger Subpoenaed for Criticizing Trial Lawyers, Katherine Seidel's blog indicates that not only has she successfully quashed her subpoena, but the lawyer issuing said subpoena is now under orders to appear and explain why the courts shouldn't sanction him for it. This should be interesting, because in addition to Ms. Seidel's subpoena in New Hampshire, the lawyer issued a similar subpoena to a doctor and a Harvard professor under similar circumstances."

Comments

More important things

[Ossifer]

Good to hear she can return to addressing more important things in life... like autism...

Re:More important things

[PopeRatzo]

I can't imagine what else I'd feed my pet alligators if the supply of lawyers ran out!

I hope you never get arrested for a crime you didn't commit or your kid isn't poisoned by some product made by a careless corporation.

I hope you never get prosecuted or sued by the RIAA because your neighbor's son hacked your wireless router and used it to play with torrentz.

I hope your civil rights are never violated or that you never need the protection of bankruptcy court.

I hope you never have a problem with your income taxes, or a dispute with your business partner or get rear-ended by a drunk driver.

I hope you never have to set up a trust fund to care for a relative who is too ill to care for herself or have a dispute with your bank or have your identity stolen.

I hope you never get married unwisely and have to divorce from a spouse who wants to hurt you as much as possible.

I hope you never get overlooked for promotion because you are too old, or too black or too female.

It can be argued that lawyers do as much to protect our freedoms as the men and women in our military. Maybe more.

People who think our lives and our country would be better without lawyers are as stupid as stupid gets.

Hooray for a bit of legal sanity

[Dutch Gun]

Well, how about that... If only this sort of story were not the exception rather than the rule.

I have a friend who recently started a small business (he makes board games). On release of his first game, he was immediately sent a letter from a competitor's lawyer demanding either cease-and-desist, or a licensing agreement for the use of the term "Superheroes*". Are you kidding me?! My understanding is that this company routinely threatens any small business (they're fairly small too) that creates a game with "Superheroes" in the name, and threatens legal action or a licensing payment.

Most of these companies run on a shoestring budget and caved, but my friend hired a lawyer to write an aggressive response, threatening countersuits, etc. My understanding is that he never heard from them again. In an ideal world, this sort of through-the-legal-system extortion and bullying would be severely reprimanded, but in the real world, a small business is generally considered lucky if they only have to shell out a few hundred (or thousand) in lawyer fees.

* It wasn't really that, but a similarly generic term. I don't want to stir anything up for my friend. Lawyers may be listening!

Re:Justice sure feels good

[Hatta]

Injustices benefit a few, justice benefits us all. By the numbers, you're more likely to benefit from justice than injustice.

What I want to know...

[fm6]

...is how much in the way of legal bills did Seidel run up getting the supoena quashed. If it was a lot, we should be outraged. And if we're outraged, we should express our outrage in a constructive manner: go to her web site, click on "donate" and drop a few bucks in her kitty.

And don't say "She can get damages from that shyster for his misuse of the legal system". That's a lot harder to do than people seem to realize.