Slashdot Mirror
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."
Good to hear she can return to addressing more important things in life... like autism...
I'm just wondering why, genetically speaking, it should feel so good to hear about justice being served? Justice, fairness, reciprocity, selflessness: these things naturally feel good to most people, while their opposites usually feel bad, even when they have absolutely nothing to do with us.
If we were truly selfish creatures, wouldn't the opposite be true? We would have evidence that we could get away with our selfishness, and that would feel good. It seems our genetics code for cooperative behaviors over selfish ones. Is this simply the selfish best choice for individuals, to cooperate with each other, or can genes code for behaviors that are detrimental to the individual but good for the gene pool overall?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The blogger's name is Kathleen Seidel, not Katherine. The previous Slashdot story got this wrong as well.
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!
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
...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.
Eliot Spitzer was just the beginning. With all the massive economic damage lawyers have caused businesses and consumers, it will be interesting to see if similar numbers of lawyers can start receiving similar levels of fines and sentences, not to mention regulatory legislation. As it is, perhaps more lawyers graduate these days than MBAs, engineers, and MDs, and the amount of wealth being parasitically siphoned from productive society is approaching Roman Civilization Bureaucratic Collapse proportions.
I don't think there has ever been such an arrogant caste profession since the days of the Egyptian priesthood. We need to see massive amounts of judges, lawyers, and politicians losing their personal assets and serving lengthy prison terms. Charge them all with bribery, extortion, abuse of power, and put a government ordered price freeze limiting all lawyer wages to $50 hour maximum.
Fuck "sanctions". This guy needs to be stripped of practicing law ever again, as well as being forced to pay a significant 6 figure fine towards his attempted victim. And we need to see much higher standards and harsher penalties of these "officers" of the "Law".
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
I am not sure that there were any legal fees. According to her blog post, Ms. Seidel was represented by the First Amendment team at Public Citizen. Perhaps Public Citizen should be the ones recovering some of the expenses? In any case they should be congratulated for the win!
From looking at what looks like the email notice of order, it appears that the blogger may have represented herself. That is simply great. Reference to the order also implies that the lawyer seriously overstepped the rules by issuing a subpoena to a nonparty without court approval. I would expect sanctions in such a context. If the blogger gets serious, she can maximize sanctions if she can demonstrate a pattern or practice of similar such abuse. I wish her good luck.
Paraphrased from Kathy's extremely... "in-depth" blog http://www.neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/149:
Since June of 2006, Mr. Shoemaker (scumbag) has been paid fees in 22 VICP cases, 15 of which were dismissed.
Total fees paid to this DB for the DISMISSED CASES are up to $254,291.25.
Total fees paid for cases which resulted in awards were $330.158.04.
Oh, and it was 4 hours after this info was published on Kathy's Blog that she was served with the Subpoena.
!#&*