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RIAA Threatens Harvard Law Prof With Sanctions
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Unhappy with Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson's motion to compel the deposition of the RIAA's head 'Enforcer', Matthew J. Oppenheim, in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, the RIAA threatened the good professor with sanctions (PDF) if he declined to withdraw his motion. Then the next day they filed papers opposing the motion, and indeed asked the Court to award monetary sanctions under Rule 37 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure."
If Mr. Oppenheimer has been the RIAA's attorney (meaning agent only) then there has to have been someone at the RIAA giving him directions and telling him what to do. Basically the RIAA is trying to hold both ends of the stick: when you ask the RIAA: "who's the person who can speak for the corporation about this litigation", they say it's Mr. Oppenheimer. When you then say "Ok, can I ask Mr. Oppenheimer some questions?" they say: no, he's actually our lawyer so he can't tell you anything.
Say the RIAA sues someone. This means they gathered evidence etc. But the RIAA is not an actual human, just a "legal person". So some human employee of the RIAA must be able to testify to things like "we told our investigators to look for X" or "this is how much money we lost due to this alleged infringement". The RIAA is trying to claim that the employee who knows all this stuff is at the same time the RIAA's lawyer, so he only knows this stuff as their attorney and can't testify to it. It's a clever way to avoid having to present their case.
The case to which you are referring is Arkell vs Pressdram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkell_vs_Pressdram#Litigation
The salient point is that Arkell's lawyers wrote to Private Eye saying "Our client's attitude to damages will depend on the nature of your reply". Private Eye's response was "We would be interested to know what your client's attitude to damages would be if the nature of our reply were as follows: Fuck off".
I recommend that people take this option more often. I *am* a lawyer - this is legal advice.
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
You mean THIS guy:
;)
"was the Senior Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs for the RIAA."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Oppenheim
"Mr. Oppenheim then became active as one of the lead litigators representing the record industry in the landmark "file-sharing" cases against peer-to-peer networks, including against Napster, Aimster, AudioGalaxy, Morpheus, Grokster and Kazaa."
http://www.spoke.com/info/p6QsSD8/MatthewOppenheim
"It is not legal, ethical or cool to copy somebody else's CD for your own use."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/june03/copyright2.html
See, he doesn't even agree with himself. What the RIAA does is not legal, ethical or cool since they copy the artists CDs for their own use. Bad Bad RIAA
Well, the court can't impose sanctions under Rule 37 for fighting back.
Rule 37 says the court can impose sanction, basically, if someone refuses or fails to appear, respond, answer etc. when so ordered by the court:
(A) Motion; Grounds for Sanctions. The court where the action is pending may, on motion, order sanctions if:
(i) a party or a party's officer, director, or managing agent â" or a person designated under Rule 30(b)(6) or 31(a)(4) â" fails, after being served with proper notice, to appear for that person's deposition; or
(ii) a party, after being properly served with interrogatories under Rule 33 or a request for inspection under Rule 34, fails to serve its answers, objections, or written response.
(B) Certification. A motion for sanctions for failing to answer or respond must include a certification that the movant has in good faith conferred or attempted to confer with the party failing to act in an effort to obtain the answer or response without court action.
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