Jammie Thomas May Face RIAA Trial Alone

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "With her trial coming up on June 15th, Jammie Thomas has received a motion by her lawyer to withdraw from the highly publicized case, Capitol Records v. Thomas. Ms. Thomas said in a written declaration (PDF) obtained from her by her lawyer that she was not opposed to the lawyer's withdrawal, and waived any hearing on the matter. The court papers submitted by the lawyer (PDF) also indicated that the RIAA was not opposed to the withdrawal — i.e. it graciously consented to Ms. Thomas having no legal representation — but was opposed to any continuance (i.e. the RIAA wants to make sure that Ms. Thomas does not have sufficient time to find other legal representation, or to prepare to handle the trial herself, or to enable new counsel to prepare to handle the trial). Nice of them."

Comments

Re:Bad case

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a nice guy because so far he's done almost $130,000 worth of work on this case, for which he will never get paid for, as he mentions on page 3 this PDF file.

He also says this:

"In its previous Order the Court noted "that the Defendant has offered to continue
to make regular, monthly payments to Toder, which evinces a good faith effort, on her
part, to make good on her debt to him, and is also an indication that communications have
not, in fact, broken down between Toder, and his client, to such an extent as to warrant a
withdrawal." Order of August 31, 1997 (Dkt. No. 48). Please see Declaration of Brian
N. Toder filed concurrently (under seal) with the instant motion which demonstrate the
opposite.

So when he first tried to leave the case, it looks like the court said "No, she says she's gonna try to pay monthly sums, and you guys can work it out". Looks like she's not keeping her end of the bargain.

Re:So this is justice in America

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Is this the kind of justice we can expect in America? Having your life financially ruined by astronomical damages for copying songs?! How can any sane judge with any sense of justice even allow this to continue?

This particular judge seems to be aware of the problem. On September 24, 2008, he wrote:

"The Court would be remiss if it did not take this opportunity to implore Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer to peer network cases.... The defendant is an individual, a consumer. She is not a business. She sought no profit from her acts..... [T]he damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs."