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

[Lloyd_Bryant]

I'm not terribly convinced Jammie Thomas is a great case to fight the RIAA with;

Have I misunderstood the paperwork? reading between the lines it appears her lawyer is withdrawing and he is concerned that he has information contradictory to the line of argument his client wants put forward, and as an officer of the court, money matters aside, he feels he cannot go on.

I read it differently. The motion is filed for in camera review, because it contains information that would be of use to the plaintiff, so he wants to keep it limited to just the judge. It's quite common for a lawyer to have information that contradicts his "official" stance in the case, so such information by itself probably wouldn't constitute a reason to withdraw.

It appears that money *is* the primary factor here. Jammie Thomas owes him a lot of money, and even though she's promised to make payments, he doesn't want to allow her to dig herself in deeper. He tried once before to withdraw from the case, but the court refused him permission to do so. This may have had something to do with his rather lackluster performance during the previous trial...

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:When your lawyer withdraws, you're probably gui

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

When your lawyer won't even stick around to see you get torn apart in the courtroom, perhaps it's time to cut a deal.

I'm sure she tried hard to do that. But what the RIAA has no doubt done is to raise the settlement bar to a number she can't afford. Partly out of retribution. Partly out of a desire not to see the case settle at this juncture, because, in its present posture, the case is an embarrassment to the RIAA and a stern rebuke to their moronic legal theory. Partly because they know she's defenseless, having either no lawyer or having a lawyer who's there only involuntarily.

I know these guys. This is how they work. They smell blood.

Re:When your lawyer withdraws, you're probably gui

[Anonymous Coward]

Ray, I'm curious why you haven't said much at all as to why her lawyer might be withdrawing from the case. Aside from your customary, thinly-veiled swipes at the plaintiffs, I don't see anything addressing this. If her case is as strong as you have been implying consistently in your comments over the past months (and I think I've read every single one of them), it certainly seems odd that an attorney would bail on a slam-dunk case like this one. Surely there has to be another (more objective) explanation or two?

Thanks, /HJ

p.s. I'm not trying to be a troll, and I happen to dislike (and disagree with) the RIAA and their tactics as much as anyone else here. But it's equally hard for me to stomach an ostensibly neutral (in the sense of not being involved with this case), eminently qualified observer such as yourself constantly cheerleading for the defense, while giving no quarter whatsoever to the possibility that the opposing side's arguments might have at least some merit.

Re:When your lawyer withdraws, you're probably gui

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I'm not trying to be a troll, and I happen to dislike (and disagree with) the RIAA and their tactics as much as anyone else here. But....

I suspect you are a troll, but...

1. He is leaving because he hasn't been paid.

2. I have never expressed any opinion about the underlying case; I am not familiar with the facts of this particular case.

Re:When your lawyer withdraws, you're probably gui

[Timesprout]

the case is an embarrassment to the RIAA and a stern rebuke to their moronic legal theory

I have never expressed any opinion about the underlying case; I am not familiar with the facts of this particular case.

So which is it?

So this is justice in America

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

We all knew stories about backward country with religious zealot wielding harsh laws punishing poor oppressed victim for seemingly trivial offense, but this kind of cases are telling you the America is not that much different, it is just that corporates+money have replaced the religious zealots+dogma.

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."

Re:When your lawyer withdraws, you're probably gui

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

the case is an embarrassment to the RIAA and a stern rebuke to their moronic legal theory

I have never expressed any opinion about the underlying case; I am not familiar with the facts of this particular case.

So which is it?

Fair question. Let me clarify.

I have never expressed any opinion about the underlying facts. I.e., I don't know what Ms. Thomas did or didn't do, or what was going on with her computer, etc.

I do know that (a) Jacobson's testimony, upon which plaintiffs' entire case rested, was bogus and inadmissible; (b) the plaintiffs' legal theory, which has now been rejected by the Court, was bogus; (c) plaintiffs have no evidence that defendant was a "distributor'; and (d) their statutory damages theory is unlikely to pass constitutional muster.