RIAA Wants To Bar Jammie From Making Objections

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In the Duluth, Minnesota case headed for a re-trial on June 15th, Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset, the RIAA has filed a motion seeking to bar the defendant, Jammie Thomas-Rasset (she got married recently), from making objections to the plaintiffs' copyright registration documents. To preempt those of you reacting with shock and anger at the American judicial system, let me assure you this motion has nothing to do with the American judicial system; the RIAA's motion has the chance of a snowball in Hell of being granted, as there is simply no legal basis for preventing a person from making valid legal objections in Trial #2, just because the lawyer she had in Trial #1 didn't make similar objections. I'm guessing that the RIAA lawyers realized they have some kind of problem with their paperwork, and thought this a clever way of short-circuiting it. Instead, of course, they have merely red-flagged it for Ms. Thomas-Rasset's new legal team. A few days earlier, the RIAA lawyers filed a similarly ludicrous motion trying to keep Ms. Thomas-Rasset's expert witness from testifying; that too is doomed."

Comments

What a non-story

[CajunArson]

The copyright registration documents are merely the paperwork that indicates that the copyright owners registered their works... which is a necessary precondition to suing for damages. The documents themselves also establish a prima facie presumption that the plaintiffs actually own the copyrights to the works that are allegedly infringed. In other words: Even if this motion to suppress objections fails, the defense is going to have to prove that the plaintiffs do not have rights to the copyrights in question... good luck trying to prove that. Frankly, the motion is not as evil as people here will make it out to be, since the issue of ownership of the copyrights isn't really in dispute anyway, and it will save both sides time & money to get to the important parts of the case.

Another thing to note is that this appears to be a new trial, which is not the same thing as an appeal. Despite what many people think, an appeal is not like a do-over of the original case. Once the original trial has been carried out, an appeal can only be made of issues that were properly disputed and objected to at trial. So, if a fact is established at trial, and there is no clear objection that is preserved for appeal, you can't argue it, even if you think that would be a great way to win the case during appeal. An appeal is almost always about questions of law instead of fact as well, and appellate courts usually give a great deal of deference to what the factfinders (usually the jury) determined during the trial, and will only overturn or (more commonly) vacate a lower court's factfinding if the jury reached a clearly erroneous conclusion. In fact, there is actually no constitutional right of appeal. By standard judicial custom most cases do get one appeal as long as they weren't dismissed with prejudice (for something like a patently frivolous claim, or for a case that clearly lacked standing like suing God).

    Since this case is a brand new trial, there is likely little that cannot be brought back into play, for what little that's worth.

Re:it flies in the face of common sense

[Insanity Defense]

In many legal systems, appeals are limited to matters of law, not matters of fact. At least in certain levels of the legal system. The highest courts don't want to bother themselves with deciding the facts, they want to spend their precious time on examining the law. Whether the RIAA has their paperwork in order is a matter of fact.

Which does not apply here as this is not an appeal. The original trial was negated due to inappropriate jury instructions. That makes this effectively a new first trial (sort of like in football where you can get a new first down).