Anti-Spam Lawyer Loses Appeal, and His Possessions

Techdirt is reporting that one particularly rabid anti-spam fighter has not only lost his case, but most of his worldly possessions as well. James Gordon tried to set himself up as an ISP to get around the conventions of the CAN SPAM act in order to set up a litigation house designed to sue companies that spam. Unfortunately a judge did not take kindly to this trick and ordered him to pay $110,000 to the firm he was suing, a decision that was not only upheld on appeal but accompanied by some very unkind words trying to shut down litigation mills like his. "But, perhaps even more fascinating is that the guy, James Gordon, didn't just lose the lawsuit, it appears he lost most of his possessions as well. Remember that ruling telling him to pay the $110k to Virtumundo? He refused. The company sent the debt to a collections agency, but told Gordon they'd call off the collections agency if he dropped the appeal. Gordon didn't."

Comments

Re:He should have set up a company to sue for him

[digitalunity]

Stone v. Frederick Hobby Associates II, LLC, 2001 Conn. Super. LEXIS 1853,
Superior Court, judicial district of Stamford-Norwalk, at Stamford, Docket No.
CV000181620S (July 10, 2001) (Mintz, J.),

Using an LLC to shield yourself from fraud doesn't necessarily work. As always, YMMV, IANAL, subject to jurisdiction, etc.

Standing

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

The spammers are violating the law by spamming.

For the court to be able to act on this assumption, it needs to make a finding of fact to that effect. Before such a finding of fact can be made, other aspects of the complaint must be evaluated. For example, the plaintiff needs to actually be entitled to pursue the complaint they are making.

So basically, in this case, the law says that to pursue a case against a spammer, the plaintiff must be an ISP. Before the court can decide whether the party being accused is actually spamming, it must determine whether the plaintiff is an ISP. The plaintiff failed that requirement, according to the court, case closed.

This may sound annoying to you in this one case, but really, this needs to be the case, in order for the legal system to throw out bad cases quickly. Read up on standing.