Slashdot Mirror
UMG v. Lindor Ends, No Fees, No Sanctions
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The 5-year-old case of UMG Recordings v. Lindor (which we've discussed all those years) has come to a close in Brooklyn, without ever reaching the deposition and document production of MediaSentry. The District Judge denied the RIAA's motions for discovery sanctions but granted the RIAA's motion for voluntary dismissal without prejudice and without attorneys fees, adopting the report and recommendation of the Magistrate Judge."
This was civil court.
It wasn't "DOJ vs. Lindor".
Regarding attorney's fees, from the decision:
In addition to the defendant's delayed disclosures, Beckerman, defendant's counsel, adopted an unduly contentious approach throughout this litigation (albeit the same can be said of plaintiff's counsel). For that reason alone, his request for attorney's fees and costs is not only denied but is also inappropriate.
Sounds like the judge was pretty annoyed, and is taking his ball and going home.
And that would be why Europe uses the loser-pays system, with security of costs for out-of-jurisdiction claimants.
Reading the judge's decision, he blames most of the court costs on the fact that the Lindors may have had a houseguest in 2004, and that she sold her computers sometime between 2004 and 2008, which was a loss of evidence for the RIAA. If they had disclosed their houseguest then a lot of this could have been averted, according to the judge. Talk about overcompensation for a small discrepancy, you effectively ruin a family because they didn't disclose a houseguest they had for an unknown amount of time. I am not a lawyer, but that seems like a pretty large case of overkill.
The judge's decision seems to be based entirely upon his having accepted as gospel the first version of Ms. Yanick Raymond-Wright's testimony, and totally ignored the second version contained in her errata sheet. At her deposition she testified that she spent a considerable amount of time at Ms. Lindor's house during the Summer of 2004. Thereafter, Ms. Raymond-Wright consulted her records and realized that she was in school in the Summer of 2004, so that it was another Summer, not the Summer of 2004. The trier of fact, at the trial, would have been permitted to determine which of the two versions to accept. Judge Trager was not the trier of fact, since this was a jury case. So the judge -- without even observing the demeanor of witnesses -- made a decision which it was beyond his authority to make.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
No fees is sanity? Shouldn't the RIAA have to pay for bringing what seems to be an essentially frivolous lawsuit?
Worse: dismissed without prejudice.
In other words the RIAA can rinse and repeat... B-b
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Judges note, among other things, that record labels didn't dramatically lower their prices for online music as compared to physical CDs despite the fact that they "experienced dramatic cost reductions in producing" it.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin