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Defendant Says Righthaven Should Pay Legal Fees
Hugh Pickens writes "On June 20 District Court Judge Philip Pro found that Kentucky resident Wayne Hoehn was protected by fair use in posting a Las Vegas Review-Journal column on a sports website. Now Hoehn's attorneys have submitted a $34,000 bill and asked that Judge Pro require Righthaven to pay it. The $34,000 could be just the tip of the iceberg for Righthaven, should the Democratic Underground prevail in what likely will be a far larger fee demand."
I think that fee shifting should automatically be a part of any civil case. During the settlement, dismissal, or awarding process, the judge should be required to ask both sides if the bringer of the suit should pay legal fees, or a percentage of. As it stands, when you sue, most of the time you have nothing to lose and everything to gain if you get the right lawyer. Change that, break the cycle, and sanity might have a fighting chance.
I like this as it would discourage these particular trolls from their 'income dragnet' of just accusing as many people as possible.
It's only a matter of time before they get to a judge who is either in the pocket of the IP mafia, or who was appointed by a politician who's in their pocket. He'll put an end to all this "fair use" nonsense.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
One thing about copyright laws is that the prevailing party in a copyright suit is entitled (as a matter of law) to attorney fees, as well as costs. Learned that from the NYCL.
I can't wait to repost a portion of the Las Vegas Review-Journal's article on it.
While the defendant won on fair use, the summary does not say that defendant would have won on lack of jursidictional grounds in that Righthaven did not have rights to sue when they filed the lawsuit in the first place.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
They will just bankrupt/shut down the company and open another one. The people perpetrated this shit, will not be prosecuted. So ?
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While I very much want to discourage these types of lawsuits, having a policy/law of paying the winner's fees might only encourage more frivolous lawsuits, especially where the fees are much higher than the liability. As it stands, lawyers won't take a case on contingency when the potential payout is very low: it's not worth their time, so there is a an opportunity cost discouragement to what would otherwise be a large volume of lawsuits. For example, a fender bender with a $1k in damages, no personal injury beyond another $1k in medical bills, many lawyers would not bother with. If you could get your legal fees paid for outside of the settlement though, it would be a different story: the loser could end up paying thousands of dollars in legal fees to the winner over a mere $2k in actual damages.
Then large companies would begin paying lawyers low retainers/fees, but with tons of benefits. Thus even if you win you'd only get twice minimum wage for your lawyer fees.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Simple solution, nationalize the legal system.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
More importantly, the judgment found something glossed over in the summary -- the court did not recognize Righthaven as an entity that had any significant rights in the copyright, and therefore could not sue in the first place.
That's because the agreement with Stephens Media was so specific in carving out Righthaven's rights to the copyright that the only right they really had, according to the court, was the right to sue others to protect the copyright. This is not a recognized transferable right.
That's a pretty big finding. You can't just assign your copyrights to another company for the sole purpose of suing others.
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Right now, the trial bar and lawyers in general have a stranglehold on governments and they won't want to do anything that jeopardizes their revenue streams. Healthcare cost go up largely due to the lack of tort reform. Drugs are expensive in this country because the companies are building in the cost of a future lawsuit. OB-Gyn's have completely moved out of some cities because the malpractice insurance costs are stupid high. The "english" system of loser pays makes a lot of sense. That being said, what if the government controlled the legal fees just like some politicians want to control gas prices or other commodities? Maybe the EPA could declare lawyer-speak as toxic to the environment. Oooo....coool.
A 3D chocolate printer, Righthaven facing it's own legal fees... man, there's sure to be unicorns farting rainbows somewhere today!
this is why we a loser pays solution in our court system.
... and get the democrat bloggers all riled up, I wonder how far Righthaven would have made it.
They also sued a bunch of other personal blogs, not just that political website. I hope Righthaven eats it in court and has to pay their legal fees. One of the bloggers they sued is known to me, and he's really been hit hard by it. Democratic Underground? Sure, to a point, but they very easily raised some funds. My friend? Not so easy...
You really want to mess with corporations out spending the little guy. The fix would be everyone is randomly assigned 1-2 lawyers and that is it. You could even make it a little better and have lawyers list their specialties and pull randomly from that pile for legal cases. It would instantly cause these out spend you into the poor house cases to disappear. It would also mean you better have a pretty good case and be pretty sure you can win because you don't know what lawyer you are going to get.
The other thing you could do is left the judges step in and say look clearly corporation XYZ is trying to spend the little guy into the ground, so here is a cap of what you can spend for this trial and if your caught playing games with pay rates to get more people the lawyers will be censured and you instantly loose the case. Lawyers repeat that crap and they are disbarred. That would instantly put an end to the spending game and it would put lawyers asses on the line to make sure things were fair. Judges could (I think they already do) have the ability to assign lawyers pro-bono so a judge could assign a lawyer that was as good as the corporations lawyer in that specific area of the law. That would also balance the scales as well.
There are easy ways to fix this, but the legal system isn't about to fix itself when it would cost lawyers money. It is up to the people to demand a change and so far it seems the average person could care less. That is typical of most people, if it doesn't effect them then they don't care about it.