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Court Renders $3 Judgment Against Spamhaus
www.sorehands.com writes "Back in 2006, e360Insight and David Linhardt obtained an $11.7M judgment against Spamhaus, an international anti-spam organization. The judgment was subsequently appealed and reduced to $27,002. That judgment was appealed yet again, and the appeals court has now vacated the earlier number and entered a judgment against Spamhaus in the amount of $3. (Yes, three dollars.) As you may recall, e360's oral arguments for the latest appeal were not well received by the court."
The ruling itself is a fairly entertaining diatribe about how e360 shot itself in the foot repeatedly and with enthusiasm throughout the case, and contains gems like this: "By failing to comply with its basic discovery obligations, a party can snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory."
These spammers are the people the ISPs should be going after for eating up bandwidth. How many people actually legitimately "opt-in" for spam? Probably pretty close to 0.
The spammers still won... Sure it's only 3 dollars.. But they still won. Instead of being burned at the stake like they deserve...
How is that justice or a good thing?
If they created a site where people could donate $3 to them, I wonder how many people would contribute?
Ok, I give up, why you?
I'd like to read the RTFA (or the ruling), but why on FSM's green earth do we, in 2011, have, instead of plain easy-to-read text, the image of text, rendered using fancy Javascript interface, using only about 30% of my 1280x800 screen? Where scrolling is "smooth" (i.e. laggy)?
Fuck this stupidity...
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
I would have awarded them three fiddy. :-)
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
In the US, you don't have to pay the winner's attorney's fees unless the judge specifically orders it. In this case, he did not. I also doubt that Spamhaus spent very much defending themselves in this case--the default judgment was because they didn't show up, and they went on to appeal the damages.
The initial victory in 2006 was in part due to the inability of the courts to grasp exactly what companies like 360 do for a living, and even less of an understanding how much they earn from their misdeeds. Everyone has a right to make cash, but to blame your entire shoddy organization's profits on a non-profits attempts to filter out noise is ludicrous to begin with and naive at best. Roll forward to 7 years since the suit was filed and you have a court that's at least partially educated and in some further sense, biased against spam operations. Cheers to Spamhaus for putting up the funds so the rest of us can enjoy a normal life.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
As explained to an anonymous coward above, lawyers fees are only awarded if it is declared in the judgement, and not for all cases where someone loses. In particular, lawyers fees are usually only awarded in cases where it would be unreasonable for a party to shoulder the burden of bringing the case to court, usually because one side is so utterly wronged that it's either "come on defendants, these people shouldn't have had to bring this matter to a court... you were clearly wrong, and decided to just scream out 'nu-huh'"... or "come on plaintiffs, this argument is the stupidest thing in the world, and you have no evidence and/or no sane legal theory to make your argument... they never should have had to defend this in court in the first place."
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Good to know. Thank you for your clarification on both the legal side and my broken English. I can sleep peacefully tonight. Its odd the level of satisfaction you get from this. I can imagine your face of victory as you scream from your keyboard ALL YOUR GRAMMAR ARE BELONG TO ME.
The real question I see is why is Spamhaus accountable for their losses at all. They are effectively a boycott list of ip's that provide spam e-mails. Is a website that says to boycott Disney and all it's subsidiarity responsible for Disney s losses? Nope. So why is Spamhaus?
If the e360 beancounters are as inapt as their lawyers, they might cash it in and hence by willful act accept the judgment (well, at least if the US system works similar to what I'm used to).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The defendant made legal errors regarding personal jurisdiction, thus losing their opportunity to get the case dismissed for lack of jurisdiction AND their opportunity to argue the merits.
The plaintiff made legal errors regarding discovery, thus losing their opportunity to recover damages.
The trial judge made legal errors that twice resulted in the verdict being overturned.
In the end, the case was decided without any actual evidence on the merits being admitted.
Justice!
http://xkcd.com/756//
Spam is UNSOLICITED!
If people signed up for it, then it is not spam.
Fight Spammers!
Heh, are you actually asking for a citation of someone's personal lack of intimate knowledge of another country's legal system? Wouldn't the citation be Draconis' actual post? Jeez, who wound /you/ up today.
I am an attorney, but this is not legal advice, and does not apply to your situation. If you want advice, pay my retainer.
Generally, responding at all confers jurisdiction, even if there was none to start with.
According to the opinion, spamhaus responded, and then changed it's mind.
Under traditional rules, all that could be done was contest jurisdiction, and any other act consented to jurisdiction (my civil procedure prof actually suggested using a letter rather than regular pleadings for good measure).
Under modern federal rules, and in most states, everything Canberra done at once--BUT you must deny Judie it croon in every pleading, or else.
hawk, Esq.
No, the "merits" had already been decided--due to Spamhaus' default (for whatever reason, they didn't properly argue to the court that they weren't subject to its jurisdiction), e360 had already "won" on the merits. The only question remaining was how much harm they had suffered from Spamhaus' actions--and since they didn't produce any appropriate evidence on that subject, they were awarded $3.
Spamhaus almost certainly would have won on the merits, if they had competently argued them. Alternatively, they probably would have gotten the case dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, if they had competently argued that. As it was, they didn't competently argue anything until it was too late to avoid judgment against them.
What I don't understand is how this is a "win". Yes, the court slapped SH on the wrist, but they still ruled against them. No beneficial precedent is set that I can see.
In this case the ruling clearly states that BOTH parties appealed the damages ruling. Spamhaus because they contended that the damages were for gross income not net income and e360 because the damages were too small. Who was at fault had already been determined and was not an issue.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
What I don't understand is how this is a "win". Yes, the court slapped SH on the wrist, but they still ruled against them. No beneficial precedent is set that I can see.
Precedent? In a civil suit? Stare Decisis is not operative in a civil suit, for good reason. Be illuminated.
Stare Decisis most definitely applies in civil cases. I think where you are getting confused, is the line that says:
The US is not a "civil law jurisdiction" -- it is a common law jurisdiction having derived its legal heritage from England. In contrast, France was (probably still is) a civil law jurisdiction and as I understand it, Louisiana is a civil law jurisdiction because of the substantial French history there (I could be wrong that it still is -- Quebec may also have a similar legal-system history).
Anyway, without a doubt, civil cases can be precedent. Of course, a trial court decision is not precedent as the term is usually thought of (it can be persuasive precedent, meaning other courts can follow it if they want to, or not follow it if they don't). So no matter what, this Spamhaus decision is not precedential in the usual sense, i.e., when people say "precedent" what they usually mean is mandatory precedent, meaning all courts below the deciding court must follow it. The most mandatory would be the US Supreme court decisions. As between two courts of appeals, the decision in one would be merely persuasive precedent in another court of appeals at the same level but in a different jurisdiction. The key is to think about the levels -- equivalent levels can decide the same issues differently if they want to. Precedent (mandatory) only applies to those courts below the deciding court. Nothing is below a trial court.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
You're confusing a Civil Law regime with a Civil Suit. Precedent does indeed matter in civil matters. After all, Sony v. Universal (the betamax case) was a civil suit that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. The thing that means that there's no precedent is that Spamhaus didn't defend the complaint -- e360 won by default.
oops, now that I've gotten around to looking at the PDF of the decision, I see it is a Court of Appeals decision so it is precedential in 7th Circuit.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
In the original trial, Spamhaus skipped defending themselves in court and the original court entered a default judgement. Non-appellate courts, even with non-default judgments, don't make precedent.
This appeals process was not based on the existence of the award but on the amount of it.