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Pro Bono Lawyer Fights C&D With Humor
Zordak writes "When Jake Freivald received a questionable Cease and Desist letter from a big-firm attorney, demanding that he immediately relinquish rights to his website http://westorage.info, his pro-bono lawyer decided to treat the letter like the joke that it was. In a three-page missive, the lawyer points out the legal, constitutional, and ethical problems with the letter that led him to conclude that the letter was a joke. He concludes, in a postscript, with an unsubstantiated demand for $28,000 in overpaid property taxes, and offers to lease the city the domain name 'westorange.gov' in exchange."
The county lawyer has a typo on his bio page about his latest work
Doesn't exactly inspire confidence if his underlings can't even spell check.
I would have used
"I refer you to the reply in arkell vs. pressdram"
A tip of the hat to Mr. Kapplitt responding to government overreach with a sense of humor. This is fine example of why lawyers work pro bono publico. I'd love to see this case go to trial so that future first amendment cases can cite Mr. Kaplitt's letter. Intel has a long history of using geographic names as project names because you can't copyright a geographic name. I worked on 'Year 2000 Compliance" at Intel. I thought I was working on Y2K compliance until the legal department sent out a notice that someone had asserted a copyright to Y2K. I once ran a BBS called "The Stack Exchange" which focused on HyperCard. I receive a nasty call from someone who wrote HyperCard applications for a company called the "The Stack Exchange." I changed the name of my BBS to avoid a legal hassle. If the caller hadn't been such an asshole I would have gone out of my way to explain the name change and to promote The Stack Exchange on my renamed BBS. The moral of the story is that it pays to ask nicely before sending out the cease and desist letter. Jack Daniel's took this approach when a book cover had the look of a Jack Daniel's label. Jack Daniel's even offered to cover the costs of designing a new cover for the book.
As someone that's just had to write a long missive to my old car insurance company, I have to wonder why such things are even allowed to get that far without someone stepping in and saying "Hold on, that's just going to cause trouble". In legal cases, there should surely be some penalty for a false representation such as the C&D letter.
My own frustration stemmed from the fact that my insurance company changed something on my policy that I agreed to. Then the next thing I know, they've cancelled the policy because I didn't pay the difference for the change. News to me, given that I actually had two letters that said my next regular payment had been adjusted accordingly for EXACTLY that payment, and that I didn't need to do anything.
It was also quite interesting in that the envelope that the notice of cancellation was received in only arrived on my doorstep the DAY AFTER the insurance was cancelled. Pretty sure that no matter what you do there, I have a came for "untimely service" or some such.
None of that matters, though, as I can prove it all if required. What really annoyed me was the letter demanding the missing payment (the one that you didn't ask for, that you told me would be taken from my regular payments, and that you cancelled the contract - I would assert illegally - before that payment ever came due?) with threat of court action.
Needless to say my reply was significantly less polite, and less humorous than this, but probably contained a lot more legalese. I'm waiting for the 60-day offer I gave them to resolve the situation (which includes £100 payment back to myself because - even if we take that debt as valid - they incurred costs for myself by cancelling the contract illegally and in an untimely manner) before I do anything else. I think that's pretty reasonable, personally, given that I had already assumed the matter was settled without either side paying the other. My next step will be to claim for the lost day at work that it cost me, though, and that's when it gets so expensive I'm hoping they have the brains to not force me to employ the services of a lawyer or the courts to get that from them.
I did once write one of my suppliers a song, though. They'd taken forever to supply the school I worked for with a Microsoft licence, and I was literally seconds away from cancelling the order after much messing about (which, apparently, including Microsoft manually typing in my email address and not being able to spell "administrator", which is worrying in so many ways).
The school were in the middle of being closed because of the snow at the time, which gave me time to write it, and it felt quite Christmassy being in a school in the snow, so it's to the tune of "The Night Before Christmas":
-------
'Twas the week after purchase and all through the school,
Not a computer was stirring, not even a "machine, virtual".
The machines were hung on blue screens in their lair,
In the hopes that new Windows soon would be there,
The children nestled all snug in their homes,
While snow-days were debated and staff manned the phones,
And hoped that everyone were all travelling well,
While wishing that Microsoft had at last learned to spell.
When out in the ICT suite there arose such a clatter,
And all came running to see what was the matter.
'Twas the IT Manager with eyes full of wrath,
Melting down old Windows disks to de-ice the path.
"Don't worry," he cried as he stoked up the flames,
"A Linux disk I have, and some educational games."
Needless to say, my licence was sorted within the hour.