Slashdot Mirror
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."
It's westorange.info, not westorage.info. The editing is ridiculous.
Why bother the appropriate response is:
------------
Re: Cease and Desist Order
No.
Regards
xxxx
Doesn't exactly inspire confidence if his underlings can't even spell check.
It's not a typo. It's written by a lawyer. You're not supposed to be able to read it and understand it.
They wouldn't feel nearly as stupid without biting sarcasm...biting them.
Why bother the appropriate response is:
No.
I would have used two words, but, hey, that's just me.
No sig today...
"No, sir."?
I would have used
"I refer you to the reply in arkell vs. pressdram"
I don't think it's a typo - I *think* it's saying "Trenk has recently completed bid litigation over $100 million" (i.e. he's taken it to trial, to conclusion)
All told it's a vile (and very legal) sentence with no punctuation. The proof-reader in me can't find a way of writing it in a better way though (well, not without rewriting the entire sentence)
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
Letter to Warner Brothers: A Night in Casablanca
Groucho Marx
Abstract: While preparing to film a movie entitled A Night in Casablanca, the Marx brothers received a letter from Warner Bros. threatening legal action if they did not change the film’s title. Warner Bros. deemed the film’s title too similar to their own Casablanca, released almost five years earlier in 1942, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. In response Groucho Marx dispatched the following letter to the studio’s legal department:
Dear Warner Brothers,
Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.
It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.
I just don’t understand your attitude. Even if you plan on releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don’t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.
You claim that you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without permission. What about “Warner Brothers”? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about the name Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor’s eye, and even before there had been other brothers—the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (This was originally “Brothers, Can You Spare a Dime?” but this was spreading a dime pretty thin, so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other one, and whittled it down to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”)
Now Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well it’s not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks—Jack of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day.
As for you, Harry, you probably sign your checks sure in the belief that you are the first Harry of all time and that all other Harrys are impostors. I can think of two Harrys that preceded you. There was Lighthouse Harry of Revolutionary fame and a Harry Appelbaum who lived on the corner of 93rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Unfortunately, Appelbaum wasn’t too well-known. The last I heard of him, he was selling neckties at Weber and Heilbroner.
Now about the Burbank studio. I believe this is what you brothers call your place. Old man Burbank is gone. Perhaps you remember him. He was a great man in a garden. His wife often said Luther had ten green thumbs. What a witty woman she must have been! Burbank was the wizard who crossed all those fruits and vegetables until he had the poor plants in such confused and jittery condition that they could never decide whether to enter the dining room on the meat platter or the dessert dish.
This is pure conjecture, of course, but who knows—perhaps Burbank’s survivors aren’t too happy with the fact that a plant that grinds out pictures on a quota settled in their town, appropriated Burbank’s name and uses it as a front for their films. It is even possible that the Burbank family is prouder of the potato produced by the old man than they are of the fact that your studio emerged “Casablanca” or even “Gold Diggers of 1931.
If it was any more petty, it would be a home owner's association.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I find it ironic curious visitors are doing what the West Orange County failed to do.
Doesn't exactly inspire confidence if his underlings can't even spell check.
Nowhere in that sentence does the word "check" or anything remotely similar in misspelled form appear.
How you can deduce from that his inability to misspell "check" is beyond me.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yup, found plenty of dirt here, no idea how true all this is but it seems to be some bad blood involved.
It does seem unusual that the town council is messing around with their own PR committee.
Plus, Freivald is/was pretty active politically so that might be where he ruffled some feathers.
Luckily, "tried" is the verb in that sentence. The "to conclusion" is an adjectival phrase.
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.
Adverbial, I believe, since it modifies "tried", not "bid litigation".
You can modify litigation now? Fuck those lawyers!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
“I'm seated in the smallest room in the house. Your letter is before me. Soon it will be behind me.” — Voltaire
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
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.
I wonder if the pro bono lawyer was alluding to something in the final paragraph. Like for example, the hired gun lawyer was representing someone other than the city/municipality?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Yes, that's exactly what it's saying.
The term "tried to conclusion" means that the matter was brought to trial, and the trial has completed, as opposed to being stalled in an endless cycle of motions and counter-motions, or settling out of court, or otherwise not finishing.
Considering that some lawsuits last several decades, simply saying that he brought a particular litigation to trial isn't really enough, because it's vague as to whether the trial is still ongoing. Similarly, ozbon's proposed alteration is vague, because it leaves open the question of how the litigation was completed. It could have been laughed out of court during pre-trial.
The language used was specific, concise, and complete. Since the majority of a lawyer's work involves reading and writing legal documents that must be specific, concise, and complete, this is a good thing. Your lack of understanding is due to your assumption regarding the definition of the word "tried". If that's a significant barrier to your understanding of his website, you should probably be looking for a dictionary, not a lawyer.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Left-to-the-imagination off?
That doesn't make much sense.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
You're reading it as English. Don't do that. It's not English, but legal jargon. We throw our own jargon around all the time, and expect people to understand it as such and not interpret it as literal.
Proof: "Use the mouse to move your cursor on the desktop until it's over Firefox icon, then click it.". A more literal translation would be "Use a small rodent to move your sliderule part on the desk you're sitting at until it has a higher vertical height than a religious depiction of a red panda, then make it emit a sharp sound."
We use tech jargon on tech websites. He's using legal jargon on a legal website. That's wholly appropriate, and it's your job to interpret it through the proper filters.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?