Prenda Gets Hit Hard With Contempt Sanctions For Lying To Court

walterbyrd writes: Team Prenda has been beaten up by the courts once again. Given all of the flat out deceit, it's actually a bit anti-climactic that the court has ordered sanctions of just $65,263 against Steele and Hansmeier for contempt of court. As for the obstruction of discovery, the court orders Duffy and Steele to pay Booth Sweet's costs, which the lawyers are told to submit. Some people are still wondering why none of this pattern of deceit, lying and abuse of the court system has not resulted in anything more serious.

Comments

Popehat

[maroberts]

If you want an amusing yet informative read on Prenda's exploits, Popehat is the place to go

Re:Popehat

[T.E.D.]

If you want an amusing yet informative read on Prenda's exploits, Popehat [popehat.com] is the place to go

Best lines:

The judges were openly incredulous of this strategy. "You want us to send this back for criminal contempt proceedings?" asked Judge Tallman, with the air of a parent asking a toddler whether he really wants to hurl himself down the stairs. "Do you understand that the maximum penalty for contempt is life imprisonment?" I lost a little urine at this point.

...and...

Pregerson followed with perhaps the most devastating line I've ever heard used against a lawyer:

Pregerson: And you're a great lawyer.

Voelker: I appreciate you saying that, Your Honor.

Pregerson: I mean, it says so, right there on your web site.

Prenda?

[hooiberg]

I am so ignorant to have absolutely no clue what this is about? What is this 'Prenda' of which you speak?

Re:Prenda?

[tiberus]

Ditto . . .

Prenda Law a.k.a. Team Prenda

Prenda Law, also known as Steele | Hansmeier PLLP and Anti-Piracy Law Group,[3] was a Chicago-based law firm that ostensibly operated by undertaking litigation against copyright infringement, but was later characterized by the United States District Court for Central California in a May 2013 ruling as a "porno-trolling collective"[4]:2 whose business model "relies on deception",[4]:8 and which resembled most closely a conspiracy[4]:FOF.1 p.3 and racketeering enterprise,[4]:p.10 referring in the judgment to RICO, the United States Federal anti-racketeering law.[4]:p.10[5] The firm ostensibly dissolved itself in July 2013 shortly after the adverse ruling[6] (although onlookers describe Alpha Law Firm LLC as its apparent replacement[7]), while in 2014, ABA Journal-Law News described the "Prenda Law saga" as entering "legal folklore".[8] [...]

My head hurts now

Re:Prenda?

[MozeeToby]

TL;DR.

A group of lawyers who set up a system of shell companies to send out settlement records to people downloading illegal pornography. The lawyers were utterly eviscerated when one judge and defending attorney finally said "what's this then?" and starting looking into their actions.

Highlights include:
Shell companies set up using other people's identities without their knowledge.
Sending out settlement letters for works they don't own the rights to.
Setting the settlement price at just below the cost of an adequate defense.
Failure to show up when summoned to court.
Lying to the court... so... so many times.
Not paying the settlements levied against them.

And this wasn't a single court hearing. This was over dozens of court appearances over a timespan of well over a year. They continue to dig the hole they find themselves in deeper and deeper. The saddest part of the whole mess (other than all the people that they bilked out of thousands of dollars) is that they still haven't been disbarred.

Re:Prenda?

[idontgno]

Not paying the settlements levied against them.

This is the crux of the current brouhaha. The Prenda weasels are blowing off settlements, claiming extreme poverty while desperately shoving huge amounts of money into wholly-owned shell companies and hidden bank accounts.

I want to ask "why are these walking cancer tumors still breathing?", but that's a little extreme. Just a little.

Why are they walking around free? In a just world, they'd be cooling their heels behind bars.

Re:Prenda?

[stabiesoft]

In a just world, they'd be dead. They have already proven they will do it again.

"Some people"

[guises]

"Some people" are wondering things? Who? I see no links to that particular claim.

I seems like the submitter had intended to say "i am wondering" but decided to go all Fox News on it. We can do better than this.

why haven't they been disbarred?

[Gravis Zero]

seriously, isn't the a good example of lawyers that should be disbarred? lying to the court and using the law to harass seems like good reasons to disbar a lawyer.

Re:why haven't they been disbarred?

[bernywork]

I do believe this is in the works, they have been referred, but the court can only judge this case. It can't disbar them, that's the bar associations job.

Re:why haven't they been disbarred?

[gstoddart]

AFAIK, it's not the court who does the disbarring, it's the Bar Society -- which is the professional organization.

I think that now the Bar Society might start taking a look.

But I think it's fairly plain that Booth Sweet and John Steele are lying bastards who have been using the courts for their own profit and generally being dishonest assholes, so hopefully whoever does have authority over the disbarring gets on with it quickly.

Basically they ran a shakedown racket, repeatedly lied to the courts, and lied to the courts in the investigation about lying to the courts.

A credit to their profession as a bunch of oily, thieving bastards.

Re:why haven't they been disbarred?

[monkeyxpress]

One of them resigned to avoid being disbarred. Looks better on his CV I guess.

http://boingboing.net/2014/01/...

Re:why haven't they been disbarred?

[gstoddart]

I honestly don't know the entire mechanics, but it may well be that any action by the Bar Association doesn't happen until after the courts have made a ruling.

I mean, it's the professional standards body of a bunch of lawyers ... you can bet your ass there's rules and procedures which must be followed.

It sure as hell won't be a process which is sensible to anybody else.

Re:why haven't they been disbarred?

[enilnomi]

"Booth Sweet" is not a player in this game...you seem to be thinking of Jason Sweet and Dan Booth, the lawyers who unraveled the finances of John Steele, Paul Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy.

Is there one lawyer who isn't a lying fuck?

[Required Snark]

Reading this, and based on my personal experience, I doubt it.

How many laws do attorneys have to break before they face something beyond a fine? 100? 1000? 10000? If you read the Prenda law articles, it's clear that if a non-lawyer did even one of those things, they would already be in jail by now. Those bastards lied their fucking teeth out, and made real good money doing so. And all they have to pay is a fine. BFD.

New policy. If you see someone in a car accident, or anywhere in public suffering a medical emergency, and you figure out it's a fucking lawyer, leave it to die or live on it's own. If we lived in a just world, you would be allowed to kill it.

I've earned my hostility. Some shithole incompetent attorneys made my life hell for five years or so. There were at least three of them who couldn't find their ass in a well lit room given a full set of written directions. They finally subcontracted to someone who knew what he was doing, and it got sorted out. I don't know what was worse: they fact that they took on work that was beyond them, or the fact that it took years for them to admit/realize they were complete losers.

Punch a lawyer in the face today. You'll be glad you did.

Re:Is there one lawyer who isn't a lying fuck?

[sjames]

We condemn the entire industry because those are just a drop in the bucket of bad experiances. It seems the bad apples spoil the remaining 10%.

Re:Is there one lawyer who isn't a lying fuck?

[tompaulco]

Yes, by all means, let us condemn and entire industry because of your real-world, terrible experience, or the assholes mentioned in the Prenda story. Yes, that's perfectly logical and is a sensible, productive way to run society. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Yes, it is definitely wrong to judge a group based on just one member, but how about when 90% or more of it's members are an issue? I have known dozens of lawyers, and I have known one that was a useful and good person. Of the others, I will admit that most of them weren't openly evil, just evil by being useless and not doing their job when some other lawyer was attempting to do you evil. However, in some circumstances I have worked for lawyers and in those cases, the lawyer was quite definitely openly evil such that I will never again work for a company that has a lawyer in its upper management.

Re:Is there one lawyer who isn't a lying fuck?

[MightyMartian]

As someone who was the victim of a litigation started by greedy family members using a lawyer who failed at some his basic fiduciary responsibilities, I can concur that there are some damned shady, or just as often incompetent lawyers. In a nutshell, my grandmother gave me a piece of property, some family members agreed with that while she was still of sound mind, but as soon as she started suffering dementia, they got a lawyer to sue my ass off. This lawyer was effectively acting as my grandmother's legal council, and he never actually even met her. That was one among a number of serious ethical lapses that ended up costing me about $100,000 (my legal costs plus the pay out I made because, I confess, three years of legal hell just made me make the problem go away).

But to counter that awful story, my lawyer, who cost me about 40% of that $100k, was absolute fantastic, worth every penny, and who would inform me before making statements or depositions that I wasn't to lie and was to take my oath to tell the truth seriously.As with all occupations, the fact that there are bad, even sociopathically evil lawyers, does not mean all lawyers are of a similar bent.

Re:Is there one lawyer who isn't a lying fuck?

[drinkypoo]

I guess it's just another example of 'you get what you pay for'.

In this case, I believe the phrase is "exactly as much justice as you can afford"

Some comments about the US legal system

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

My best friend for many years is a lawyer and he's taught me a lot about how the legal system really works. I can assure you that non-lawyers almost never understand the reality of the US legal system. Judges rarely like to sanction lawyers like has happened to Prenda. The general feeling in the legal industry is that making one side of lawyers pay the other side's costs is very bad because it might - no joke - lead to fewer lawsuits. You see, lawyers and judges feel that the system works perfectly fine as it is and that any time you've been wronged, they have no problem with the idea that you may have to pay tens of thousands of dollars or much more to defend yourself by hiring an attorney and running up costs. And what you might not know is that paying off attorney fees has a higher priority than anything else because the judges and attorneys have fixed the system to insure that they get paid first and they get paid all that you owe them. Believe me when I tell you that attorneys and judges are not even a little bit troubled by the massive costs that innocent parties expend trying to defend themselves from predatory attorneys and they truly do not care if it destroys financially to pay them off, but by God you will pay your attorney and court fees fully or they'll put you in jail or confiscate your stuff if they have to to get it done. If you win a financial judgement against another party, good luck getting a sheriff interested in enforcing the payment on your behalf but those same sheriffs will not hesitate at all to make you pay off legal fees you owe. My guess is that Prenda will simply file appeal after appeal on the judgement against them and it may be many years before they pay it, if ever.

Hansmeiers' father heads the MN Ethics Committee

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.

Just disbarred

[phorm]

The saddest part of the whole mess (other than all the people that they bilked out of thousands of dollars) is that they still haven't been disbarred.

Screw disbarred, I'm thinking that they should be imprisoned
* Identity theft
* Perjury
* (possible) Racketeering
* Failing to comply with a court order
* etc