Slashdot Mirror
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.
If you want an amusing yet informative read on Prenda's exploits, Popehat is the place to go
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
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.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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.