Slashdot Mirror
Pokemon Lawyers Sue Themselves
dex writes "The law firm of Milberg Weiss, lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Pokemon lawsuit, have discovered they are coporate counsel for one of the defendants. According to this article they will probably now be barred from participating on either side. " See the recent story about it on Slashdot.
Isn't this like Magik the Gathering? I realize that, having never actually played the game before, I could be very far off-my-rockers on this one, but, don't you "collect" the cards? and don't you buy more cards? and win cards? and play the game with them? then again, I don't really know, so someone fill me in on this, please.. thank you.
Insert mind here.
Its always nice to see one shark biting into his
own ass (isn't this called self regulation?).
But sorry to say that this doesn't happen often
enough in God's own Country.
Laywers (and patent law) are the single biggest
threat to Free Software. It is high time for
the fans of Linux and friends to protect their
freedom to develop against software patents.
Today these sharks in lawyer gowns are extracting
money from established businesses. Tomorrow
they could email you cease and desist orders for
writing software which is 'patented' by their
clients.
With all the mega-mergers going on in large law firm biz, these conflict-of-interest screwups are going to get more and more commonplace. The head bean counters at large law firms don't give a rat's ass about their I.T. operations. They view I.T. as a liability--- a leach on their business operation, not the absolute necessity that it really is required to do business properly. With each new merger, they usually strip down the existing I.T. department of one of the preceding separate firms and drive away the key players who had been keeping the systems functioning properly there beforehand. The more politically powerful of the two firms' I.T. departments will take over the combined operation, ousting the senior staff of the weaker, who leave databases and systems in disarray, sometimes even sabotaging the information therein. It's not a pretty picture and after one of these mergers takes place, it's usually many months to maybe even a couple of years before the smoke clears enough for the "winning" I.T. staff to get things back under something that resembles control. I "survived" a couple of these mergers and then got the fsck out of the law firm I.T. business for good just before the third, since my firm was going to have been the "loser" that time around. The law firm computer biz got to be the second worst I.T. professional area on the planet, just behind working for a large HMO or other medical management organization. My ulcers prove it.
They have sued sportscards manufactures, as well as Wizards of the Coast before for this same thing. Actually, nine such lawsuits so far. They have yet to when a case based on these grounds (oddly, I suspect they get paid by their clients everytime anyways, so winning or losing probably doesn't matter. It's a niche market.)
You can find more here.
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -- Thomas Jefferson
Its more media being blamed for stuff thats not its fault...school shooting blame doom.....Gambling addiction...blame nintendo ive never heard Matha Stewart being blamed for a teen baking a cake!
I work for a large law firm. We have what is called a "Chinese wall". This is simply a company wide statement and procedure for keeping the two lawyers in question away from each other and their case sensitive documents.
The price we pay for immortality... is death. Narnia The Great Fall
If you were trying to draw me into a flame war, you should have checked to see if I was a yank first, eh.
What I really want to know is this. Is m$ on that list of companies, and how many /.ers signed up?
gearry
like g-a-r-y, only different
The difference here is that the total purpose of the Pokemon cards is to play a game--a gambling game, while the baseball cards are mainly there to collect.
So long as they say "collectable," they're okay. But with the Pokemon cards, they're for a game, which makes it gambling.
Honestly, the defense for this is the exact same as the one against gun control. The argument is that you're purchasing them for a different purpose, or that they're designed for a different purpose. While the physical consequences of card misuse aren't quite so severe as gun misuse, there are still psychological ramifications to consider.
Personally I think the courts will agree with you that it's ridiculous. We're talking about a country that insists guns don't kill people, people kill people.
But just because they think it's ridiculous doesn't mean the parents don't have a point. I mean, those Barbies, Tamagotchis, etc. are collectible too, but you don't see little kids trying to cheat eachother out of a rare one on the playground, do you?
Maybe I'm just forgetful, but I don't remember anyone ever gambling over a Tickle-Me-Elmo..
James
With the number of clients MW has, it was only a matter of time... Sounds kind of like they all belong to the Associated Federation of Organizations to me...
Gobble Grabber??
You mean THE HAMBURGLAR??!!
PPoE
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
i mean whats next? Suing Id software for promoting school shootings?
Actually, it's been done. I believe the parents of the victims of some school shooting or other sued just about everyone...including Id I believe.
Maybe I'm just forgetful, but I don't remember anyone ever gambling over a Tickle-Me-Elmo..
You don't gamble with Pokemon cards. The closest to that was Magic where you have the option of playing for "ante". I don't think anyone ever does that anymore though. (When I played, I did, But then again I was playtesting with prototype magic decks before the game was released.) I gave away all my cards years ago (it got boring), I got curious a while ago and discovered that the cards I got rid of are worth thousands of dollars now. (shrug)
Well if that isn't a case of the snake sallowing itself, then I don't know what is.
You have been absolved.
I think we can look at this two ways. We have the issue of a possible illegal lottery. We have a lawfirm that is suing the company that is orchestrating this lottery.
The situation here is whether or not they are doing it for the right reasons. Are they suing them to seek moral justification for a possible violation of the law? Or are they suing them to fill their own pockets?
The evidence here suggests the latter. Accordingly, they are doing something right for the wrong reasons. For that reason, I cannot support their actions.
However, most magic players are old enough to know that when they spend money on inherently worthless items, it is their own fault and not the
fault of the gaming company.
Right! which is why I brought Magic into the discussion, because it shows that Pokemon isn't the only game to operate in this manner. It hasn't been, it isn't, and it won't be, which makes the whole situation even more ridiculous because that means that they have no basis for their suit. I think it should be thrown out of court. (not that I have a clue about Pokemon, other than it's about little animated looking animals, and I don't play it either, but that's another story altogether).
Insert mind here.
The info from the pokeleague is here. I posted it on the earlier story, though I doubt anyone read it.
I bet the lawyers at Weiss are kicking themselves in the ass. Imagine how much money they stood to make on the lawsuit. ESPECIALLY if they had both sides paying. Woo. Thank god for the Bar Association. Otherwise, the same law firm _would be_ on both sides of the lawsuit, raking the cash in.... that's THEIR only interest.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
Damn. As if the whole lawsuit wasn't damaging their reputation and credibility enough as it was...
...but this, this is beautiful. Now we have idiot vulture lawyers to go with idiot absentee parents - none of whom take any responsibility for anything. These aren't real lawyers, they're late-night ambulance chasers with delusions of grandeur. Schmucks, the lot of them.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
...how many trees were sacrificed by the law firm just to get here. :)
--
--
talon - Oh no, more Slashdotters!
I *love* how lawyers talk about "just discovering" a dual-agency representation as if they had just uncovered something they'd misplaced a long time ago.
You *know* they knew it up front -- when was the last time a law firm went "Wait. Who are my clients again?" -- and you know they would do it as long as they felt they could get away with it.
These kind of shennanigans shouldn't go unpunished. They should be forced to cede all of their billings for their newest client (in this case, the plaintiff) to whomever the plaintiff chooses as replacement counsel and at the hourly rate the new counsel charges, as well as deducting all billings accrued during the dual agency representation from their original client.
Unless you slap lawyers on their wrists when they reach into the cookie jar, they tend to keep reaching into the cookie jar.
...from a situation arising from the fact that too many kids have nothing better to do than watch a show with the animation quality of South Park and the plot depth of a cheap 50's sci-fi mini-series?
But their "Join A Class Action" web application form has to be seen to be believed. They really do have a page with I am interested in participating in an action against the following company:, and a long selection box.
This has been covered already.. If you don't believe me, check this post on that "previous discussion".. It even includes the same link.. Ha! ;)
~ Kish
I'll I got to say is that these lawyers are total losers and morons... they couldn't look at there stacks of papers to find out they work for both sides... I say its a scam for more money baby!
Actually, this is standard practice now. I recently got into a car accident with myself, but it was really my fault, so I sued me. Sure, my driver's licence is chock full of red marks, but the money comes out of the insurance company's pocket anyway. And the returns are higher than my increased insurance premium, so I take home a little at the end of the day. I'm suing myself for abuse next ;-)
Ah, the joys of MPD.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
When the same law firm represents both sides on "Ally McBeal," there doesn't seem to be any problem. Hmmm... I'm starting to think maybe that show is a little unrealistic.
I'm left wondering if there isn't a way that Milberg Weiss could be sued by 4Kids for its actions (libel, etc., etc.), and maybe by the family who started the lawsuit (there has to be a law allowing damage recovery against legal services that have been paid by the competition not to provide proper counsel, which in a way they have. I would prefer they were disbarred, but I'm sure we aren't that lucky!). That would be sweet!
These guys ought to read The Merchant of Venice. They were trying for two pounds of flesh, but like in the book won't receive even one.
it's The Mushroom that deals with gaming issues, in the spirit of The Onion.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
Woops. I work at a law firm and can tell you this would have to be a major embarrasement for sombody.
The difference here is that the total purpose of the Pokemon cards is to play a game--a gambling game, while the baseball cards are mainly there to collect.
Nice, except for one thing: Pokemon is no more a gambling game than chess. Yes, with some of the older card games you played "for ante" (before each game each player picks a card at random from his or her deck and sets it aside; the winner keeps these cards). Pokemon was not designed to be played this way.
Yes, some kids have created a variation of the game where you do play for ante. But this is not the way the game is meant to be played. If you go back to the original Gameboy game, the first rule of etiquette is that you never take another trainer's Pokemon; that rule spills over into the card game. People make side bets on other games, like golf and billiards, all the time; does this mean that those games should be illegal too? If not, then no one has any business screaming about Pokemon for that reason, because it is no different.
A design engineer died and arrived at the Pearly Gates. The gatekeeper, looking over his lists said "Sorry buddy you're name isn't on here, you're gonna have to leave." The sad engineer departed for hell.
Resigned to his fate, he soon set about improving the living areas. Within a few weeks he had drafted plans and schematics for air conditioning, television, and refrigerators.
A few weeks later, God calls up Satan and asks him how things are going.
The devil replies "Great! We got this engineer and he's put in air conditioning, escalators and flushing toilets. Next month we begin construction of his prototype satellite TV system."
God says "You have an engineer?! Send him back up here right away!"
Satan replies "No way am I letting him go! He's on my board of director's now, and I'm keeping him."
"No way, you can't do that. I'll sue!"
The devil laughs uproariously, and says "Oh yeah, and where are YOU gonna get any lawyers??"
- fog
...according to my lovely wife, who works as a senior claims analyst for a national insurance company here [and has a disturbingly broad acquaintance with the civil law machinery]. It's a commonplace practice to do what is called a 'conflict search' when a big suit comes up, but sometimes it goes wrong, or just doesn't get done.
It seems to me that there are only a very few real surprises in the practice of law...this is a very minor one.
Token
Cool! I'm signing up for all of them! I might get lucky with 1 or 2
"Pokemon Lawyers Sue Themselves"
If I didn't know better, I'd think I was reading The Onion.
Umm... not sure if you guys have been reading Slashdot for long, but the 'founders' of Slashdot don't do much in the way of digging up stories. The readers do. Thus, the readers are, by definition of the site, ahead of the founders.
:)
And yeah, sure, this particular story was mentioned in a message somewhere, but it seems big enough to warrant a post and a link to a news story about it.
So quitcher bitchin.
I find it absolutely ridiculous that a law firm, int the first place could possibly think they could sue Nintendo and co over gambling issues...i mean whats next? Suing Id software for promoting school shootings? This, to me, sounds like a *REALLY* bad episode of Ally McBeal.
These guys just seem like massive litigation machines. They probably believe that you can sue anyone and everyone at the drop of a hat. Every once and a while, they'll be right about something, and get a huge settlement. That settlement pays for all of their other suits, and they keep going.
The downside to this is that our court system is now clogged with silly lawsuits. This just makes it harder for the occasional legitimate case to reach trial.
Are these guys for real? I assume they are going after *all* these companies. (Check here for the list). What a terribly sad way to earn a living.
It might be fun to join one of their class action suits. Then, when your claim is rejected on the grounds that you had no interest whatsoever in the action you could sue the balls off Milbergs for raising your hopes. That could be funny.
I'm with Shakespeare (Henry IV) - "The first thing we'll do, let's kill all the lawyers."
The worst Japanese animation is on par with the best American.
Lawyers at Wilmerg Beiss expressed dismay today that their own law firm would engage in a frivolous suit against one of their clients. They promised to counter-sue themselves for all legal expenses incurred.
A top level firm member noted that they took their own allegations of immoral conduct by their client very seriously and were considering an action. The client's spokesperson noted that they were also thinking of a slander action, but thought it prudent to find new representation first, despite being quite impressed with the firm's flexibility.
Why should lawyers from the same firm not represent both parties in an action? Surely each laywer has a duty to his/her client, and the fact that the person acting for the other side has an office in the same building should not affect that. To think otherwise is question the professional integrity of the people concerned.
Wow..I thought it was all about dancing babies, bad singing, and Calista, Calista, Calista.
Conflicts like this happen all the time. A sensible law practice has procedures to ensure that they find out about them up front, though.
Say I want to buy a house, I need a lawyer to represent me, and the seller needs one to represent him/her/it. When I go down to the Dewey, Screwem, and Howe law office, they get the particulars and then do a check to make sure they aren't representing the seller as well.
Small firms pretty much know who is doing what, big firms with offices in several cities have some sort of process they follow to sniff out conflicts.
Now if it's something easy and non-confrontational, like selling a house, both parties can agree to use 2 lawyers from the same firm. (In Canada, at least) A buddy of mine just bought some land. Both he and the vendor had known their respective lawyers for years, but
the lawyers worked for the same firm. No problem, sign a form and everything goes ahead, they trusted their lawyers not to shaft them.
Obviously in some situations (lawsuits!) that wouldn't work, so the second party has to go find a new lawyer.
What country do you live in? Obviously not one with a small claims court system.
The Bar Association supervises lawyers like boxing commissions supervise Don King.
Nonsense. The Pokemon game is no more a gambling game than checkers or Monopoly. People might decide to bet on it, but that is extrinsic to the game itself -- if that counts, then all games (hell, all events) would constitute gambling.
Personally I think the courts will agree with you that it's ridiculous.
Great Ghu, I certainly hope so. Given some of the idiocy that has come out of the courts, it's not a foregone conclusion, though.
We're talking about a country that insists guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Yes, and it's also a country that insists that two plus two equals four and that the sun rises in the east.
But just because they think it's ridiculous doesn't mean the parents don't have a point.
The only points these parents have are in their hair. They're trying to find someone else to blame for the fact that they gave a little kid "thousands of dollars" to blow on these cards. I have very large collections of a few CCGs, but I doubt that the total I've spent is even $1000 (and, as a self-respecting adult, I would never dream of trying to blame somebody else if I decided that the money had been wasted).
I mean, those Barbies, Tamagotchis, etc. are collectible too, but you don't see little kids trying to cheat eachother out of a rare one on the playground, do you?
I understand that some schools have banned Pokemon cards because of problems with theft and bad-faith trading. The underlying problem is with the ill-behaved brats causing the problems, not with the Pokemon cards. Unfortunately, the former cannot be banned.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
My girlfriend is in law school, so I teased her about the "sign up online" form. She told me that these firms bringing class action suits are actually obligated to publicize the case (via newspaper ads, etc) in order to include all interested / qualified parties so that the subset of people who originally decided to complain aren't privy to "unjust enrichment" It makes sense for the legal system to get as many people as are interested involved up front because if the suit results in a huge award, other parties who might have been eligible will all bring suits of their own. Better to get everyone involved from the start in one large suit rather than twenty smaller ones. She wasn't sure the intention of these policies was to have web-based signup forms, but, hey, whatever. Law on the Internet...
I'm not too big a fan of this lawyer crap, but I just thought I'd pass on some info that came my way.
-Dan
I mean, you buy them in packets. The rare ones are spread out randomly in packets. You trade them for other cards and/or money.
Only thing really different is that you can actually do something with Pokemon cards - play a game. Baseball cards can't even do that.
So why hasn't anybody sued baseball card manufacturers and distributors? Because the whole lawsuit is REDICULOUS!
Mike_k
Just because they went to college? A turd is a turd, no matter what kind of papers it carries around to job interviews. Do people even interview these people to see if they can even think?
"We have been prosecuting these alleged (Pokemon-related) gambling activities for the last several years," Weiss said. "When this matter came in as a potential additional case, apparently the conflicts check by the litigators did not pick up that the corporate side was representing 4Kids."
Bold added by me.
Isn't Pokemon less then two years old???
These people make me so sick.
Aaron "PooF" Matthews
E-mail: aaron@fish.pathcom.com
To mail me remove "fish."
ICQ: 11391152
Quote: "Success is the greatest revenge"
The laywers that found they were sueing thier own client, have dropped thier case (a couple days ago infact...) but other firms have chosen to pick up on such a "tempting" suit. For more up-to-date gaming news, pocket.ign.com is a good and reliable source
----------------------------------------------
I don't really mind double posts on