-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Many of you will remember the misinformation campaign uncovered by Lottakatz during the ABA competition two years ago. The campaign gave a 100 vote surge and final victory to The Legal Satyricon, a blog run by Marc Randazza.
We also previously discussed the $2.5 million award against blogger Crystal L. Cox (left). Cox was a cause célèbre, as a crusading blogger, with her claims of journalistic privilege and that she deserved protection under Oregon’s shield law. Cox is represented by Eugene Volokh, and Cox’s motion for a new trial was recently denied. Randazza had consulted with Cox on her case, but she decided not to work with him.
According to Carlos Miller:
Cox, who spent several years publishing negative blog posts about Obsidian Finance, damaging the Oregon company’s online reputation in the process, contacted them earlier this year to offer online reputation services at $2,500-a-month.
Cox sent the following e-mail to Randazza:
She offers her services to manage Randazza’s Google Footprint. The strategy is to set up numerous web sites with interconnecting links, and ensure that these web sites turn up first in any Google keyword searches. Ask Rick Santorum how that works. Apparently she offered the same service to David Aman – counsel for Kevin Padrick and Obsidian Finance – and he accused her of extortion.
In addition to macrorandazza.com, she also registered:
- fuckmarcrandazza.com
- marcrandazzasucks.com
- marcjrandazza.com
- marcjohnrandazza.com
Cox then included Randazza’s wife and registered JenniferRandazza.com and 
jenniferrandazza.blogspot.com. Cox then focused her attention on Randazza’s three-year-old daughter, pictured, and registered NataliaRandazza.com.
In his opinion, Marco A. Hernandez United States District Judge, wrote:
In my discussion, I did not state that a person who “blogs” could never be considered “media.” I also did not state that to be considered “media,” one had to possess all or most of the characteristics I recited. Rather, I confined my conclusion to the record defendant created in this case and noted that defendant had presented no evidence as to any single one of the characteristics which would tend to establish oneself as a member of the “media.”
H/T: VC, Kashmir Hill (Forbes), David Carr (NY Times), Philly Law Blog, The Fraud Files, David Carr (NY Times), The Legal Satyricon.
I put my docs on wordpress
http://kaysieverding.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/use-of-unpublished-procedure-in-federal-courts-dismissal-with-prejudice-100k-fineimposition-of-filing-restrictions-imprisonment-without-a-criminal-charge-2/#respond
I was a pro se plaintiff.
You and I think that people have the right to represent themselves but lawyers don’t, or say that they don’t. Many people don’t want lawsuits. They don’t want to pay and they want to keep the underlying facts quiet. So they don’t want pro se plaintiffs because that removes a barrier to litigation. Also, it seems that most of the lawyers who get disciplined or disbarred are plaintiff’s lawyers. Lawyers also don’t want any competition for business. Like plumbers don’t want people to fix their own toilets and dentists don’t want people to whiten their own teeth. And if there are to be pro se plaintiffs, lawyers want to be able to lie about the facts and lie about the laws to get rid of them.
Follow the money and where does it go? It seems that a big percentage of no pro se orders involve suits against local governments where the governments are insured. In my case, the City of Steamboat had a $ 5 million errors and omissions insurance with a $10,000 deductible purchased from Colorado Intergovernmental Risk Sharing Agency, which had a $ 1 million deductible from the reinsurance it purchased from foreign insurance companies.
The CIRSA lawyer, who was also billing Lloyds of London, teamed up with a lawyer who was billing Mutual Insurance of Bermuda. CIRSA never once filed the annual claims handling procedures report with the Colorado Division of Insurance that it was required to annually. Mutual Insurance advertised that it was selling insurance across the U.S. but it never got a NCIC number, never registered with ANY state insurance regulator. By statute unregistered insurance companies aren’t supposed to use the Courts but when I complained both the 10th Circuit and the Colorado Division of Insurance said they didn’t care.
Marvin Heemeyer did $4 Million of damage to the City of Granby after his defamation and zoning lawsuit was dismissed (after he paid $50 K to Deitze Associates in Boulder for a professional written complaint). The City of Granby was a CIRSA insured, but the State of Colorado paid for the damage and CIRSA paid nothing. Why?
Look what happened in Germany before and during the Holocaust. They fixed the courts. Now we have insurance being sold on the Internet as a way of doing business but we have the same regulatory model we had in 1945 — see McCarran Ferguson Act and federal regulation of insurance is almost never discussed. Why? Did you know that the reason that we have state insurance commissions is that insurance companies used to harass the injured to stop them from pressing their claims? Sound familiar?
Kay,
It may be taking us down a slippery slope. Judges don’t like pro se defendants, but your right to represent yourself is absolute.
Focus your energy. Don’t fight too many battles at the same time. Prioritize and then strategize.
Kay,
What you think is what counts. You have opponents. Don’t concern yourself with what they think. Brush them off like water off a duck. If you keep fighting, that’s exactly what they want.
Deprive them of what they want, and you win.
Matt, I don’t know where you are getting your ideas. Why would they want me to “keep on fighting”? They don’t. They committed felonies (witness intimidation, witness retaliation, conspiracy to deprive rights, and extortion) and intentional torts with the purpose of hurting me and they want that information swept under the rug and ignored.
What I think is not what counts in the marketplace. What counts in the marketplace is public information and they rigged the game so that the public information is inaccurate and defamatory. It does me no good to nurse my grievances privately or look in the mirror and say inspiring things to myself. What I need is money as a necessary condition of survival.
What happened to me was not just defamation it was also a crime of violence. Would you tell a rape victim to ignore what happened? What I want is justice for myself and for others. I am embarrassed that I was a victim, like people are embarrassed by being raped, but if no one protests obstruction of justice, it will keep happening. In fact, the reason that I am the only person every imprisoned for filing truthful pleadings in federal court is probably because I complained publicly about it. The 10th Circuit in particular is issuing many orders against pro se litigation and some of them are against college professors. Where is this taking us?
The Supreme Court has already stated that “T]he individuals right to the protection of his own good name ‘reflects no more than our basis concept of the essential dignity and worth of every human being – a concept at the root of any decent system of ordered liberty…[it is] a basis of our constitutional system” see Rosenblatt v. Baer [1966] 383 U.S. 75, 92.