Following up on my earlier posting, some interesting reading on the Johnny Monsarrat lawsuit. The ones in bold are the juiciest.
- April 30, 2013: Ron Newman’s first posting about the lawsuit.
- May 1, 2013:
- A followup posting from Ron Newman with a copy of the actual lawsuit.
- Universal Hub reports on the lawsuit.
- May 5, 2013: The Popehat Signal posting which helped Ron Newman find pro bono counsel to put a stop to the lawsuit.
- May 8, 2013: The press release put out by JonMon suggesting that the lawsuit may be nothing more than a promotional gimmick for a “cyber investigation service” JonMon claims to be starting. (See also the amended press release below on May 17.)
- May 12, 2013: One of several reports about JonMon supposedly showing up in person at the houses of the unnamed defendants in the lawsuit.
- May 14, 2013: Boston.com writes about the lawsuit and gets it mostly right.
- May 15, 2013:
- The mind-blowing letter from Ron Newman’s lawyer, Dan Booth of Booth Sweet LLP, to Monsarrat’s lawyer, detailing all the ways in which the lawsuit is frivolous and how Monsarrat and his counsel are going to get their asses handed to them on a silver platter if they don’t drop it with prejudice.
- Universal Hub writes more on the topic.
- May 16, 2013: An update from Ron Newman showing the beginning of the damage control efforts by JonMon and his lawyer.
- May 17, 2013:
- Techdirt writes eloquently on the lawsuit and Dan Booth’s response.
- The amended press release which JonMon’s lawyer and/or Rickland Powell made him put in an attempt to control the damage wrought by the first press release.
- May 29, 2013: The wonderful response from Deb Filcman’s (the other named defendant) lawyer, Zachary Kleinsasser of Greenberg Traurig, to the lawsuit.
- June 7, 2013:
- Ron Newman’s posting about the dismissal, with prejudice, of the lawsuit.
- Universal Hub also covers the dismissal.
- June 10, 2013: The techdirt article about the end of the lawsuit.
- June 11, 2013: Boston.com reports on the end of the lawsuit.
- For some historical flavor:
- The Encyclopedia Dramatica article which had JonMon so incensed, which has been updated to reflect the recent lawsuit.
- The Boston.com article about JonMon’s January 2010 arrest, which apparently JonMon thought it was libelous for anyone to link to or talk about in an online posting.
- The Wicked Local Somerville article about the same arrest.
- The two Wicked Local Somerville blog entries about which JonMon sued Deb Filcman.
- Apparently the January 2010 arrest was not JonMon’s first run-in with the law.
- A 2003 article about JonMon’s alleged misuse of the database for a dating service he helped to create to find dates for himself.
- JonMon’s prior 2011 lawsuit to get content he didn’t like remove from the web, which alas was successful not on the merits (it looks to me like it was just as bogus as his recent suit) but rather because the defendant, foolishly, did not mount a defense and JonMon won a default judgment.
He’s re-suing Ron Newman because of liver journal post re-located to Dreamwidth.
YHGTBFKM. I hope Ron finds a good lawyer. He should be able to file an anti-SLAPP motion and recover his legal fees.
hey jik,
JonMon’s suing Encyclopedia Dramatica now.
They’ve got a header on every page, and their jonmon page redirects to their DMCA-bot page. stumbled across it by accident today.
–srakkt
I imagine I might care a bit more about this if E.D. weren’t such a cesspool.
Having said that, I hope Randazza not only gets the suit dismissed as a SLAPP suit but also convinces the court to pay the defendants’ legal costs. I haven’t looked at E.D.’s JonMon page recently — and I apparently can’t now, since they’ve taken it down — but I seem to recall that it was pretty factually accurate the last time I looked at it, and even if it wasn’t, I doubt there’s any site on the internet that is more clearly satirical and not to be taken seriously than E.D., so I think it should be _prima facie_ obvious to any court that applies the correct standard that the stuff written on E.D. isn’t libelous.
Also, if JonMon really used a DMCA request to get them to take down the page, then that was entirely and completely bogus and a clear misuse of the DMCA process. They should not have taken down the page in response to such a request. Having taken down the page in response to such a request will actually hurt their case.