Oh, this brought a big smile to my face. Remember Bradlee Dean’s ridiculous lawsuit against Rachel Maddow and the American Independent News Network (AINN), my former employer? Not only has that suit been dismissed, Dean has also been ordered to pay the legal fees of the defendants too.
Memorandum and Order Granting in Part Defendants’ Motion for Attorneys’ Fees and Denying Plaintiffs’ Combined Motions for Reconsideration and Sanctions Entered on the Docket 6/25/12. Signed in chambers 6/25/12. Electronically filed via CaseFileXPress on counsel for the parties 6/25/12. Plaintiffs shall pay to Defendants fees and costs in the amount of $24,625.23 within thirty days.
This was very predictable. In fact, it’s exactly what I did predict when the suit was filed. At the time, I was under a gag order because I worked for AINN; otherwise, I would have offered a big wager to Dean and his attorney Larry Klayman, aka the worst lawyer in America (okay, Orly Taitz and Mat Staver rank up there too) on exactly this outcome. Klayman is lucky he wasn’t sanctioned by the court under Rule 11 for filing such a blatantly frivolous suit.
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raven
July 12, 2012 at 11:08 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
SLAPP suit, Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
Loser pays courts costs and the opposing side’s lawyer. They can get expensive fast.
Alverant
July 12, 2012 at 11:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@1
Does SLAPP always apply or just in frivilous cases? I’m concerned because if it always applies then it will discourage legitimate cases from going forwards because there’s a risk of losing to the more flashy lawyer and not due to the actual merits of the case.
MikeMa
July 12, 2012 at 11:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ah, a good result but will Dean appeal? Klayman will probably encourage it. He certainly doesn’t want to let the truth get in the way of a good bigoted rant? If he does his, he might lose his secret decoder ring Michele gave him.
Has Dean made any excuses for his loss?
Trebuchet
July 12, 2012 at 11:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If you’re listing idiot right-wing lawyers, don’t forget Andy Schlafley!
What’s the likelihood that Dean will actually pay up?
slc1
July 12, 2012 at 11:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Trebuchet @ #4
As I understand it, If Dean doesn’t fork over, he could be held in contempt of court. That threat, in addition to possible disbarment proceedings was sufficient to force Orly Taitz to fork over as ordered by the judge in Georgia.
raven
July 12, 2012 at 11:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Probably pretty low. It’s a fundie xian thing.
But there are legal remedies for that too. You can file a lien on Dean’s tangible property if any. Or maybe order his bank to pay you out of his accounts.
Alverant
July 12, 2012 at 11:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Maybe the debt can be sold to the repo men or those with the broken noses. Not that I’m wishing violence, but I would like to see it taken over by aggressive debt collectors.
Ed Brayton
July 12, 2012 at 11:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is just one suit by Dean, the one filed in D.C. court. He tried to withdraw that suit and filed instead in federal court, which is still pending. But the judge in the original suit is the one who ordered him to pay the fees of the other side. The federal suit will inevitably get dismissed.
Alukonis, metal ninja
July 12, 2012 at 11:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Don’t forget Charles Carreon on your worst lawyers list.
baal
July 12, 2012 at 11:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dean is likely judgment-proof – i.e. trivial assets. His attorneys are right wing activists who essentially paid for themselves or got rtwing think tank money to file the suit. It was an excuse to sue Maddow for the harassment value.
@#2
c.f. Code of Civil Procedure – Section 425.16.
It’s California’s anti-SLAPP statute. It only applies in free speech related cases and the case needs to be frivolous. The judge gets to make the decision as to what’s frivolous (not a hard decision in this case). There has been some pushback against anti-SLAPP suits. Most of that is political.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
July 12, 2012 at 12:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well that’s a start, but filing a SLAPP suit is such an outrageous attempt at perverting the most basic premises of a free society that it ought to be a felony after a certain number of offenses.
thisisaturingtest
July 12, 2012 at 12:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@#4, Trebuchet: Ah, Andy Schlafly, my favorite moron. Whenever I need a good laugh, I can always depend on Conservapedia. I was rummaging through there the other day, and found this list of “Best Conservative Songs”. Go ahead, click on it- you need the laugh, right? For example:
“Red Barchetta” by Rush, according to Andy, “[t]ells the story of a future with excessive regulation, where even driving is illegal.” I don’t normally pay much attention to lyrics (in fact, as a guitarist, I once signed a blood-oath to always regard them as only wasted space between solos), but… as far as I can tell, the song is just about driving a really cool car really fast. I think Schlafly took the one line “He says it used to be a farm, before the Motor Law,” and just went with that to a place he wanted to go- it didn’t matter what Neal Peart may actually have meant by it. And apparently Andy really likes Rush- he lists “The Big Money” as a “pro-capitalism” song (the last line in the song is “Big Money got a mean streak, Big Money got no soul”).
Andy Schlafly is a paradox- a joke with no sense of humor.
d cwilson
July 12, 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So, will future law students study the case of Dean vs. Maddow, which establishes the precedent that quoting someone verbatim is not slander?
Magic 8-Ball says: Not Likely.
Ed Brayton
July 12, 2012 at 1:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
thisisaturingtest wrote:
Actually, the song is about a future dystopia where cars are outlawed. It was based on a science fiction story about exactly that and Peart has talked about that in many interviews. It isn’t just about driving fast, as anyone who has listened to the lyrics at all would know. That doesn’t make it a conservative song, for crying out loud, but your take on it is clearly false too.
Ben P
July 12, 2012 at 1:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Everyone likes to rail about frivolous lawsuits, but no one really seems to be able to agree on what frivolous means except for crazy prisoners who sue random celebrities and the like.
When you combine that with the fact that you have a right to access the court system for redress of (legitimate) grievances, any laws that put high costs on suits deemed frivolous get difficult quite quickly.
Laws prohibiting “SLAPP” suits survive and exist because the purported basis for such suits is filing the suit without any intent to even pursue it to a verdict much less hope of winning it, merely to intimidate and harass the other side by forcing them to hire lawyers to defend it.
It basically requires proving the other side couldn’t be so stupid to have believed they could win this suit and must have been acting in bad faith. Maybe you can say that, but I’m not 100% sure.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
July 12, 2012 at 2:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’d think the blatant absence of a reasonable grievance would be a clue, but I’ve never been able to get my mind around the idiotic “well, you can’t just take the fire department’s side, you have to consider the arsonists’ perspective too” mentality.
Trebuchet
July 12, 2012 at 2:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@#9:
True, but at least Chuckles isn’t a right-wing idiot.
@#12: Andy also thinks “YMCA” by the Village People is a conservative song!
Jafafa Hots
July 12, 2012 at 3:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Klayman/Dean are not giving up. They are demanding that the judge recuse herself.
“Dean thinks that the judge is showing “bias” and in a declaration to the court yesterday, points to a few reasons…
…wants Judge Zeldon out of the picture. “This extra-judicial bias and prejudice is also the admitted result of Judge Zeldon acting like a ‘woman scorned’ after YCR and I decided to file suit in federal court,” he says in a legal filing.”
Modusoperandi
July 12, 2012 at 3:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
raven “But there are legal remedies for that too. You can file a lien on Dean’s tangible property if any.”
A hamper full of track suits?
Ed Brayton “That doesn’t make it a conservative song, for crying out loud, but your take on it is clearly false too.”
Ah, but what does the four minute long drum solo mean?
raven
July 12, 2012 at 3:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The bar is high here but the wingnuts and christofascists are easily capable of jumping over it into SLAPP suit territory.
Judges makes calls like this all the time. It’s their job!!!
Before the anti-SLAPP suits and today, they can and occasionally do issue Summary Judgements that a lawsuit won’t prevail on its merits. And that is why Rule 11 prohibiting frivolous lawsuits exists. Ask Orly Taitz about all this. It is very hard to provoke a judge into fining a lawyer but she managed to do it.
thisisaturingtest
July 12, 2012 at 5:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed: my bad, I guess. That’s what I get for not really paying much attention to lyrics. Reckon I’ll stick to the solos from now on- no such thing as a libertarian (or liberal, or conservative) lick.
Ben P
July 13, 2012 at 10:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As a practicing lawyer I can tell you getting a judge actually willing to award sanctions is exceedingly rare. Most judges are more than willing to give Plaintiffs the benefit of the doubt, even where the allegations are ridiculous.