Is ‘litigiosity’ a word? It ought to be.


Good news for lawyers everywhere! We have managed to completely pay off our lawyer, Marc Randazza! The Carrier lawsuit is over, ending in victory for the side of goodness, he says, as he gazes out over the shambles of his finances. We paid him off, but all of us defendants together are in the hole for <gulp> $20,000, so we’re not closing our fundraiser yet, and I’m still holding out my hat for personal donations. Good lawyers, it turns out, aren’t cheap, and litigious assholes willing to sell their soul to misogynistic, racist haters can mobilize more cash than we can.

And our society does breed for litigious assholes. Case in point: Devin Nunes is suing Twitter, “Devin Nunes’ Mom”, and “Devin Nunes’ Cow” for $250 million dollars. It’s absurd. It’s doomed (although his lawyers will profit). All it accomplishes is to further promote people who are laughing at him. I would never have seen this, for instance, if it weren’t one of many insults featured in his filing:

You may be thinking that the defendants might need some help protecting themselves from this frivolous and excessive nuisance, but really, Twitter’s lawyers are laughing themselves sick right now. If you are inspired to help an underdog, donate to me instead.

Man, I’m thinking that if there were a poll to name the dumbest person on the internet, and the choices were Jim Hoft, Jacob Wohl, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, or Devin Nunes, I wouldn’t know who to vote for.

Comments

  1. thomasmorris says

    Devin Nunes’ Cow has gone from 1,500 followers to 70,000 in less than 24 hours. I’m hoping that rate of growth continues and the Cow ends up with more followers than Devin Nunes.

  2. says

    The word I know of for someone who sues at the drop of an insult is “litigiousness,” but “litigiosity” could apply to people or institutions who are just so sueable, because they are outspoken, because they are popular, because they said this one thing, or because they have money in their pockets.

  3. petesh says

    I giggled too, until someone pointed out the fundraising Nunes is going to (try to) do off this, especially if the suit is tossed. It will be, and the Feds won’t start a formal investigation of SNL, but these humorless assholes are completely shameless and their flailing around is quite likely to cause damage — largely indirect. Of course it “won’t be his fault” when some nutter shoots up Twitter headquarters and it “won’t have anything to do with the White House” if someone plants a bomb at NBC. I fully support making fun of these idiots, just don’t underestimate their potential for sparking violence.

    Oh, and do follow his Mom as well as his Cow. Also his Yacht, his Drunk Uncle, and doubtless many more.

  4. says

    Man, I’m thinking that if there were a poll to name the dumbest person on the internet, and the choices were Jim Hoft, Jacob Wohl, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, or Devin Nunes, I wouldn’t know who to vote for.

    I’d call it an even tie between the five of them.

  5. says

    Hustle v. Falwell makes satire and parody, as this clearly is, practically immune from defamation claims.

    Moreover, and while this is minor, the cartoon does not depict a sexual act. It is lifted from The Human Centipede and among other things it is calling Nunes a shit eater. This shows inattention to detail that is key in defamation cases.

  6. ck, the Irate Lump says

    Twitter might decide to act, though. Big companies, especially ones that are flirting with monopoly, like Twitter is, can be rather skittish with the threat of a lawsuit from a lawmaker which he could mutate into regulation. The right has been whipping themselves into such a frenzy around “shadow banning”, a practice they’ve never proved actually affects them (or necessarily even exists), that they’d be more than willing to ignore their traditional allergy towards regulation if it means they’re putting certain people in their place.

  7. chrislawson says

    Hard to choose among the others, but Jacob Wohl stands out as spectacularly moronic.

  8. ck, the Irate Lump says

    petesh wrote:

    I giggled too, until someone pointed out the fundraising Nunes is going to (try to) do off this, especially if the suit is tossed.

    There’s also another implicit threat in there. Twitter is a near monopoly, and there is effectively a threat of regulation or other unwanted governmental attention in the lawsuit. I’m sure he’s hoping this will cause Twitter to make some changes to promote and protect conservative voices from dissent.

  9. ck, the Irate Lump says

    Oops. Didn’t mean to make the same point twice. I thought I had abandoned my first post since it wasn’t showing up for me at the time.

  10. Onamission5 says

    @thomasmorris #2:
    It is done. Nunes had 392K followers. The Cow account’s followers now stand at 416K. That’s an increase of more than 414,000 in 48 hours, for anyone keeping track.

    The Mom-alt account (because original was broad daylight banned) has as its header a photo of Barbara Streisand’s Malibu beach house, which is hilarious.

  11. says

    Wait, wait, wait. Pronoun trouble:

    We have managed to completely pay off our lawyer, Marc Randazza! The Carrier lawsuit is over, ending in victory for the side of goodness, he says, as he gazes out over the shambles of his finances. We paid him off…

    Who is the “he” in “he says”? The same “he” who is gazing out over the shambles of his finances? If “he” is Randazza, why would his finances be in shambles? If “he” is Carrier, did the lawsuit really end in victory for the side of goodness, according to anyone not Carrier?
     
    Who got paid off? Carrier or Randazza?
     
    If the “Carrier lawsuit is over,” it seems like that should be the news, with links to final filings and court orders, and not this Nunes crap.

  12. says

    “He (or she) says” is a second-person trope in which the speaker pre-emptively comments on his statement in the role of a sarcastic listener before the ink in his word balloon has dried. It’s venerable as all get-out in my country.