Good news, everybody! The Richard Carrier lawsuit is kaput. He finally, after 3 years of this nonsense, approached our lawyer and begged for mercy: he agreed to walk away from the lawsuit with prejudice if we agreed to do likewise and promise not to hurt him anymore. This is a comprehensive surrender, agreeing to quit harassing me, Amy Frank, Lauren Lane, Stephanie Zvan, Skepticon, The Orbit, and Freethoughtblogs with his legal bullshit. Here’s the SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT if you want to savor our victory a little more.
We still have to finish paying off our legal debt, so we’ll still be begging for donations for a while. If you’re one of those terrible people who supported Carrier in his attempt to silence people, I hope you appreciate what a bad investment you made, and excuse me while I dance on your failure, losers. Your champion is crawling away, defeated.
Congratulations.
Indeed, congrats to all!
What convinced Carrier to drop everything? Let me guess: his backers or donors or whoever was footing his bills dropped out, and he found himself paying for three different lawsuits.
Finally! Congratulations!
I want to see them driven before you. I will forbear on hearing the lamentation of the women, as that is misogynistic.
Happy day – that’s great news. Congratulations!
I can understand your desire to kick this bullshit lawsuit to the curb and be rid of it once and for all but it strikes me as totally unfair that your legal bills don’t become the responsibility of the plaintiff. In a sense, he’s achieved some measure of victory in that money that should of gone into your pocket had to be spent on defending yourself unnecessarily.
Conga-rats. About time! Maybe he finally did a Bayesian calculation on his chances of anything other than going broke, and decided calling it quits was for the best.
As far as I can tell you promise not to sue him, but you don’t promise not to say mean things about him. Anyway you must be relieved.
Victory! Congratulations all.
To garnetstar
Maybe he finally got a reality check. For years now, every respectable lawyer I have seen has said that “whoops, I filed in the wrong jurisdiction” is not a sufficient reason for equitable tolling. I brought this fact to Carrier’s attention, and he said that I was wrong and it does work like that. Maybe his delusion finally broke and he realized that he has no chance to win, and that he’s facing potential SLAPP penalties.
PS
To Larry. Winning is one thing. Collecting is another. Because Carrier is so poor, it is possible that the winners might not see much of the money. It’s called being “judgment proof”. So, when you calculate how much you’re likely to really receive, vs ongoing costs and time, sometimes it’s just best to walk away. I’ve had personal experience in this matter.
I am stunned, STUNNED, I tell you, that there is no mention of this on Carrier’s web site.
Congrats!
Thank fucking Christ….oh…wait.
Thank every supporter. Carrier cost a whole community.
I would insist that he pays all your legal bills.
Congratulations. Now you can deal with the real stuff in life. It truly amazes me that people that act in questionable wayst, get all huffy and attack anyone that points it out. Right wingers get the most upset when you quote their own words back to them or you point out their actual behaviors. Instead of suing people maybe they should change what they say and how they act.
Great news! Congratulations to you and to all who fought the good fight.
I think what sealed the deal is Carrier’s over-reach: he sued Amy in Arizona, and our wicked sharp lawyer saw an opportunity in that venue, and hit Carrier with a counter-suit. He probably suddenly realized that he was no longer punching at people in venues where they just had to be passive about it all, and was vulnerable to counterattack. One threat to punch back, and he folded.
Ultimately, he was just a bullying coward who couldn’t take what he was dishing out.
Congratulations to all of you! Glad I supported you guys.
PZ @17 Spot on with my experience.
I’ve contributed to a bunch of SLAPP suits.
On the side of the good people of course.
My sides, since I have some money in the game, have always won.
This makes one more.
In one case, the opposing side was required to pay the victim’s legal bills.
Meaning I got my contribution back with a very nice letter.
Glad to hear. I donated a few months ago when I had a job. Been out of work for a few months (with no income) so can’t presently help you close this chapter out, but will donate again when I can. Very happy to hear of justice (of sorts) in this case.
Ha-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
What a shocking surprise!
Anyway, congratulations.
This sounds interesting.
A countersuit on what basis or law?
And why only in Arizona?
Any info or a link would help.
@24 Raven, Arizona may have a particularly robust anti-SLAAP statute. But I know not from anti-SLAAP statutes.
Hm. The settlement says:
Just a neutral location? Or something deeper?
Nevada does seem to have anti-SLAPP legislation, so it certainly doesn’t seem to benefit Carrier. Oh, I see that Marc Randazza’s offices are in Nevada. So that seems to be a fairly important concession by Carrier: it’s on the opposing counsel’s home ground.
~happy dance~
I hope Carrier decides to seek psychiatric counseling now. I won’t pretend to diagnose him, but his actions strongly suggest that he has some kind of personality disorder.
Yay! Congratulations!
What a fuckwit, and what an absolute waste of time and money. How could he not even see how this was going to end?
I’m amused by the arbitration clause, particularly as it states things that are not to be done and not some critical things that are. And I understand perfectly well why “no retired judges” is in there… but that’s not for this forum. (It’s long, hypertechnical, and rather off-topic.)
The main reason for Nevada law is that Nevada is much harsher on pseudonymous defamation (whether what is often called “sock puppetry” or even darker, more devious things), as that — unlike, say, filing in a venue in which there is no reasonable ground for jurisdiction — is treatable as grounds for tolling statutes of limitations. Nevada also has one of the most generous “this is how you serve a lawsuit on a nonresident” provisions. Put all of these together and there’s a nonjudicial hint that sock-puppet attacks (and worse) will have… consequences.
Nice!
So glad the end of such nonsense is, at least, in sight now. Hopefully everyone harassed with the stupid, legal resource-wasting can get on with more productive activities.
IANAL, but it looks to me like the Settlement Agreement doesn’t say anything about Carrier filing new lawsuits against anyone. Given that Carrier went all in on the original bullshit lawsuits, this may be worth worrying about.
Now for the songs of victory.
Those signatures could have been used in Highlander…
Good.
High Eights all round.
Yey! Three cheers and whoop-de-doo! What a collosal waste of everyone’s time and money. I’d gloat that Carrier has also finally and conclusively driven his reputation into the mud, but the drain it was on everyone else is of much more significance.
That colossal wanker has finally stopped wanking in public and on over other people’s money for even entertaining the notion that he might be a wanker.
=8/-DX
Cubist @ 34:
IAAL (but not practicing here or having ever represented any party involved). It’s in lawyer language, but there’s an exclusion for everything that could have been filed to date (search for “1542” and then read the two subparagraphs right before that). That means that any new Carrier lawsuit must be based on conduct occurring after the effective date of the settlement, or it’s barred by the settlement… as to these parties. That is, if I had been one of the people repeating the things about Carrier (I wasn’t), I would still be vulnerable to being sued (although I’d still have all of my other defenses like the statute of limitations).
So, as a hypothetical example, if I were to claim next week — waiting until then so that all of the motions to dismiss have been accepted by the respective courts — that Carrier’s continued lawsuits reflect failure to acknowledge the duties of counsel to make a factual inquiry and assure himself that the action has merit and is filed for not an improper purpose (n.b. doesn’t apply to Carrier, he’s pro se and so only has to meet specific jurisdiction rules and not general ethics responsibilities), Carrier could try to sue me for that. Even if I had said so six months ago, he could/could have. Because I’m not a party to the settlement, so I can’t claim benefit from it.
If there had been a decision on the merits, that would be different. (There still could have been a settlement to, say, forgo appeals.) Then a third party could try what’s called offensive collateral estoppel… and then we’re really into technical lawyer-land.
The mildly deranged penguin waves some cheese in the general direction of Morria — albeit I’m too sure what compass or coordinate system she’s using as the wave looks to me to be more in the direction of her mouth — in congratulations. She also then eats the cheese, so I suspect she won’t be sending any… albeit she’s now asking if donations of cheese to the legal fund are possible? (I would advise declining the offer, albeit the sight of a lawyer being chased around their office by a French cheese hungry for avocat is rather tempting!)
I fart in Carrier’s general direction.
I’ve not seen any discussion of Carrier’s work as a historian; Bayes theorem religious expose etc. References?
jack16
@43: If you want to read some excellent posts pulling apart Carrier’s theories, check out Tim O’Neill’s blog at http://www.historyforatheists.com: he writes quite a bit about the errors in Jesus mythicist arguments, and Carrier’s name does come up quite a lot.