Congratulations to the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC clients who have been dismissed from the BASEPROTECT UG, LTD. v. JOHN DOES 1-X (Case No. 2:11-cv-03621) and the CENTURY MEDIA, LTD. v. SWARM AND JOHN DOES 1-944 (Case No. 2:12-cv-03868) cases in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
The politics leading to the dismissal of these cases is quite simple. Each of these cases lagged on for almost TWO YEARS with little progress being made against the hundreds of John Doe Defendants implicated in the lawsuits. After 178 documents were filed with the court in the Baseprotect case (whether they be motions to dismiss defendants who have settled, motions to quash, or administrative motions and/or hearing notes), eventually the case got stale.
On 2/26, Judge Joseph Dickson issued an ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE (which is usually indicative of a soon-to-be-dead case) as to why the court should not SEVER AND DISMISS all defendants except for John Doe 1.
In other words, Judge Dickson figured out that the John Doe Defendants in this case — the alleged co-defendants of the “same” bittorrent swarm — had download dates which were spaced so far apart that it was very unlikely that each of the hundreds of defendants participated in the “same swarm and the same time.” In other words, joinder was obviously deficient and the judge was about to break apart the case into a few hundred pieces telling plaintiff attorney Jay McDaniel that he better pay the $350 filing fee for each of the John Doe Defendants and file separate actions, or else he’s dismissing everyone except for John Doe #1. The judge set the hearing date for 4/1.
In sum, McDaniel decided to cut his losses (which if you look at just how many people settled, you would conclude that this case was very profitable for him since its original filing on 6/23/2011), and without even waiting to attend the 4/1 hearing, he dismissed the case in its entirety.
Oh, and while he was at it, he also dismissed the Century Media, Ltd. case that same day.
Once again, congratulations to all who have been dismissed from these cases.
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I took a look at the BaseProtect cases today and noted to SJD that they all had been closed, but I really wasn’t sure why – I didn’t look in detail. Thanks so much for this post, which gives me the background on them and why they were dismissed!
My pleasure. Baseprotect was one of the older NJ copyright trolling cases, so I am happy to see it go. Century Media, Ltd. was one of the few music copyright cases. The reason I didn’t like this plaintiff was because I did not want a whole repeat of the MPAA/RIAA music download lawsuits we saw pre-2010. Happy to see that the other music companies did not join Century Media with their own lawsuits and that this did not become a trend.