Maverick Entertainment Group Inc.

West Coast Productions, Inc. Case is DEAD.

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With the flick of a wrist and the power a pen, the West Coast Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-5,829 case is dead.

I don’t know whether I should be saying congratulations to the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC clients who are now dismissed from the case, whether I should be writing an obituary on what was one of the longest-lasting monster bittorrent cases, or whether I should be skeptical and cautious at such a simple and eloquent end to such a violent case.

This case had everything wrong with it. Improper joinder, improper jurisdiction, even the content it accused internet users of downloading was distasteful. “I don’t like ugly biker chicks, I’d never download their films,” a Doe Defendant once told me.

On top of everything wrong with it, this case had baggage, namely West Virginia’s West Coast Productions, Inc. lawsuits with Kenneth Ford at the helm, all of which went bust last year.

But it wasn’t jurisdiction or joinder which caused to downfall of this case; it was failing to name and serve defendants within the 120 day limits as dictated by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 4(m). Judge Kollar-Kotelly, realizing that the plaintiff attorneys were using the courts to extract settlement agreements, decided to implement and enforce this rule forcing the case to shut down.

The last stab to the case was a September 1st, 2011 deadline where the plaintiff attorneys were ordered to name and serve defendants, and to report to the court by the end of today who they have named and served.

I was sure that they would at least name the John Doe Defendants who lived in the District of Columbia, and they would in turn ask the court for more time. But instead, they named NOBODY. They merely packed up their bags, closed up shop, and dismissed the case.

What does this mean? Could it mean that the plaintiff attorneys do not have the resources, the time, the patience, or the energy to take clients to trial? Or, did West Coast Productions, Inc. say “enough is enough; we’ve made enough money in settlements — let’s close up shop.” It cannot be that easy.

Here is my take. Before they sue each and every one of the defendants in smaller groups in the correct courts — a tactic that Steele Hansmeier, PLLC and other plaintiff attorneys have caught onto — they had to kill the big bad monster of a case. After all, it would be bad to sue the same defendant in two cases at the same time for the same alleged act of infringement.

So for now, those of you who were defendants in this case, you are no longer defendants, and I congratulate you on your victory. I would whip out the champagne bottles and celebrate, but be very aware that there is one more West Coast Productions, Inc. v. Does case lurking in this same DC court. West Coast Productions, Inc. (1:11-cv-00055), our case’s little brother is still alive and well. While Judge Kollar-Kotelly has taken the sword to slay the extortion machine that was our West Coast Productions, Inc. case, so far, Magistrate Judge John Facciola has been merely pushing paper on the other West Coast Productions, Inc. case.  Really, nothing of substance has been going on there.

What about the letters and the phone calls you all have been receiving?  Should you ignore them?  Probably not.  For the most part, the plaintiff attorneys at Dunlap Grubb & Weaver, PLLC have your contact information, and they plan to use it.  Expect multiple “scare” letters saying, “we plan to sue you unless you pay us $3,500 (or more) by XYZ date.”  Then expect to get additional letters for higher amounts.  As far as whether this is a bluff or not, it is best to be prudent and to watch where they are suing in order to determine where they have hired local counsel.  For example, if you are watching the copyright cases on RFC Express (http://www.rfcexpress.com), and you see that one of Dunlap Grubb & Weaver’s cases — whether West Coast Productions, Maverick Entertainment Group, Call of the Wild, etc. etc. — has been filed in your home court, that should be a red flag that you might be sued yourself.  Lawyering up (e.g., hiring an attorney) at this point if you have not already done so, or even proactively settling might be a wise option.  However, if you see no lawsuits of theirs in your state, my opinion is that there is no need to feed their war chest with your settlement dollars.

I have attached the dismissal letter below for your viewing pleasure. Simple. Voilà!

[scribd id=64331514 key=key-215wj3misks3ksdu8ytl mode=list]

DC Judges Look Toward Case Dismissals

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[UPDATE: I just found out that Judge Howell wrote almost identical opinions in the Voltage Pictures, LLC v. Does 1-5,000 (1:10-cv-00873-BAH) case and the Call Of The Wild Movie, LLC v. Does 1-331 (1:10-cv-00455-BAH) case to the opinion she wrote in the Maverick Entertainment Group v. Does 1-2,115 case, as described below.]

No doubt there will be many questions about the new order in the now Maverick Entertainment Group v. Does 1-2,115 case (1:10-cv-00569-BAH) — same case, new number of defendants from the recent dismissals. In addition, there is new news in the West Coast Productions v. Does 1-5,829 case (1:10-cv-00057-CKK).

First, the Maverick Entertainment Group news. Today, Judge Howell mentioned in her order that no jurisdiction nor any joinder arguments will be entertained by the court until defendants are named in the case. This twenty-six page ruling is essentially the same as her previous ruling, but this time she explicitly said that once defendants are named, they will have these defenses, and chances are they will be meritorious. To use her words, “[t]he putative defendants’ argument that they are improperly joined may be meritorious should they be named as defendants in this action.” (emphasis added, p.11)

*Surprisingly missing from her opinion was the elephant in the room — the settlement demand letters.* Judge Howell goes on to say, “…the putative defendants are not subject to the plaintiff’s subpoenas, and therefore do not face any ‘annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense’ from the plaintiff’s discovery request (as per Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c)(1)).” I cannot possibly believe Judge Howell does not know that the plaintiff attorneys are demanding settlements from defendants.

They say justice is blind, but not stupid. Perhaps a few of us attorneys and our clients should send Judge Howell a sampling of the settlement letters our clients have received over the past few months.

Next topic, the West Coast Productions case. In short, yesterday, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered that certain defendants should be named and served with process by May 16th, 2011 or they should be dismissed. My guess is that that they will dismiss these defendants so that the case will remain alive.

In addition, the judge ordered that by June 1st, 2011, the plaintiffs need to give the court an accounting as to which of the defendants have been dismissed; which of the John Does have been disclosed by the various ISPs, and which they are still waiting for; and, which John Does cannot be named because the ISPs no longer have their contact information (e.g., likely because they purged the records after six months according to each ISP’s IP retention policy).

Last, but not least [and this is the juicy part], the judge ordered that by June 20th, the plaintiffs should either name their defendants or dismiss them. She is doing this by way of FRCP Rule 4(m), which is the way Judge Shadur dismissed the CP Productions, Inc v. Does case in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois just a few months ago.

In short, it seems as if the DC court is getting tired of these cases. Judge Beryl Howell (the former copyright lobbyist) is sticking to her guns and not dismissing these cases and she is turning a blind eye to what the plaintiff attorneys are doing. Yet, possibly due to political pressure, she has softened her approach and has conceded that as soon as plaintiffs start naming defendants, she may start severing and dismissing them for lack of jurisdiction and/or improper joinder. [She also gave one strong evidentiary hint as to the weaknesses of these cases, but we will deal with that in another article if and when it becomes relevant.] Similarly, in this same court, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly seems to also be tiring of these cases. Instead of playing chicken with the plaintiffs in a “don’t name or else” stance as Judge Howell has done, Judge Kollar-Kotelly seems to be going the route of Illinois Judge Shadur in using FRCP Rule 4(m) to dispose of the case.

This is all good news. I am happy to share it with you.

Thousands of John Doe Defendants Quietly Dismissed!

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In a flick of the wrist and a slight of hand letter to the court, plaintiffs Dunlapp, Grubb, & Weaver (“DGW”) have possibly dismissed more accused John Doe defendants than ever before in the history of these bittorrent lawsuits. In a letter to the court titled a “Consolidated Status Report Pursuant To The Court’s Direction of 3/1/2011,” the plaintiff attorneys have dismissed* almost every defendant in almost every one of their mass copyright infringement lawsuits.

*I will explain below what I mean by dismissed, because I am not using the term in its conventional use. A more proper term for what they have done is that they have “dumped” these defendants rather than having them dismissed and released from the lawsuit.

The cases in which John Doe defendants have been affected are:

Call of the Wild Movie, LLC v. Does 1-1,062 (1:10-cv-004455-BAH)
Maverick Entertainment Group, Inc. v. Does 1-4,350 (1:10-cv-00569-BAH)
Voltage Pictures, LLC v. Does 1-5,000 (1:10-cv-00873-BAH), and
Donkeyball Movie, LLC v. Does 1-171 (1:10-cv-01520-BAH).

– NOTE: the “BAH” at the end of the case names is a recent change in the case names. When checking your case to determine whether this applies to you, just look at the 1:10-cv-“XXXXX” number and compare it to the case number you received from your ISP to determine whether this is your case.

This is a huge victory to our clients and those of the 10,000+ defendants that have been dismissed. No doubt we will be sending letters of congratulations to our clients in these cases in the coming days.

Now a little about these cases. These were what I like to call the initial “monster” cases, filed by DGW. They were the cases where thousands of John Doe defendants were sued, regardless of whether the courts had jurisdiction or not. These cases were also filed prior to the 6,000 Larry Flint Productions (LFP Internet Group, LLC) cases in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas and other cases (e.g., Far Cry) were severed and dismissed for improperly joining defendants in one John Doe lawsuit. In addition, these cases were more famously known as “the Hurt Locker” case, “The Call of the Wild” case, among other more famous titles.

As you can read by the filing, the plaintiff attorneys have determined that there is nobody to name in these cases, and thus they have determined to dump the defendant pool as a whole and rethink their strategy.

If you are a former defendant in this case, firstly we congratulate you. This is a big victory. However, with every victory comes a bit of bitterness. Here, the plaintiffs have determined on their own to not proceed with the current pool of defendants, which means that they have a few years from the alleged date of infringement to sue these defendants individually or as smaller groups in their home states.

On top of this, this is not an explicit dismissal, as a voluntary dismissal of all defendants would be. Here, the plaintiff attorneys have simply mentioned that they are not going to “name” defendants (see our article here to understand what it means to be “named”). In addition, it is not an order of severance by the judge dismissing all defendants. It is simply a “heads up” letting the court know they won’t be going after the various defendants.

This is good, with three caveats:

Firstly. Their note only refers to defendants where the ISP has handed their subscriber information over to the plaintiff attorneys. Defendants whose information has not yet been shared (e.g., my more recent clients in the past few weeks) are likely not included in this declaration of theirs because the ISPs have not yet given over their information to the plaintiff attorneys.

Secondly. The plaintiff attorneys can still sue all of these defendants in the US District Courts for the district where the defendants live. (You can read more about the likelihood of them doing this in this article.)

Thirdly. These cases are still alive! After filing this memo, the plaintiff attorneys proceeded to file a memo why a number of motions to quash the subpoena should be denied. They also filed an opposition motion asking the judge to deny these motions to quash. So the cases themselves are still alive and for the time being, well.

In closing. To those John Doe defendants and the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC clients who have been sitting around for months, feel free to breathe easy for now. I will continue monitoring these cases for changes, but you should feel comfortable considering yourselves dismissed. The numbers are certainly on your side and while the risk of being sued individually is always present, the likelihood of hearing from the plaintiff attorneys ever again is very low.