Joinder: Whether the John Doe Defendants in a lawsuit should be linked together as defendant in the same lawsuit. Joinder usually relates to the question of whether they were involved in the “same transaction or occurrence.”
In many mass-IP-adrdess-based John Doe copyright infringement lawsuits, joinder is improper because the accused downloaders did not download the same copyrighted title from the same online swarm at the same time. Yet, they are thrown together in one lawsuit as co-defendants.
UPDATE (10/10/2012): “He loved her not.” All 33 cases severed and dismissed. Congratulations to all the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC clients who have been dismissed from these lawsuits. “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.” It appears as if us attorneys are playing a “he loves me, he loves me not” game watching Judge Klausner’s … Read more
Case consolidations (until now) happened when a federal judge lumped together different cases which all suffered from the same flaws, e.g., improper jurisdiction, improper joinder, etc. and they dismissed them all in one order. This was a good thing! However, when a troll-friendly judge consolidates a plaintiff attorneys case to keep the cases alive, but to manage the dockets, e.g., to avoid inconsistent rulings, while this in itself is a good thing for the court (and for justice), it is a bad thing for the defendants accused in those copyright infringement cases.
It is very easy to put up a banner claiming “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED — NO MORE BITTORRENT CASES IN SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK,” but reality is not that simple. A judge can give a ruling, and it can be a darned good ruling which is binding on all other judges in that federal district (similarly, … Read more
I am happy to share that the first round of Malibu Media VA (Virginia) cases have gone down in flames. As of this afternoon, I noticed that all of the Malibu Media VA cases (in the Eastern District of Virginia) received the same designation at the end of their case names, “-CMH-TRJ,” indicating that Magistrate … Read more
Arizona federal courts now apply FRCP Joinder Rule to apply only to bittorrent swarms the defendant participated in.