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 orders in the Malibu Media, LLC v. John Does 1-10 (Case No. 2:12-cv-03615) case in the California Central District Court (where copyright troll Leemore Kushner’s bittorrent swarm scam cases are). Quite frankly, it looks to me as if he is doing one of two things, but it is unclear which game he is playing.
SCENARIO 1: “HE LOVES ME NOT”
In the first scenario, Judge Klausner is against the John Does, and he is very aware of the case law that has been flourishing around the federal district courts in so many states cutting down the bittorrent lawsuits at the knees of the copyright trolls. The problem is that Judge Klausner hates a copyright infringer.
So as we discussed in the “California Judge Consolidates ALL Malibu Media, LLC Cases, and WHY THIS IS BAD” article on 7/12/2012, the judge consolidated all of the Malibu Media, LLC cases under his control, his decision to separate out JURISDICTION and JOINDER issues was deliberate. In his charade where he ordered Leemore Kushner (the copyright troll) to explain to the court why the cases should not be dismissed for LACK OF PERSONAL JURISDICTION — we know Kushner sues California defendants in the California courts, so jurisdiction is likely proper — the Judge was pretending to cause her grief, but in secret, he was winking at her and telling her he supports her cause.
This order was EASY to comply with, and in just a few minutes time, Leemore Kushner filed the proper response explaining why jurisdiction was correct.
UPDATE: *AS OF THIS AFTERNOON,* Judge Klausner graciously accepted her explanation, and in doing so, he established case law indicating that “it is proper to sue a bittorrent defendant where the bittorrent defendant resides.” Now for joinder.
Now that Judge Klausner enjoyed Kushner’s explanation regarding PERSONAL JURISDICTION, today he asked her to explain to the court the JOINDER issue. Following this line of thought, she’ll provide him the usual “blah blah” swarm nonsense, and he’ll accept her explanation for that too. At that point, he’ll grant her motion for early discovery, and he’ll let the ISPs hand over subscriber information for the many defendants who are implicated in Leemore Kushner’s cases.
While Kushner would no doubt be thrilled at this victory, Judge Klausner will have also scored a victory in his own “judgy kind of way.” If he accepts her explanation regarding joinder, he will have effectively ruled that“in California, suing defendants together in a bittorrent swarm is PROPER, even when the defendants never knew each other, and none of the defendants uploaded or downloaded to the other (because the dates and times of the alleged infringement would be weeks if not months apart).” In other words, NO MORE SEVERANCE AND DISMISSALS for improper joinder. Now wouldn’t that be a nightmare?!? Watch out for Judge Klausner. EFF, consider an amicus brief here, because HE IS SEPARATING OUT THE ISSUES.
SCENARIO 2: “HE LOVES ME.” <– the MORE LIKELY SCENARIO.
As we discussed in our “California Judge Consolidates ALL Malibu Media, LLC Cases, and WHY THIS IS BAD” article, Judge Klausner made a silly mistake and sent an ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE why the cases should not be dismissed for lack of PERSONAL JURISDICTION. Pretending for a second that he read my article (I highly doubt this is the case) where I chided him for his error in confusing PERSONAL JURISDICTION and JOINDER, he accepted Leemore Kushner’s explanation of why PERSONAL JURISDICTION is proper.
Now, instead of saying, “okay, proceed with the case,” behind the scenes, Judge Klausner is getting ready to kill each and every one of the cases with one stroke of the pen. So, instead of admitting to his mistake (“who cares anyway,” he might think — “I just cost the evil troll some time and money.”), after being satisfied with Kushner’s explanation, he said, “Oh yeah, and by the way — I’m accepting your personal jurisdiction argument, but I’m not letting you subpoena the ISPs until you explain to me that JOINDER is proper. Why would you sue defendants together in the same lawsuit who were NOT INVOLVED IN THE SAME TRANSACTION OR OCCURRENCE? Silly troll.” In other words, he’s covering his oversight by making Leemore Kushner (the troll) jump through hoops, whereas in the end, he’ll take one look at her boilerplate answer as to why all the defendants belong in the same lawsuit and he’ll LAUGH HER OUT OF COURT. Severance and dismissal of each of the cases. “Go sue them individually and pay the $350 filing fee for each Doe,” he’ll say. In other words, Judge Klausner could be on your side.
MY OPINION: I wrote this quick article because at this point, it is unclear what will happen, and since many people are calling into my office asking my opinion about this particular case (and the California consolidations in general), I wanted to be explicitly clear that IT CAN GO EITHER WAY. We can only wait and see what he’ll do, and based on that, you, the putative defendant, will learn whether Leemore Kushner or the Lipscomb gang will be calling you to solicit a settlement in the near future. There is really nothing else here. He is either for the trolls, or he is for the downloaders. He can bend the law in whatever direction his judicial activist mind would like to.
So what’s you’re thought? Is it “he loves me?” or “he loves me not?”