Quote:
Originally Posted by Biggy2
Based on this thread, you make it sound like its a hypothetical situation - "if i get sued", etc - If I were you, I wouldn't think of it as a hypothetical situation.
For as much as you go after them, they will come after you, probably harder. Big companies like Ameritech don't really care about you because your dealing mostly with employees of a large conglomerate (at the end of the day, they just want to go home and be done with it), but a small company like TMM where the owners personally see and feel your attacks, will personally see to it what goes around, comes around. Have you ever been sued before and gone thru the process? It's all fun and games, until the paperwork gets served. You may have to travel to the state, many times, to give depositions. With the public knowledge of what was posted here, they're going to be calling you in for psychoanalysis quite a bit. Years of legal fees, and if you can't afford them, many people go bankrupt. Any halfway decent lawyer is going to want 5-10k from the start, but they'll blow thru that inside of 3 months, and a lawsuit like this will take years to resolve. Going to trial can cost $100K+.
The legal system in the US is fucked. Anyone can sue anybody, for anything. In 6 months, this thing is going to be blown over, everyone will go on happy (assuming nothing else happens), but you will be paying for this, for quite some time. You should really stop posting, and start preparing, because with every new thread, you rub salt over the wound.
Never underestimate your opponents.
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You are assuming that I am going to hire an attorney. I have went through the process before and I have won. I am not going to hire counsel. Lawyers are for people who simply cannot make time to deal with it themselves, or people who have more money than brains. I will make the time for John (and then I will charge him for it in the end) and I have the brains are not an issue. There are exceptions to this, for instance, I probably would not attempt to represent myself at a murder trial. I am not that knowledgeable about the criminal courts so it would not be a good idea to roll the dice on a potential life sentence. But an assault charge, sure.
I will most likely do it myself. Its much more fun that way and the maximum costs I have in are paper, toner and postage. And a case of exhibit tabs, which are admittedly - fucking expensive. Toners is not much cheaper, either. Nor is mailing. So fine, John costs me a couple of thousand in expenses. Representing yourself in Court evens the score. When a mega corp sues an individual, the mega corp has the advantage because the individual will not be able to afford representation. Knowing this, the corps love to file lawsuits because most people cave in and give them what they want. I did - at first. Until I learned how the game was played.
Now, if you threaten to sue me, you damn well better do it. And if you sue me, you damn well better have a good solid case because I know the law, I know the relevant cases and I know how the court system works. And I know alot of the lawyers little tricks. I know how to get motions in front of the judge the day they are filed just like they do. I know who to call and get dates moved and its not the clerk. I know the games with serving things on another party by first class mail and postage meters (you file your copy with the clerk, then you wait a couple of days before you mail it to the other parties and you backdate the postage, then you drop it in a metro box at the post office [they look at meter dates handed over the counter, but not on stuff at the metro boxes] and by doing so you can put all parties at a disadvantage because they don't have the ability to file a timely objection, etc.) and thats why - if the court does not have online dockets - the clerk will get a call from me every fucking day to check for new "sneak filings" as I call them.
One court clerk tried to stop taking my calls because they said it was a nusciance. That did not last very long. I stuck a motion to compel in front of the judge about it and he asked me point blank "If I turn this down, are you going to stop the whole trial and run this to the Court of Appeals" and I said "Yes, your honor... I came with a notice of appeal and motion to stay just in case you decideded to do that" and that was that. The clerk had to take a phone call from me every single day. Eventually, she warmed up and I fostered the relationship, sending candies for the holidays and so on. She really liked this, as did all of the other people in the office she shared them with... and pretty soon that office was oh too happy to help me learn anything I didn't know already on how to get things done.
The corps also like to turn the cheek and bitch about lawsuits, these are the tort reform morons that I refer to in my writings. Home Depot threatened to sue me over a t-shirt I printed several years ago that was a parody on their logo with the words "Home Grown" on it. Bernie Marcus, one of the founders of Home Depot, loved to talk about tort reform. I downloaded some of his interviews, printed them and mailed them back with a letter telling them to go ahead and try it. They did not respond and they did not sue, either. So I decided to up the ante one, I told them that if they did not sue within 30 days, I was going to sue them for harassment. Almost immediately, a letter came from Continental Enterprises (which is a professional legal threat generating company that Home Depot and alot of other mega corps contract with) telling me that they did not plan to sue me at that time. I should have filed on them anyway but I was busy with a spammer suit at the time so I did not.
As for John, if and when he files, and when he finally losses - and he will lose - he will get a bill from me for bad faith litigation and anything else I can find (like common law trademark infringement on the "minusonebit" trademark) to support the allegation and he will be sued when he does not pay it. There has been more than one telemarketer and more than one spammer who has found out the hard way that I am fully capable of representing myself in court from start to finish and that while you can ignore 95% of the legal threats that show up in the mail from pro se litigants, there are about 5% that you should not. I am in that second group.
The real reason why I have not gone after ePassporte (yet) is the fact that I cannot find anywhere here to serve them and have legally effective service that they could not wiggle out of down the road. And its not worth going international over. I can accomplish the same thing on the forums by making sure that customers don't forget any of their misdeeds. If they should ever tire of that and decide to file a frivilious lawsuit against me claiming libel, that would solve the problem of serving them because then I can just serve their corporate counsel in a counter claim.
I don't need a lawyer. I have before paid lawyers an hourly rate to review documents that I plan to file if they are making key arguments, I have also paid them to research caselaw. But its always me who presents the case, me who does the vast majority of the paper work and the filing and the lawyers are then advisors who catch things that I may have overlooked. And doing it that way it does not cost very much at all. The last time I brought someone in to look over stuff, it cost me about $700. Chump change in the grand scheme of things. Going to trial costs almost nothing when you take the lawyer out of it. Then the most expensive thing is the fucking court reporter at $3 a page. But I can deal with that.
I know what I am doing and John had better watch his ass if he decides to try and steam roller me. And for that matter, so should the attorney who represents him. I should tell you all about the district attorney who tried to prosecute me and got his case thrown out and almost cited for contempt because he couldn't follow a simple order to find a document, make a copy of it and mail the copy to me. But we'll save that one for another time.