The oral argument took place a year ago:
Congratulations to Morgan Pietz, Nicholas Ranallo, Jason Sweet, Erin Russel, and many others who contributed to Prenda’s dishonorable finale.
One scam is down, more to go.
Since the order is short (12 pages), descriptive, and isn’t dealing with complex legal issues, there is nothing to analyse, explain or comment on. Just read it.
Ninth Circuit's decision affirming Judge Wright's Prenda order is brutal in its matter-of-fact brevity accepting his conclusions.
— (((Popehat))) (@Popehat) June 10, 2016
Put another way, Ninth Circuit thinks the record so self-evidently shows Prenda to be crooks that not much discussion is necessary.
— (((Popehat))) (@Popehat) June 10, 2016
Coverage
- Star Tribune: Ninth Circuit hammers Minnesota porn troll attorney
- TechDirt: Appeals Court Trashes Prenda’s Appeal, Affirms Sanctions
- ArsTechnica: Prenda lawyers lose key appeal, will pay $230k sanction
- Law360: 9th Circ. Rips Prenda Law For ‘Copyright Trolling’
- XBiz: Porn Copyright Trolling Law Firm Loses $230K Sanction Appeal
- Popehat: The Ninth Circuit Offers Prenda Law A Brusque Bench-Slap
- ABA Journal: 9th Circuit upholds sanction against ‘copyright trolling’ lawyers who sued porn downloaders
- Reuters: Notorious porn copyright troll committed ‘fraud on courts’ – 9th Circuit
- Morrison/Lee: Copyright Porn Troll Law Firm Spanked Hard by Judge
- Northern California Record: Federal judges increasingly aware of the dangers of ‘copyright trolls,’ EFF lawyer says
…and now for something completely different (and so painfully clueless that I struggle to keep my eyeballs in the sockets). Written by a Harvard law professor, no less:
- Bloomberg: Porn, Copyright Law and a Raised Judicial Eyebrow
But it remains noteworthy that the district judge reacted so strongly to the trolling scheme, and that the Ninth Circuit was happy to wink and let him get away with it.
Essentially, Prenda’s conduct was barely unlawful. Without the misrepresentation, it would have been completely legal.
What made the judges angry was the fact that Prenda made the legal system look foolish — by drawing attention to how the law could be used to enforce a scheme that Wright called a “legal shakedown.”
Tl;dr: forget about a myriad of instances when other courts ruled against Prenda and sanctioned its attorneys, forget that Steele and Hansmeier are about to be disbarred, forget an imminent criminal indictment — it was all Judge Wright’s whim.
You may say that the author is naive, I disagree: don’t attribute to naivete what can be adequately explained by snobbery.
Update
6/15/2016
Today Morgan Pietz and Nick Ranallo filed a request for attorney’s fees on appeal and motion for fees as damages (scroll down for the exhibits, which include a hilarious 2013 email from Prenda’s appellate attorney, Daniel Voelker, to Morgan Pietz). The defendant asks for $65,611 in fees and $795.30 in costs.
In related news, the Ninth Circuit denied Hansmeier’s application for admission to the bar of the circuit for failure to file status reports — as was ordered in May 2013, when the appeal was filed.
Filed under: Prenda
