Of course, the real friend here is truth.
You should read a lawyer’s take on the meritless lawsuit over being called a crackpot.
I will have to bookmark that for whenever I get Yet Another Tiresome Lawsuit Threat from a crank, crackpot, pseudoscientist, antiscientist, fraud, phony, goofball, and/or reality-impaired chucklehead.
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The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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 | Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. |
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August 25th, 2007 at 11:18 am
These sort of lawsuits are hard to win in court, even when there is some very good evidence of malicious and intentional slander. This lawsuit cannot be won in court and the fraud who brought it likely knows this.
The point is not to actually win the suit, but to use the suit as a threat and make the other cry uncle at the prospect of having to hire lawyers and trudge out a court battle. “Okay, I give up. I’ll apologize and take down everything if you just promise to stop destroying my life.” This is very L-Ron-Hubbard tactics.
Hopefully PZ will not need to even worry about the fees and risks, as a good judge with experience in these sort of suits would likely toss this out on it’s ear and hopefully appeals would be equally fruitless. I’m sure that there are some lawyers out there who would be willing to give someone like PZ some pro-bono advice. And again… hopefully it won’t amount to anything more than advice.
I’d like to see this guy’s bluff get called. In the end, these scare tactics can backfire. They can get a lot of bad press for the plantif and can lead to the possibility of counter suits, if the tactics are aggressive and fraudulent enough to merit it.
August 25th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Unfortunately, I believe that Pivar has already achieved his goals in this law suit. In bringing this suit he has created massive amounts of undeserved publicity. Hell, at this point if I was him I’d chose to represent myself and try my best to turn the whole thing into a media circus.
In the end what should have been an obscure book by a crackpot might end up on the best seller list because of all the attention he’s getting.
Never underestimate the derangement of American popular culture.
August 25th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
My favorite part:
“So, in my opinion, Judge Scheindlin will promptly dismiss your suit. Assuming, for sake of argument, that she does not, your suit faces several insurmountable evidentiary obstacles. First, your complaint alleges that your Lifecode book, in both the 2004 and 2007 versions, was published by “Ryland Press, Inc.” My research has turned up no such publisher anywhere in the world. … I also talked with Terry Krohn at Axiom House, which advertises your second Lifecode book; he told me it was not published by him, that he listed it as a favor to you, and that it had no sales to date. It would be impossible for you to prove even one dollar of damages, let alone $15 million.”
August 25th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
It’s funny that it states Pivar’s lawyer “should have known…” this and that.
I say it’s funny because for every good, just member of the legal profession, there are the “ambulance chasers” who will file suits at the drop of a hat (or thought of a drop of a hat).
If there were some way to actually punish the lawyer for filing a frivolous suit, and the complainant as well. Something monetary, would be good for starters. That might start to tone down the amount of junk suits in court.
August 25th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Well, there is a nutty woman near me I have had some scuffles with (she runs a local anti-radiation/technology is killing us/close the nuclear plant/uber-stupid green party-esq bad science group). I was worried she would sue me, becasue she talked about her fights for the environment like that and she hated me for crashing a rally and such….
but she can’t…
She was a lawyer. She got disbarred. And the state courts went to some unusually extreme measures, even saying she was ordered to have no part in any civil litigation unless ordered to directly and she was not allowed near the homes of judges or others involved in such… yada yada..
Long story though. Basically she loved filing law suits… crazy ones. And then she took issue with the fact that the local judges were dismissing her lawsuits and giving her some tongue lashings, such as threatening with sending her law license in for review.
Anyways… her response? She started suing the judges who she didn’t like. Yeah, seriously. Not through the court or anything.. but actually personally going against the judges for things unrelated.
Oh.. it gets wackier. She sued a judge for sexual harassment. Well, not the judge, but his dog. Who apparently the judge brought once or twice to the town hall. And the dog apparently had a habbit of putting it’s nose near the bottom of women’s skirts or something.
Source: http://www.newsoftheweird.com/cgi-bin/search/newsweird.cgi?query=connecticut&num=1
So thus this all goes before a state board of judicial greviences. The problem though? She had pending law suits against several judges on the board!
Well… long story short. She was dissbared, the state bar association kicked her out. She was severely reprimanded by the bar association. She narrowly escaped being held in contempt.
Okay… I guess that’s a bit off topic. But this sort of thing should happen a bit more. The whole story makes me giggle
August 25th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Haha. Now that is what I call destroying someone.
That was an awesome read.
August 25th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Steve
Thank you for posting Perry’s lecture. It gave his fans a chance to see another side of him – that of an accomplished speaker. Regular listeners got to hear him as the resident jester full of good humor. Sharing the lecture let us know that there was much more to the Perry you knew but we never got to see.
We will miss him all the more.
August 25th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Nice one there. But frivolous lawsuits are not usually intended to be won, they are just used to harass and finanically ruin someone
August 25th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Wasn’t Hovind a famous “frivolous lawsuit-filer”?
Of course, that was before he wound up in the pokey…
August 25th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Judge Scheindlin? Is PZ going to be on Judge Judy?
August 25th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Steve P. said,
“Judge Scheindlin? Is PZ going to be on Judge Judy?”
Oh Steve P. I only wish it were so. That’s what I’d call entertainment!
August 26th, 2007 at 12:37 am
That is what really gets me with this case, though. This guy isn’t suing PZ alone. He is suing PZ along with Seed Media Group (SMG), the publishers of Seed magazine, a fairly major lay science magazine that is also quite popular with non-scientists (they also happen to host PZ’s blog and pay him to post there). The magazine has fairly deep pockets and a strong financial interest in not letting themselves get pushed around, both to avoid alienating readers and to avoid setting a precedent that would likely lead to many more frivolous lawsuits. You would think pushing PZ around would be easy (although from what I have been hearing he has been getting a lot of offers for donations and even pro-bono legal counsel). But if Pivar’s goal was just to make PZ’s life difficult then attacking SMG at the same time is shooting himself in the foot. Pivar is forcing a major corporation to come to PZ’s aid.
August 26th, 2007 at 4:01 am
Oh, please…
Lawyer’s don’t exist.
August 26th, 2007 at 5:58 am
Steve P. said,
“Judge Scheindlin? Is PZ going to be on Judge Judy?â€
That’s what I thought when I saw the name:)! If only! Just visualizing her scowling face while she barks, “DOES IT SAY STUPID ON MY FOREHEAD?!” makes me giggle.
August 26th, 2007 at 7:39 am
LOL! that’s what I thought too upon seeing the name.
‘Boy, you’ve got some chutzpah coming in here with this!’
August 26th, 2007 at 7:44 am
I know California, and I think maybe New York have anti-SLAPP laws (Strategic lawsuit against public participation). This basically stays discovery and halts amendments to the suit until a judge determines that the lawsuit is designed to impede a person’s right to speak out on something.
Stopsylviabrowne.com’s lawyer mentioned SLAPP in the legal response to her suit against the website:
“It is a fact that bears mention that Ms. Browne is a person of wealth and resources far in excess of Mr. Lancaster. There have been instances where monied individuals have used the courts as tools to bully their detractors. You are put on notice that any suit filed without basis will be met with a vigorous defense that will take full advantage of California’s anti-SLAPP law and include motions for legal fees and sanctions.”
http://www.stopsylviabrowne.com/articles/response_attempttosilence.shtml
August 26th, 2007 at 9:49 am
I have managed to locate at least one other book published by Ryland Press: Easy Cookies by Linda Collister.
http://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/1841729523
There may be others, but I quickly lost interest in digging into this.
August 26th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Apparently that is a different Ryland Press and they have stated that they have never heard of Lifecode, not to mention published it. They specialize in cookbooks and craft book if I remember correctly.
August 26th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Mr. Pivar and Mr. Little are a bunch of n00bs! (sue me for that)
August 26th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Pivar is such a tool. There, now go and sue me.
August 26th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
The letter, in addition to being an interesting read, was quite funny. One of the funniest things about it is what it didn’t say. I get the sense that Mr. Irons was deliberately refraining from engaging in a bit of “rhetorical hyperbole” of his own. Perhaps he was considering saying that anyone who thinks he’s been legally hurt by such name calling would be a “crybaby,” that anyone who couldn’t shake off a bad review was a “wuss” and that anyone foolish enough to bring such a lawsuit would be a “litigious fathead.” (My apologies for the possible ageist and sexist nature of my hyperbole, but words like “wimp” and “whiner” wouldn’t quite be hyperbolic enough.)
Mr. Irons mentioned Rule 11, a rule with which his audience was unfamiliar. (That may be no surprise, as even the ilustrious President of the United States was completely ignorant of it when he toured the country falsely claiming that there was no protection in place against frivolous lawsuits.) Mr. Irons did not mention–as it would serve no purpose at this time–that there are certain very effective strategies for dealing with the well-funded frivolous litigant. Anyone who thinks he can prevail in a suit unsupported by fact and law simply because he has more money than his opponent is in for a rather nasty surprise.
August 27th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
It would be interesting to know if there a “standard” sanction for cases like these under Rule 11, since the limitation is “limited to what is sufficient to deter repetition of such conduct or comparable conduct by others similarly situated.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/Rule11.htm
August 28th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Thank you, Vis.
According to that, it could get very ugly, indeed, for Pivar and his attorney. Yes, the law firm is held jointly responsible.
Seed and PZ list all legal expenses tied to this. Plus the judge can award sanctions, including penalty fees, and non-monetary directives.
August 31st, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Weirdly, the guy who was going around the Internet saying positive things about Pivar’s book turned out to be a professional PR man, Matthew Rich, whose organization issued the press release which prompted PZ Myers to repost his old debunking and thereby provoked the whole incident in the first place! Rich’s other job duties include arranging photo-ops for Miss Teen USA winners.