Rumer v. Doe et al (2020) - Whoever loses, we win

[UncleTusky]

I am surprised that no lawyer is willing to represent the tranny Pro Bono.
I think that is why he/she/it is going to loose.
The butcher will have some high dollar lawyers and the other side will be a guy that thought chopping off his balls and turning his dick inside out was a good idea.

Also the idea of being able to serve people via email terrifies me.
If I got somthing that claimed to be a subpoena or a warrant via email I would delete it becase I would assume it as a scam.
The potential for fraud is huge.
What's next? Service via text or voice mail?
If you can't be bothered to have a PI find the person and put papers in their hand you should not get to sue them IMHO.

This case is messed up.
I guess that should be expected considering it involves people who pay to get castrated and have their dicks turned inside out by someone who took an oath to "Do No Harm".

Things like this are why any time I hear of a giant meteor headed to Earth I cheer for the meteor.

It's worse than that because the complaint didn't prove libel even if all the claims in it were true: False claims aren't libelous if the speaker had a good reason for believing them, so Rumer needed to show that she either was not a public figure and Miller was negligent, or concede that she is a public figure and Miller knew or should reasonably have known the posts were false. On top of that the basis for holding the trial in federal court rather than Pennsylvania court was that damages exceeded $75,000 which was based on nothing more than conjecture. The judge questioned none of this and then fucked Miller over a second time by not appointing defense counsel in violation of basic Constitutional rights.

 

[Thomas Talus]

The judge questioned none of this and then fucked Miller over a second time by not appointing defense counsel in violation of basic Constitutional rights.

The right to have a lawyer appointed to represent you only attaches in criminal cases, not civil.

 

[UncleTusky]

We have another update, it looks like Rumer and Miller are trying and failing to reach a settlement: Based on the updated docket it looks like there was a settlement conference early last month, Miller objected to unspecified facts in the conference (the documents are all sealed but my educated guess was it had to do with her claim/his denial that he wrote the posts which would remove his CDA230 protection or that the posts she's suing over were false), there will be another settlement conference early this month. A settlement does not require Rumer to restate all her claims or Miller to identify which claims he agrees/disagrees with, just a statement that they mutually agreed to end the suit for a specified amount, so if the lolsuit ends with a settlement the Court won't get to weigh in on where the line between legitimate SRS and malpractice/quackery falls. I suspect Rumer is the one pushing a settlement since going to trial will cost her a large amount in attorneys' fees (assuming they are hourly and not working for a cut of the payout), and put her practice + results under extreme scrutiny. Even if she genuinely believes her work is high quality the burden of proof on her right now amounts to proving she's not just innocent of medical malpractice but that anyone claiming otherwise would have to be negligent, reckless, or knowingly lying. It's a really high bar she has to meet and given Miller's decision to self-represent he might not have the money to pay regardless.

Independent of this, Rumer has now requested and received two extensions for her final pretrial documents. Based on a google search this says less about her being malicious and more about Miller kicking and screaming because these documents are normally jointly filed by all parties. I'll give Jamie this, he's probably fucked with Rumer's head more than this entire site has.

Spoiler: Screencap of the docket

Edit: To add more guesswork around the settlement.
Edit x2: To add more explanation for why Rumer might prefer a settlement.

 

[UncleTusky]

And just like that, Jamie Miller has trolled Kathy Rumer again: I'm still not privy to any of the documents but based on the docket it looks like Rumer's attorneys keep using his real name and now he's filing for sanctions over it:

Hopefully the magistrate judge who inherited this case last year (Strawbridge) is less deferential than the one who just rolled over and gave Rumer's attorneys everything they wanted but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Edit to avoid double post: I don't know how courts decide whether a motion is handled by a magistrate judge or the district judge s/he received the case from but the motion for sanctions was denied by the judge who initially heard this case:


Can the troon just win once in this whole farce? This is such a miscarriage of justice that it's not even funny anymore.

 

[UncleTusky]

Major update, it looks like Rumer attempted to block Miller from entering his own medical records into evidence:

If Miller is a former patient of Rumer's then just filing this motion should have gotten her attorneys disbarred, it's hard to think of something more relevant in this case than hard proof she's a quack butcher.

Fortunately Rumer backed down and agreed to dismiss the case against Miller without making him pay her a dime. Congrats Kathy you wasted everybody's time and (I hope) tens of thousands in attorney's fees, just to get beaten by a shitposting troon!

However she has re-filed for default against the other defendant (John Doe) so s/he might still get crucified by the pro-quackery judge:

It's great that the lawsuit is over but god damn does this look like a shakedown attempt that was abandoned when the defendant pushed back. It's the same thing she did a few years to Jezebel when it ran an article about one of her patients developing severe complications (to Jezebel's credit it stood by the article and didn't give her an inch).

Pinging @AnOminous just in case I got something wrong.

 

[UncleTusky]

Major and probably final update: The judge has issued a default judgment against John Doe (note that his name was sealed over privacy concerns, Rumer and the judge know exactly who he is) and in favor of Kathy Rumer. Her proposed damages were only granted in part.

For the crime of shitposting about a quack butcher, John Doe has been ordered to pay said quack butcher $169,000 to cover the costs she incurred hiring and retaining a reputation management firm, plus an additional $5,000 in punitive damages even though Doe is known to be destitute. No Rumer didn't mention that there are plenty of online accounts that point out she's a quack butcher other than "Rumers Anonymous", that would just be silly.

The crazy part is that $169,000 is notably less than what Rumer was demanding - she claimed that she'd need the reputation management firm's services for at least the next ten years and demanded $950,000 to cover those costs on top of the $169,000 (astute readers will notice this is a fine of over a million dollars, just for copy-pasting reddit posts and making some silly Oprah memes) but the judge ruled that was too speculative to approve. By the same token the $5,000 in punitive damages may be much more than John Doe can afford but it's still less than the $1 million Rumer originally demanded.

With that, this lolsuit has reached its end so let's tally up the winners and losers. Special thanks to AnOminous for the legal analysis and Not Really Here and Useful_Mistake for finding documents.

Winners
* Jamie Miller ran a blog that fucked with Rumer's head, made brilliantly trollsy arguments in an official court record, and ultimately got all the charges against him dismissed when Rumer's attorneys realized "oh shit, he might prove that our client really is a quack butcher".
* Everybody in this thread, it's been a fun ride and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
* Magistrate Judge David Strawbridge, for being spared any exposure to stinkditches and discussion thereof.
* Rumer's attorneys for making (I assume) a shitton of money in a legally very simple case.

Losers
* Kathy Rumer got the ruling she wanted but she's still liable for attorney's fees + future reputation management costs and getting the $174,000 she won out of John Doe will take years. Meanwhile, negative posts on Reddit and Jezebel aren't going anywhere so her title of "the Butcher of Ardmore" is going to stick around for years to come.
* John Doe is probably going to spend most of the rest of his life paying this judgment and/or hiding from whatever collections agency Rumer hires.
* Judge Chad Kenney for not realizing this was an obvious lolsuit and attempt by Rumer to silence her critics by making an example of someone who could not fight back.

 

[AnOminous]

* John Doe is probably going to spend most of the rest of his life paying this judgment and/or hiding from whatever collections agency Rumer hires.

I hope if he kills himself because of the harm caused to him by this evil quack butcher that he makes it clear whose fault it was.

 

[Pill Cosby]

Not only is she chopping off Troon dicks but she’s also siphoning their purses and silencing them.

I wonder if the dickless men will stand up to her now lol. Then again they probably have more important things to worry about such as Elon’s twitter and the horrible Kiwifarms.

 

[get_ur_gamon]

Oh no, looks like Cathy will be free to add more troons to her kill count.

Anyway...

 

[Sparkling Yuzu]

I hope if he kills himself because of the harm caused to him by this evil quack butcher that he makes it clear whose fault it was.

I hope he murder suicides her along with himself if he ends up killing himself. I can't believe the Judge would shit on an impoverished botch genital surgery victim and humor Rumer, even in part. So disgusting.

 

[DragoonSierra]

I can't believe the Judge would shit on an impoverished botch genital surgery victim and humor Rumer, even in part. So disgusting.

Doesnt he have to considering its a default judgement?

 

[UncleTusky]

Doesnt he have to considering its a default judgement?

Not to this extent. The default judgment meant John Doe was held liable for defamation and his no-show at the damages hearing meant he could not object to the amount he owed. But if Rumer claimed damages that were greater than the actual harm done, or damages that were not traceable to Doe's conduct, the judge could still use his own discretion and reduce the award accordingly. This is how Rumer's requested award of about $1.2 million to cover all current and future reputation management costs was reduced to just $169,000 (the amount she spent on reputation management to date) because the future costs + Doe's liability for them were considered too speculative. Punitive damages were also reduced from a requested $1 million to $5,000 because Doe is destitute and the judge considered that even $5,000 would be so unbearable that it would be an effective deterrent.

Now for my personal editorializing. Reducing those damages from Rumer's requested amounts was a good start but there were other obvious inconsistencies that the judge chose not to scrutinize - to pick one that was in Rumer's own complaint, half the allegedly libelous posts were outside the statute of limitations.

 

[AnOminous]

It's an absolute fucking joke that a quack butcher like this evil cunt gets even a penny from her victim who dared to complain about being mutilated by this fucking monster.