Steve Quest (p/k/a Montagraph) vs. Nicholas Robert Rekieta & Rekieta Law, LLC (2023)

It is shocking how retarded the parties are in this suite.

Montegraph: Retarded grifter thinking he can win.
Rekieta: Retarded grifter thinking he can monetize this lawsuit into a net positive.

Monetgraph's lawyer: paid by the hour and doesn't appear to respect rekieta at all.
Rekieta's lawyer: gets paid stupid amounts by the hour.

This lolsuit is almost as perfect a storm as the weeb wars had been. As soon as monty has a GFM we will achieve equilibrium. You will have a big money loud mouth that just bought a new vehicle claiming total victory soon™. The loud mouth has money behind him and industry support. The loud mouth shows off all of his expensive purchases and wife to own the haters.
Except one major difference: Montagraph is unlikeable in a similar category as Russell Greer. If Monty creates a GFM, you would have to question anyone who donates why would they support someone who takes pictures of nude children?
 
It would be a huge waste of time for both sides to go through the motions of an MtD followed by a nearly inevitable grant of leave to amend. Personally I think they should have not agreed to it and just gone ahead and filed the MtD and opposed the leave to amend, and filed for sanctions on top of that, just on principle but hey, maybe Nick isn't finding that even the dumbest of his Nickers want to fund his luxury lolsuit defense, and Randazza is costly counsel.

In any event, this is the same result that was most likely at much less cost. And remember, Minnesota doesn't have a SLAPP statute. Ironically, SLAPP is intended to reduce litigation but we see what happened in the Vic case. It actually encouraged not just litigating but massively over-litigating a rather simple case.
This feels like the parties & counsel actually acting like grownups for once.
 
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I just found out that Monty has actually posted the main clip he's mad at on his Rumble channel.

Sorry if this has been posted, but the original complaint his lawyer has filed is so vague that the only descriptions of what he was suing over that I have seen was Nick's explanation after the fact.

 
I just found out that Monty has actually posted the main clip he's mad at on his Rumble channel.

Sorry if this has been posted, but the original complaint his lawyer has filed is so vague that the only descriptions of what he was suing over that I have seen was Nick's explanation after the fact.

That clip doesn't sound like a joke to me. Then you add into the context it is from a licensed attorney and it becomes even more damning. I could see monty playing that clip next to Nick's rant about Keffals and the wall. Monty's lawyers, while being dicks to Nick, have seen the possibility of a win or likely nice settlement. They just need to get their shit together and give us an entertaining lolsuit.

"sue me if you want you fucking faggot...child molesting... fucking faggot" -member of Minnesota Bar and practicing attorney.
"I'm just saying he should probably be shot in the fucking head"- man that abhors physical and political violence.
 
That clip doesn't sound like a joke to me. Then you add into the context it is from a licensed attorney and it becomes even more damning. I could see monty playing that clip next to Nick's rant about Keffals and the wall. Monty's lawyers, while being dicks to Nick, have seen the possibility of a win or likely nice settlement. They just need to get their shit together and give us an entertaining lolsuit.

"sue me if you want you fucking faggot...child molesting... fucking faggot" -member of Minnesota Bar and practicing attorney.
"I'm just saying he should probably be shot in the fucking head"- man that abhors physical and political violence.
Yeah, the clip was actually a lot worse than I was expecting. Perhaps not surprising because I was just going off what Nick said since the complaint was so bad.

Interestingly, I can't find the stream date listed in the video mentioned in the initial complaint. Not sure if Monty fucked up when uploading the video, if the complaint is wrong, or if the complaint forgot to mention one of the alleged defamatory statements. Looks like there is a stream mentioned from the previous night, but that mentions a different guest.

I very much doubt if Nick is going to settle. TBH, a settlement might actually make financial sense here, since I feel like a properly plead complaint has a very good chance of going to trial. As someone mentioned at some point, this sounds a lot like the Musk diver lawsuit, which Musk won, but the win was at trial.

I'm not sure if Nick's status as a lawyer matters so much for the outcome of the case. But it kind of matters to the extent that Nick does not appear to have made many friends within the local legal community, at least to the extent that he has managed to have negative run-ins with both the judge and Monty's lawyer, the latter of which refuses to have any interaction with him. I do think that this is going to be a very interesting subplot of the case.

The "sue me if you want" looks very bad in court when Nick is begging to get this dismissed and it will look very bad if he eventually creates a GFM. Daring someone to sue you and then going cap in hand to raise legal funds is not a good look. Especially for someone who just bought a $100k Mustang.
 
Interestingly, I can't find the stream date listed in the video mentioned in the initial complaint. Not sure if Monty fucked up when uploading the video, if the complaint is wrong, or if the complaint forgot to mention one of the alleged defamatory statements. Looks like there is a stream mentioned from the previous night, but that mentions a different guest.
I think they were going in with a mindset of notice pleading and putting vague generalities in their complaint, forgetting (because they've probably never written a defamation complaint before) that defamation actually requires that you plead it with specificity. Randazza threw them that bone to avoid wasting a bunch of time and they went "oh shit, maybe we should amend it to add specifics then..."
 
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Not sure if Monty fucked up when uploading the video, if the complaint is wrong, or if the complaint forgot to mention one of the alleged defamatory statements.
The "shot in the fucking head" comment was literally the only actual statement the complaint cited. And it isn't even defamatory. It's obviously just a low opinion of Nick.

The other statements Nick has actually made probably do provide a cause of action if they are taken to be statements of actual fact. And Monty's genius lawyer has already stated that Nick's show is mostly hyperbole and rhetoric. He's not necessarily married to that, but it's going to be somewhat difficult to distance the case from such a statement, considering he's on the record as having said it.

There's still probably a colorable claim in the statements preceding the "shot in the fucking head" comment that led up to it that the complaint inexplicably doesn't bother to quote.
 
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I just found out that Monty has actually posted the main clip he's mad at on his Rumble channel.

Sorry if this has been posted, but the original complaint his lawyer has filed is so vague that the only descriptions of what he was suing over that I have seen was Nick's explanation after the fact.

What did Nick say leading into that segment?

In a vacuum yeah that's pretty bad and if it were included verbatim in the amended complaint it might survive a motion to dismiss (not going to say "would survive" because not an attorney), but context matters - if he were giving an example of the things Montegraph is claiming he says rather than what he actually believes then it's a very different story.

I'm not sure if Nick's status as a lawyer matters so much for the outcome of the case. But it kind of matters to the extent that Nick does not appear to have made many friends within the local legal community, at least to the extent that he has managed to have negative run-ins with both the judge and Monty's lawyer, the latter of which refuses to have any interaction with him. I do think that this is going to be a very interesting subplot of the case
Nick being unpopular with local judges and attorneys is going to matter much more than anything else: I have seen defamation complaints against attorneys arguing that the defendant acted with actual malice because s/he knew the appropriate level of due diligence for the allegedly defamatory claims based on his/her legal training & did not satisfy it but it was never the only basis for claiming actual malice, just one of many, and the motions to dismiss focused on more fundamental issues with the complaints than the idea that an attorney's out-of-court statements should be held to a higher standard than a layperson's. This applies here too, even if Montegraph makes a similar argument in his amended complaint the statement that Rekieta uses hyperbole in his videos is a much stronger argument for dismissal.
 
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Not sure if Monty fucked up when uploading the video, if the complaint is wrong, or if the complaint forgot to mention one of the alleged defamatory statements.
The "shot in the fucking head" comment was literally the only actual statement the complaint cited. And it isn't even defamatory. It's obviously just a low opinion of Nick.

The other statements Nick has actually made probably do provide a cause of action if they are taken to be statements of actual fact. And Monty's genius lawyer has already stated that Nick's show is mostly hyperbole and rhetoric. He's not necessarily married to that, but it's going to be somewhat difficult to distance the case from such a statement, considering he's on the record as having said it.

(Apparently Minnesota doesn't require a complaint be verified, i.e. the factual allegations to be made under oath with an attached affidavit.)
 
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I can't upload the documents at the moment so I'll let someone else do it, but the amended complaint is up on MCRO.
 
Here's the amended complaint. They also filed a one-page correspondence that just says that they served the amended complaint to Nick's lawyers.

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Attachments

"Case Type: Jennifer Fischer"

I see the high quality lolyering continues.

ETA: Holy shit. The Amended Complaint has an entire new section called "Amendments". I have never seen that before. Has anyone ever seen that before?
Clearly your specialty isn't Jennifer Fischer cases.

I love this. It seems from a quick glance as if the lawyer didn't actually edit any of the original complaint, he just appended a bunch to the end. So in the main complaint it still says Rekieta is known for hyperbole and comedy and in the section "Amendments" it says "nothing about most of his defamatory conduct suggests humor, levity, or that he's joking." And even with the new sentence why on earth would you put in the word "most"??

Looks like there's actually more specific quotes and dates now, which is progress. But some of them aren't going anywhere. I don't think saying to someone "you're Monty dumb" is defamatory to Montagraph. It appears that the clip posted on Monty's Rumble channel, which is now quoted in his complaint, is the best he's got.
 
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It's the best kind of case, where you want both sides to somehow lose.
I don't really want Rekieta to lose, but considering he quite literally dared Monty to sue him and mocked him about the damages, as quoted in the amended complaint, it'd be hilarious for him to be forced to go to trial over this and have to desperately rattle the GFM jar.
 
I don't really want Rekieta to lose, but considering he quite literally dared Monty to sue him and mocked him about the damages, as quoted in the amended complaint, it'd be hilarious for him to be forced to go to trial over this and have to desperately rattle the GFM jar.
And considering he's detested now, it would be hilarious if when he shook his tin can begging for money, everyone told him to fuck off.
 
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