He didn't, though. He sued Rekieta personally and a corporation that is really irrelevant since his show is not the practice of law. I don't know if his lawyer just looked up Minnesota corporations and didn't know there was specifically a potential "media" LLC to sue too.
He should probably have just sued Nick personally and let him bring in the LLC if he wanted to, leaving him with a difficult choice. It's pretty likely the proper venue would have been the same anyway. Everything Nick did in relation to Monty I believe was done while he was physically present in Minnesota, whether or not he was acting through an LLC (which appears to be abandoned).
That's true. I'm just saying that Monty didn't get fooled by the obviously bullshit argument that an LLC is a magical impenetrable shield that protects Nick from being sued personally for any defamation lawsuits. I concede that it could be that the only reason he didn't get fooled by the argument was that he didn't hear it.
Nick could
try to bring in the LLC and try and argue that the proper venue was Texas, or that Texas law should be applied, in the same way he could turn up to court naked and clucking like a chicken. I really doubt that would work when the statements were all made on camera where, without going back to check, I'm willing to guess it's clear that Nick was in his home in Minnesota.
The fact that Rekieta apparently bragged for years about his one weird trick to avoid defamation suits and his top-tier defamation attorney didn't even take any steps to advance it as an alternate argument says it all. The only time he mentioned Rekieta Media at all was to state that Rekieta Law was a case of mistaken identity so that part of the suit should be dismissed.
I guess Randazza had to slowly explain to Nick that his idea was stupid but that in suits made over claims on the Internet, you can try to apply the law of the defamed person's state of domicile. That's why they're trying to apply Colorado law even though they can't prove that Monty was physically present in Colorado for any time in the past 2+ years and he doesn't appear to have any continuing relationship to the state beyond a mailing address which does not appear to be owned by him and maybe a health provider who provides telehealth services.
This is sometimes called "piercing the corporate veil" and it can be very hard to do except in cases of serious corporate misconduct (acting with malice works, but mere recklessness rarely works to do this) if the corporation is set up correctly and operates as a separate entity. Nick Rekieta almost certainly has not set up his corporations correctly here (eg using his "Rekieta Law" trademarks for the work of "Rekieta Media" and advertising his law firm in every video), and he may have actual malice in this case, but a generic defamation case would usually not rise to the level of corporate misconduct.
That has to do with limited liability of debts. In the hypothetical situation where somebody was so stupid as to sue Rekieta Media LLC, won a judgement, and Rekieta went "well, too bad, Rekieta Media is broke!" then maybe that person could make those arguments.
As for the defamation claim, Nick is on camera personally making the statements. Therefore, you can sue him if you want to, even if he made the statements on a YouTube channel purportedly owned by an out-of-state holding company. In general, plaintiffs are trying to go the other way - an employee makes a defamatory statement, but the employer is the one with the money, so the plaintiff sues both employee and employer on the basis that the employer published the statements (as in the case of a newspaper or something) or that the employee made the statements in the scope of their employment.
Going this way is easy. Just sue the guy who made the statement.
