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

[Useful_Mistake]

Is it really so hard for nick to settle for an undisclosed sum and apologize on stream? What does he hope to gain by "winning" this?

I’d assume its the principle of the thing; showing he can’t be silenced and the whole “never apologize” thing he’s been harping on

 

[AnOminous]

I’d assume its the principle of the thing; showing he can’t be silenced and the whole “never apologize” thing he’s been harping on

"Never apologize" is a good principle just like "never talk to the feds" but there are obvious exceptions to both. If you know a terrorist is about to nuke a city (that isn't in California) you should probably talk to the feds, and if you are an absolute fuck-up who absolutely fucked up, you should apologize.

 

[Dixieland Buckaroo]

Is it really so hard for nick to settle for an undisclosed sum and apologize on stream? What does he hope to gain by "winning" this?

Nick's egotistical enough to think that he's become the content.

So what's better than a lawsuit with anime lasagna-man? Why a lawsuit with Balldo-man! He's talked in the past about how he'd get into a lawsuit and talk about it on stream. He practically begged Soye-boye to sue him, maybe part of the reason he set up his Rekieta Media LLC in Texas. But that didn't pan out. So he just goes around drunkenly yelling at people, practically begging them to sue him.

Unfortunately, life comes out you fast, and Monte didn't go full cow with self-representation. Now he's down at least 2x the proposed cost of damages, with many, many more billable hours on the horizon, and the distinct possibility of a judgment against him. Instead of being a freeze peach warrior, he could become the cuck in the convicted slanderer corner.

 

[TheClappening]

"Never apologize" is a good principle just like "never talk to the feds" but there are obvious exceptions to both. If you know a terrorist is about to nuke a city (that isn't in California) you should probably talk to the feds, and if you are an absolute fuck-up who absolutely fucked up, you should apologize.

His never apologize saying also came with the nuance never apoolgize to the mob, but apologize to those you wronged.

In this case Nick should be saying, "I don't like you and you're a weirdo who humps fruit, but calling you a child abuser was a bit much. My bad." while not making any public apologies toward any of Quest's fans.

But he'll never do that. He'd have to be sober and not a hypocrite.

 

[AnOminous]

His never apologize saying also came with the nuance never apoolgize to the mob, but apologize to those you wronged.

In this case Nick should be saying, "I don't like you and you're a weirdo who humps fruit, but calling you a child abuser was a bit much. My bad." while not making any public apologies toward any of Quest's fans.

But he'll never do that. He'd have to be sober and not a hypocrite.

Imagine being so retarded that you have a choice between admitting okay, some dude doesn't literally suck little boys' dicks, and coughing up six figures for one of the premier First Amendment lawyers in the country, and you choose to double down on your absolutely bogus allegations, like a stupid motherfucking liar.

Nick is mega-stupid. An absolute faggot.

 

[Himedall All-seeing Waifu]

Imagine being so retarded that you have a choice between admitting okay, some dude doesn't literally suck little boys' dicks, and coughing up six figures for one of the premier First Amendment lawyers in the country, and you choose to double down on your absolutely bogus allegations, like a stupid motherfucking liar.

Nick is mega-stupid. An absolute faggot.

This might be me (becuase I am naturally very introspective) but I wonder if this is part of an elaborate plan to re-brand after 'cancellation'..

You have Andy Signore, Sargon, Van Sciver, and some other Rekeita adjacent creators that got pushed out of their original brand/space and have found some success doing something else, buy NEVER admitted they did anything wrong.

Is Nick learning the wrong lessons from their arcs?

Nah... Not Mr. SocialMedia Expert.

 

[Balldo's Gate]

You have to actually put in effort to come across this retarded, Kosher. We all know what's going on and pretending we don't is just embarrassing.

There was only one of the super chats which specifically requested the deletion of videos and it also specifically requested a "FORMAL Apology [sic]", so it's not clear what the point is even supposed to be.

I don't know if it's embarrassing, but it's certainly puzzling.

Interesting, I always thought the black and white face paint he always uses was Montagraphs personal mark of faggotry. But I'm not a viewer of his so I wouldn't know the deep lore either. It just makes me think of his godawful "My dark side" video that reeks of teenage angst in a 40 year old body. Highly recommend if you haven't seen it and you have a significant tolerance for cringe.

Im going to have to look up his irl inspiration. If Montagraph is a fan of any sort this guy it's based on must be a trip.

The "deep lore", as far as I can tell, was that Monty is a weirdo who has been defending himself against conspiratorial accusations from even more insane weirdos for years.

This is a good summary:

I don't really get that the video is in any way about jonbenet Ramsey. And if you watch the full video, the Umbrella Man seems to be a shoutout to Kennedy Assassination conspiracy theory. The connection back to Jonbenet Ramsey seemed to be mostly through Monty's fellow conspiracy autists who have for years been peddling Monty as actually responsible for the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey. I'd be interested if there was some connection to an umbrella man in the jonbenet ramsey thing that doesn't end up originating with a Monty story.

The thing about the film is that whole version of it amounts to low budget horror. You have a guy in a mask doing bad acting and a bad character voice doing cheap horror movie things that never really deliver. No sex. No nudity. No torture porn. Just a guy in a mask being creepy with a clearly adult woman who is tied up. The serial killer is also given an elaborately stupid background that blames the kennedy assassination for what he is doing. There is also a whole crying montage at the end. It comes across as a bad and amaturish "art" film.

Its not so much " prurient" as its just stupid. The noterity of the thing grew based on people not being able to see the whole thing. There were stills and there were clips and everything seemed to suggest that the clips/stills were leading up to something really awful. Usually described as a child snuff film. There were stories about the supposedly unreleased final two parts. But then if you see the whole thing, its just dumb. The best that can be said about it is that it delivers some genuinely unsettling moments of build-up.

I believe the big link these people had was that he used a black-and-white checkerboard pattern in his videos, and the Ramsey family home had checkerboard tiling in the kitchen. It was something like that involving that pattern. It seems way to out there to put any credence in unless Monty made that link explicit himself, which as far as I'm aware he did not. But I didn't do exhaustive research.

 

[Confetti Meringue]

He has self-diagnosed with ODD (a pediatric diagnosis that is a cover for Narcissism or APD in adults so as to not saddle them with that diagnosis if they grow out of it), and he claims his wife and kids are on ADHD meds. He has said that he is probably there too, but never got tested and he works just fine... LOL!

To be slightly pedantic, the understanding of ODD here is a little off.

ODD is a concern for parents and physicians because it usually develops into Conduct Disorder. This is when kids start killing cats or acting violent. When they are adults, it officially becomes ASPD (commonly known as psychopathy). This is because you need a history of childhood violence and/or criminal activity to be diagnosed with ASPD. Narcissism never plays a part.

I believe Josh had commented on the "they were worried I'd become a psychopath" part before. As he's also noted, ODD that does not evolve further simply makes you a stubborn asshole. It is also rare for ODD children to become functional adults in society, even with treatment.

Honestly he fits the criteria at least based on observing from afar his patterns over a few years. It’s pretty commonplace. But he’s an adult with the means to manage it more effectively (read: so it causes less disruption to his and others’ lives). The fact that he doesn’t even bother trying is downright pathetic.

I became very fixated on the idea of Nick having  both ADHD and narcolepsy, so here is what I found.

Narcolepsy and ADHD can be comorbid, but it is usually the narcolepsyt that is undiagnosed rather than the ADHD. In either case, the medication used to stay awake for narcolepsy (which Nick has mentioned having medication for), is a stimulant that also would help with symptoms of ADHD. If he really has both, I would have expected him to have noticed this by now or mentioned it with a physician.

The other, potentially more interesting part to me, is that symptoms of narcolepsy often display similarly to ADHD and vice versa. This is of note because it means that Nick's self diagnosis may hold no water at all and be a misunderstanding of his own clinical signs.

Source for my hyperfixation

 

[Captain Manning]

This might be me (becuase I am naturally very introspective) but I wonder if this is part of an elaborate plan to re-brand after 'cancellation'..

You have Andy Signore, Sargon, Van Sciver, and some other Rekeita adjacent creators that got pushed out of their original brand/space and have found some success doing something else, buy NEVER admitted they did anything wrong.

Is Nick learning the wrong lessons from their arcs?

Nah... Not Mr. SocialMedia Expert.

@Mister Dongs is probably the very best person to comment on EVS, and he's welcome to correct me if I'm wrong, but I am not sure any of those people you listed really went through what Nick seems to be going through right now. Except maybe in a very superficial sense.

EVS has some baggage with War Campaign that he seems reluctant to own up to, and Sargon had that stupid shit with Kraut and the whole falling out with Metokur, but they're pretty much exactly as they've always been AFAIK. EVS still does his comic stuff. Sargon still does his political stuff. I honestly forget WTF Signore's deal was. EVS won one lawsuit against Poulter (a second is pending in NJ), and Sargon won his against Akilah Hughes.

Contrast to Nick: Nick basically did a complete heel turn on most of the things he once professed to believe, and seems to be mostly abandoning all the content that made him popular in the first place. He went from legal content a lot of people seemed to enjoy, to degenerate variety show crap, and that appears to be entirely his decision to do so. Now he's being sued for being a complete retard dumbass by saying a complete retard dumbass thing where he really should have known better, and it doesn't seem to be going so well for him. I'm not joking when I say one of the most abrupt and catastrophic nosedives I've ever seen documented on KF.

EDIT: NJ and not NY.

 

[feral cat #6385]

These corporate entities are incredibly vaporous, though. Nick is just Nick and should suck up his personal liability. I hope he goes broke and all his children have to end up in some Dickensian nightmare as chimney sweeps.

I hope they end up with Vito.

 

[Swole McPole]

It's the type of semantic game that Rekieta absolutely fucking loves but I doubt how it would fly with a Kandiyohi County jury. And it seems like it doesn't really matter.

It was this type of reasoning that made me doubt Nick had ever engaged in the practice of law. Real lawyers just don't do that speculative shit. They give you answers based on their solid knowledge of the law and their experience of legal practice.

As a non-lawyer, I'd always be trying out these legal loopholes that I thought I'd found on my lawyer wife. Without exception, she'd shoot me down because they were ridiculous. (She was rarely that cruel. She'd patently explain why my theory was nonsense, based on her actual knowledge of law and legal practice. But future me sees that they were ridiculous.

But if you don't have an actual practice and you aren't grinding out your 70 hours a week, I can see how your mind can entertain such flights of fancy. It'd be nice to find a loophole that hadn't occurred to anyone else and game the system as a result of it.

 

[im5!XxhO]

As a non-lawyer, I'd always be trying out these legal loopholes that I thought I'd found on my lawyer wife. Without exception, she'd shoot me down because they were ridiculous. (She was rarely that cruel. She'd patently explain why my theory was nonsense, based on her actual knowledge of law and legal practice. But future me sees that they were ridiculous.

The problem with legal loopholes is fundamentally that at the end of a day it is a human deciding whether you suceed with it and 99 out of a 100 cases the judge would just go "That's retarded get fucked".

 

[Dixieland Buckaroo]

It'd be nice to find a loophole that hadn't occurred to anyone else and game the system as a result of it.

Taking this with a grain of salt, remember Rackets' account of his first case:

It was an HOA case, the homeowner pissed at the HOA because whatever. He found a loophole, that the HOA hadn't maintained its incorporation and thus was void. Rackets struts into the hearing and declares, "You don't exist!" to which the opposing party responds, "Sir, I most certainly do exist." Then legal mumbo jumbo, and Rackets wins/settles ala Matlock or some shit. (Not a fan of HOA's, so whatever.) I'm sure that just inflated his nose from the start.

 

[Mister Dongs]

@Mister Dongs is probably the very best person to comment on EVS, and he's welcome to correct me if I'm wrong, but I am not sure any of those people you listed really went through what Nick seems to be going through right now. Except maybe in a very superficial sense.

EVS has some baggage with War Campaign that he seems reluctant to own up to, and Sargon had that stupid shit with Kraut and the whole falling out with Metokur, but they're pretty much exactly as they've always been AFAIK. EVS still does his comic stuff. Sargon still does his political stuff. I honestly forget WTF Signore's deal was. EVS won one lawsuit against Poulter (a second is pending in NY), and Sargon won his against Akilah Hughes.

Contrast to Nick: Nick basically did a complete heel turn on most of the things he once professed to believe, and seems to be mostly abandoning all the content that made him popular in the first place. He went from legal content a lot of people seemed to enjoy, to degenerate variety show crap, and that appears to be entirely his decision to do so. Now he's being sued for being a complete retard dumbass by saying a complete retard dumbass thing where he really should have known better, and it doesn't seem to be going so well for him. I'm not joking when I say one of the most abrupt and catastrophic nosedives I've ever seen documented on KF.

The Jersey case against EVS is still happening (the lolsuit thread isn't being updated anymore), and the case over the Comicsgate trademark has been ordered by the USPTO for a process that guarantees another 2 years of proceedings. Rekieta's legal problems are relatively minor and simple in comparison to Ethan's, which really makes Rackets' nasal flailing all the more shocking for a would-be 'authoritative legal mind'. Frog has kept his mouth zipped on the case and seeks to ease his legal fees by selling CG-related ballcaps and beanies (here), which can be sold without even mentioning the lawsuit. By contrast Rekieta's strategem was to draw as much public attention to the case as possible to direct people to a GoFundMe, which requires discussing the case so as to sell donors on the merits of his defense. Usually drunk. This is extremely inadvisable for anyone stuck in a lawsuit and really are just free, unprompted gifts handed to Montagraph over and over again.

Regarding Ethan: the 'WC baggage' these days is largely behind him but he's since become mired with other problems that are less easily solved than simply ditching his self-styled Praetorian Guard (which was the most obvious thing humanly imaginable to everyone). I could go into them at length but this is a Rekieta thread. EVS bringing in Dick Masterson into the CG-adjacent sphere only for Dax to side with his nemesis VikkiVerse over him - on the eve of the Cyberfrog 3 crowdfund launch no less - was truly an incredible L though.

As for Nick, he remains a man without a country. Not versed enough in law to hold his own in the lawtube community on trending legal subjects, not able to go back to weeb wars or niche lolsuits, he is adrift in a coom no man's land. It is the same with this lawsuit. Rekieta the Lawyer/Defendant is expected to present himself as a sober, serious person who's opponent is fundamentally irrational and misunderstands the law. Rekieta the Youtuber, with the demands placed on him as a public IBS-derived internet persona, is expected to present himself as a smarmy, imperturbably smug dickhead until his opponent quits out of frustration and is declared the loser for being MATI. Fine for youtube, but totally antithetical to what an lawyer or an aggrieved legal victim is supposed to be. His online adversaries have learned to use his legal history against him and now his legal adversaries use his online persona against him as well.
For Rekieta it is becoming the worst of both worlds.

 

[AnOminous]

The other, potentially more interesting part to me, is that symptoms of narcolepsy often display similarly to ADHD and vice versa. This is of note because it means that Nick's self diagnosis may hold no water at all and be a misunderstanding of his own clinical signs.

This is retarded. Nick has BAAFD (Being An Absolute Faggot Disorder).

 

[Kosher Salt]

I’d assume its the principle of the thing; showing he can’t be silenced and the whole “never apologize” thing he’s been harping on

Nick covers a lot of lolcows and lolcow-adjacent news. Some of them are quite litigious (Russell Greer, Melinda Scott). And sure, some of us might think that Steve Quest has a much stronger case than any of them possibly would, but litigious plaintiffs never think that their lawsuit is frivolous.

Nick wouldn't want to become known as a guy who will give you a briefcase full of cash because he's very scared of your lawsuit and wants it to go away.

 

[Useful_Mistake]

Nick wouldn't want to become known as a guy who will give you a briefcase full of cash because he's very scared of your lawsuit and wants it to go away.

Yeah, I see that. On the other hand, he might not have the money to fight this to the end

 

[Swole McPole]

Nick wouldn't want to become known as a guy who will give you a briefcase full of cash because he's very scared of your lawsuit and wants it to go away.

But I doubt this would have ever taken a briefcase full of cash to make it go away. I'd have bet money he could have made it go away with a retraction and an apology.

Nick's problem (OK, one of his many, many problems) is he can never acknowledge being wrong. And when you're wrong as often as he is, that's a pretty major personality flaw.

 

[Dixieland Buckaroo]

Yeah, I see that. On the other hand, he might not have the money to fight this to the end

Imagine, if only Rackets knew someone who could do the work for his case for free! Someone already with a license to practice law in the state he is being sued in.

Or seriously, just a local lawyer. There's no reason to pay ~$100k for this suit to date. He's going be be at least 500k in, on a case he could have settled for a tenth of that. (Or more, Monte was asking for $50k.)

 

[TheClappening]

Yeah, I see that. On the other hand, he might not have the money to fight this to the end

I dunno, to a certain extent Nick can pick his battles. If Nick gets sued by Melinda Scott for calling her a husband hopping mountain jew, or by Russell Greer for calling him a facially frozen troglodyte, it wouldn't be bad for Nick to actually challenge those, since it's clear free speech and likely to get thrown out in the earliest stages anyway. He'd be able to make any money he uses by laughing on his night show.

But we have this case, where Nick has per se defamed someone of an atrocious act (sucking little boy penis is a horrible accusation) and simply can't find it in himself to admit that's going too far. There's literally dozens of things he can make fun of Quest for, and he makes that up.

This isn't even touching on the utter hypocrisy of defending a gay-trousered voice actor for years who was accused of less serious acts.