I would just appreciate the lulz from Balldoman having to take the L, even for $1 in damages.
See, morally, I think Nick should lose, and pay out big. Montagraph is not someone I can describe nicely, but Nick's words were hideous and that's putting it lightly.
But, from a legal perspective, I don't really see a win for Monty. Let's ignore for a moment that he, to this day, claims he
filmed a video in 2014 where he portrayed himself as raping an underage girl. Russell Greer figured out how to remove fake data from IMDB, so I'm sure Monty could have too if it was fake. Let's ignore the decades long reputation of pedophilia (whether true or not). I just don't see who was damaged. Montagraph is not a real person, nor is he tied significantly and financially to his real identity, or to a business.
If I say that Null likes sucking little boys' dicks; who got injured is obvious. Null's name is infamously tied to his real one, and with a single search you can find multiple big media orgs talking about the connection to his real identity, as well as endless amounts of blogs. If I say that Pipkin Pippa likes to kidnapp young girls and boys and enforce upon them her disturbing Japanese torture fetish, the victim is obvious. Pippa's name is not tied clearly to her real identity, but it is tied directly to her business, and through it to Phase Connect and all her coworkers, fans, and so on. We know that Pippa's family is aware of her alt identity, so there's harm there too.
But Montagraph is neither the Null case, nor the Pippa case. The "Montagraph" identity is not closely tied to him -he is a noted user of sock accounts-, it has almost no history of being tied to his real life identity (prior to 2019 nobody knew his real identity and instead speculated him to be someone called Dale Ellis Bennet), it has never made any significant monetary value (in 24 years of using it, he has not alleged that he made even a single cent from it), and there is not even an allegation that anyone he knows has ever known of the connection between Steve Quest and his "Montagraph" alt. He doesn't have a business under the name or anything like that. In none of the comments forming a basis of Montagraph's amended complaint does Nick ever say anything about Steve Quest other than saying that nobody says that Steve Quest is upstanding citizen which neither forms the basis of Monty's complaint, nor is it defamatory. Montagraph getting defamed does not transfer it to Steve unlike my previous mentioned examples. Add to the fact that Montagraph's lawyer has admitted orally to the Judge that there is no damage they can show, and the facts I asked you to ignore for the moment, and I don't see how Nick loses because I am certain Randazza only plans to sabotage until trial.
Nick should lose, but I just don't see how. Well, aside from his family possibly starving to death after Randazza cons him out for every single cent he has.
The dude filmed a video which, by appearance, was a snuff video of a kid,
He also
claims to "often use[ing] [...]young children in his work[s]"