Richard Meyer v. Mark Waid (2018)

[Jub-Jub]

He's actually attached as an exhibit the Tweet where he says he's going to contact Antarctic, immediately followed by Antarctic's tweet that they're cancelling the contract.

Is this as re-tarded as I think, or am I missing a legal nuance?

Hey he didn't highlight the part where MW offers a bribe in the Bleeding cool article, genius stratagem.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Whatever the letter of the law may say, the highest law is "Don't annoy the judge". And I've thought Meyer came in with a disadvantage in that respect, for bringing a lolcow-adjacent matter before the court in the first place.
Waid and Zaid just burned through all of their goodwill advantage by making these frivolous arguments and copy-pasting reams of Gamergate clickbait into the court record.

 

[Jub-Jub]

I can't believe how badly these exhibits have been copied into the document, I mean look at it

Do you need to copy in ad links? or have someones bio split across two pages

 

[Love Soze]

Is the document posted somewhere free? I only see a way to buy it from Pacer.

 

[MysteriousStranger]

Yeah, I was going to ask if it was the usual thing for the formatting to be so shitty. I mean, maybe they go out of their way not to alter a document for reasons, but then they've put yellow highlighting all through it.

Is the document posted somewhere free? I only see a way to buy it from Pacer.

Yeah, @AnOminous posted the link about two pages back, I think it was.

edit to add: one more Yeah and I got me a Beatles song.

 

[break these cuffs]

I can't believe how badly these exhibits have been copied into the document, I mean look at it
View attachment 582783
Do you need to copy in ad links? or have someones bio split across two pages

This looks like the work of either a boomer, or some freshman trying to meet a page requirement and thinking his prof is as a dumb as he is.

 

[AnOminous]

The defendant's argument is pretty simple, and comes down to the fact that the main basis for personal jurisdiction is a single phone call by Waid and that generally, a single phone call does not constitute sufficient minimum contacts to exert personal jurisdiction within the bounds of due process. Real 1L Civ Pro stuff with Int'l Shoe and all that jazz.

The argument for jurisdiction is based not on general jurisdiction, i.e. that Waid has consistently had a practice of dealing with Texas or otherwise would expect to be haled into court in Texas on general principle, but that he purposefully availed himself of the jurisdiction for his own benefit, and at least with regard to that contact, he is subject to specific jurisdiction.

Most of Reeve's/Zaid's argument is pretty boilerplate and I won't go into it. Here's the nugget of what I consider the strongest part of the argument:

"[C]hanges in technology have made reliance on phone calls obsolete as proof of purposeful availment. While the ubiquity of “caller ID” may allow nonresidents to know a caller’s telephone number, that number no longer necessarily indicates anything about the caller’s location. If jurisdiction can be based on phone conversations “directed at” a forum, how does a defendant avail itself of any jurisdiction when it can never know where the other party has forwarded calls or traveled with a mobile phone?"

Michiana Easy Livin’ Country, Inc. v. Holten, 168 S.W.3d 777, 791 (Tex. 2005); Lonestar Livestock, 2015 WL 3756501, at **3-4 (“Communications with the plaintiff in the forum state are insufficient….The fact that the parties exchanged hundreds of phone calls, texts, and emails are also insufficient contacts.”).

On paper, this looks reasonably good, but this case is distinguishable in a number of obvious ways. For instance, in the Michiana case cited by the defendant, the actual facts are pretty simple:

The sale at issue here was initiated entirely by Holten. Seeking a cheaper price than he could get from any of Coachmen's many dealers in Texas, Holten called the Coachmen factory. He was informed that Coachmen did not sell directly from the factory, but that a lower price could be obtained from Michiana, a "factory outlet." Holten obtained Michiana's number from the factory and placed the call that initiated the transaction here.

The RV was constructed and equipped outside Texas. It was paid for outside Texas. It was shipped to Texas at Holten's request and entirely at his expense.

Michiana at 784.

In that case, the defendant, an Indiana corporation, did nothing to seek out business in Texas, only did business with a Texas resident because he specifically reached out and called them. It was the choice of the Texas plaintiff not to buy locally, but to go out and choose an Indiana corporation. The situation there is really barely different than if he had simply bought something there while driving through the state, and their only purposeful contact with the plaintiff was picking up the phone when he called them.

Waid, by comparison, either knew or should have known he was calling a Texas corporation, and if he's calling them to try to get them to breach a contract, that seems like fairly important business that he should only do when knowing what he's doing. The result he was seeking was the breach of a contract in Texas by a Texas resident. Where would he expect any legal proceedings arising out of this obviously tortious behavior to be litigated?

In the Michiana case, the defendant was the recipient of the call. The Texas resident was someone who had called them with no prompting.

Here, it's Waid who deliberately called the Texas resident.

Quite simply, you don't get to "reach out and hit someone" and then expect the case is going to happen where you live, rather than where you deliberately caused the harm. Due process does not require every other party to the litigation, as well as innocent third parties (like Antarctic) get massively inconvenienced on behalf of the defendant who deliberately created the mess in the first place, and created it in Texas.

tl;dr Zaid has realized he's going to get his ass handed to him in Texas and is desperate to keep the case out of Texas. Unfortunately, he has no really good argument for this and has to make silly ones instead.

Waid and Zaid just burned through all of their goodwill advantage by making these frivolous arguments and copy-pasting reams of Gamergate clickbait into the court record.

The argument isn't very good but I wouldn't go so far as to call it sanctionably frivolous.

Cut and pasting weird, irrelevant shit like blog posts from friends of Waid doesn't really impress me, though.

 

[Clockwork Dragon]

Major props to all the lawfags who have been remarking on this and various other legal matters around the farm. I really appreciate it, and the discussions of the nuances.

 

[Jub-Jub]

Yeah, I was going to ask if it was the usual thing for the formatting to be so shitty. I mean, maybe they go out of their way not to alter a document for reasons, but then they've put yellow highlighting all through it.

I can understand not altering the 'document' but it looks so unprofessional, it looks like they have simply held down the mouse and copy pasted the whole webpage. Why not archive it and take screenshots.

This looks like the work of either a boomer, or some freshman trying to meet a page requirement and thinking his prof is as a dumb as he is.

All for the low, low price of $750+ an hour

 

[andr0id psycho sho(ker]

I can understand not altering the 'document' but it looks so unprofessional, it looks like they have simply held down the mouse and copy pasted the whole webpage. Why not archive it and take screenshots.

All for the low, low price of $750+ an hour

and endless laughs for us. Remember Waid and Zaid's social media circus?

 

[RodgerDodger]

Waid playing dumb isn't going to help him. He knew what phone number he was calling. He knew he was trying to get the people on the other end to breach a contract. If he got sued over that, he has no reasonable argument that he couldn't have expected to get haled into court wherever the recipient of his call was, and a reasonable person would have known who he was calling and why he was doing it.

Yes, a reasonable person would have taken a minute to realize maybe he shouldn't break the law, but Mark Waid is not a reasonable person.

That won't help him either. A civil defendant is generally held to the standards of a reasonable person, not to the standards of an infantile, tantrum throwing man baby.

As an added bit. Waid had to take an affirmative act and dial the Texas area code. It doesn’t matter whether he realized it was Texas or not. It’s not like Meyer was court shopping. He is a Texas Resident. Antarctic Press is Texas with a Texas phone number. Waid specifically researched the business info of a Texas Physician and contacted AP’s owner at that business. The Plaintiff has the expectation to enter the Judicial System at the point closest to them.

 

[Jub-Jub]

Zaid's been racking up those billable hours again. Here he shills and retweets for his clients gofundme, retweets renfamous, says he wants to go after Ya Boi for Fraud (enjoy getting billed for that too Waid). Oh, and says he'll go anywhere in the US to fight this court case, well that's a good thing because he's going to end up in Texas once his motion fails. Polygon updated their article too informing people Waid met his goal in a week, no mention of Zack's beating it in a day and a half.

 

[damian]

Pretty smug for a man whose strategy is to change the jurisdiction to MAYBE win a case.

 

[break these cuffs]

The stream Racket's prepared for tonight is starting at 11pm EDT; two hours from the time of this post. He will not be covering Waid in that stream and plans on doing a separate one on the filing after.

 

[AnOminous]

Zaid's been racking up those billable hours again. Here he shills and retweets for his clients gofundme, retweets renfamous, says he wants to go after Ya Boi for Fraud (enjoy getting billed for that too Waid). Oh, and says he'll go anywhere in the US to fight this court case, well that's a good thing because he's going to end up in Texas once his motion fails. Polygon updated their article too informing people Waid met his goal in a week, no mention of Zack's beating it in a day and a half.
View attachment 582958 View attachment 582960 View attachment 582962 View attachment 582963 View attachment 582968 View attachment 582971 View attachment 582972 View attachment 582973

So he's publicly stating he wants to engage in discovery abuse to go on a fishing expedition completely irrelevant to the case.

 

[JohnDoe]

View attachment 582973

Didn't Waid nuke all his social media accounts after committing an act of tortuous interference?

 

[AnOminous]

Didn't Waid nuke all his social media accounts after committing an act of tortuous interference?

"A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself." W.E.B. Du Bois.

 

[RockVolnutt]

I like how often he groups together "bigotry, hatred, and intolerance" but still feels the need to type out all three. Okay, maybe not all bigotry is "hateful" but what the flying fuck is "tolerant bigotry" if intolerance is a seperate feature from bigotry?

Why stop at three instead of using 20 words to call Meyer a Nazi again? "I'm sorry for mischaracterizing you, Mr. Meyer, you are a happy tolerant bigot" is probably not a thing anyone would say.

 

[AnOminous]

I like how often he groups together "bigotry, hatred, and intolerance" but still feels the need to type out all three. Okay, maybe not all bigotry is "hateful" but what the flying fuck is "tolerant bigotry" if intolerance is a seperate feature from bigotry?

Why stop at three instead of using 20 words to call Meyer a Nazi again? "I'm sorry for mischaracterizing you, Mr. Meyer, you are a happy tolerant bigot" is probably not a thing anyone would say.

It's pretty generic shitlawyering to describe everything with a list of adjectives separated by commas that are all synonyms of each other.

 

[Water-T]

I like how often he groups together "bigotry, hatred, and intolerance" but still feels the need to type out all three. Okay, maybe not all bigotry is "hateful" but what the flying fuck is "tolerant bigotry" if intolerance is a seperate feature from bigotry?

Why stop at three instead of using 20 words to call Meyer a Nazi again? "I'm sorry for mischaracterizing you, Mr. Meyer, you are a happy tolerant bigot" is probably not a thing anyone would say.

Zaid is charging by the word, so he can m1lk Waid for all the cash he's got.