I'm skeptical that any of them feel financially desperate enough to take that out.
Ron's definitely going to take that out. It's either that, or get dragged into
criminal court for fraud
after getting his skull split with the verdict.
I suppose I can understand to an extent why people are supposing Marchi's chances are better than everyone else's to a significant degree, but the TCPA-- as stated in the response-- isn't just to protect free speech, but specifically free speech as it pertains to public concern. The defendants either vaguely define whose interests they were trying to protect to the point of uselessness ("what
is the 'anime community'?"), or they don't bother delineating to begin with. Rial and Toye, along with Funimation, are in it really deep, and while Marchi doesn't have much to her compared to them in particular, you're going to have to argue really hard to make the case that she has no significant association with any of the other defendants-- and my understanding is that she's made no such effort, unlike Funimation's pitiful attempts to treat their employees like the independent contractors they claim they are.
The burden isn't particularly great-- Plaintiff just needs to demonstrate that he's suing these people for the reasons he saying he is, as opposed to just trying to shut them up, and he needs to make the case that it's such,
by the slightest tip of the scales.
Ron Toye definitely committed TI. There's no two ways about it. He could actually be brought into criminal court for fraud, on top of that. Ron and Monica both said that Vic would have criminal charges filed against him,
but they never were. That by itself poisons the rest of the defendants-- why would Vic be trying to file a SLAPP while legitimately coming for Rial and Toye for tortious interference with contract and business prospects? Rial and Toye already lied about criminal charges for his alleged sexual predating being imminently filed-- what's to say that they're not lying about the sexual predation to begin with since no such filing occurred despite them saying that it would occur before KC?
That's why Huber is important.
Marchi is most implicated through Huber's testimony, because he describes Rial,
*hurk* Specht,
and Marchi talking about how Vic would have criminal charges filed against him soon. Suddenly, without
successfully impeaching Huber (and good luck with that, since he was firing at Vic, too, and was willing at some point to call him a sex addict without his permission), it becomes substantially more difficult for Marchi to extricate herself from the conduct of her co-defendants-- and she needed that extrication to ensure that her allegations weren't colored in the same context as Rial's and Toye's.
