Akilah Hughes v. Carl Benjamin (2017)

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This thing reads like Sullivan actively despised the plaintiff. I know it was clear he wasn't too pleased with them, I wonder what triggered the animosity.

I believe it is the fact they were clearly advancing frivolous claims in bad faith and continued to do so even when informed by not just the plaintif but the court that the claims were clearly frivolous. To us, watching an idiot perpetrate hilariously frivolous litigation is entertainment, but imagine already working a 70 hour week and this piece of shit ends up on your desk. You are bound to resent the idiot bringing this lolsuit over their Internet butthurt.

Thats brutal. Judge spends a lot of time breaking down just how much that bitch has to pay and why, specifically using it as a deterent for more frivolous garbage. Absolutely wrecked.

The judge is saying well, if you're going to make me waste my time with this bullshit, I'm going to spend those hours well.

Anyone else want to bring one of these bullshit actions into my court?
 
Wesley Martin Mullen.
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Wes Mullen, legal legend.
 
This thing reads like Sullivan actively despised the plaintiff. I know it was clear he wasn't too pleased with them, I wonder what triggered the animosity.
Opening gloating about how you plan to use the judges court as a tool to silence political opponents is not a good way to to be on the judge's good side.
 
Opening gloating about how you plan to use the judges court as a tool to silence political opponents is not a good way to to be on the judge's good side.

It's amazing how going to a Judge with hat-in-hand and saying "Yes Sir" can get you a slap on the wrist for stabbing a guy, while going to the Judge with both middle fingers out and saying "Can ya hear me NOW Skippy?!" can get you a weekend in jail for a traffic ticket.... amazing ,really. Who knew?



I genuinely think the attorneys didn't know this was gonna happen. Sargon is such a beta male joke that you'd think the powers that be would be salivating at the chance to humble him for some free woke points. The fact that they basically pulled a fast one on this stunningly brave kween is, pardon my language, quite poggers.

Like, this win would be a 'feather in the cap' for a woke attorney. Instead, they now look like a fuckin' buffoon because they lost to Sargon.

If they didn't ask Akilah for specifics and just assumed the prelimary "woke" feel of the case was an assured win (Sassy Black Woman suing some fat white British Nazi guy? HOW CAN WE LOSE?!) shame on them.

If she lied and only when they were up to their neck did they realize they had no case, shame on her. And then shame on them for not doing due diligence.

Either way, these lawyers are stupid and I would not use them to argue for anything on my behalf, not even a parking ticket.

It really seems they were made for each other, Akilah and Counsel, running arm and arm full tilt towards a brick wall, sure that their incredible stunning anti-racism would make them immune to pain.
 
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Opening gloating about how you plan to use the judges court as a tool to silence political opponents is not a good way to to be on the judge's good side.

And that's what he said.

"Improper or bad faith motivations are generally difficult to discern, as litigants often have a variety of objectives and may obscure their baser ones behind a veil of legitimate-sounding claims."

He's referring to the old standard for frivolous litigation, which required subjective bad faith. He is also pointing out that most litigants with bad motives are smarter than Akila Hughes, because he then launches into this tirade:

"In this case, however, Hughes openly discussed her improper motivations on both Twitter and her website. Indeed, Hughes admitted to potentially hundreds of thousands of followers that she intended to (i) “bankrupt” Benjamin (Doc. No. 43 at 2), (ii) stymy his attempts to crowdfund his legal costs (id. at 2–3), and (iii) use copyright laws to silence her political opponents and critics (id. at 4). Other posts, including her public boasting about the legal dispute on her social media accounts (even describing her complaint as a “[C]hristmas present” for Benjamin) and her public belittlement and celebrity-style feuding with Benjamin (id. at 5–7), strongly suggest that Hughes intended to sensationalize the litigation to elevate her own public profile and achieve a secondary financial gain."

In other words, "this fucking idiot spewed her bad motivations all over the fucking Internet like an absolute goddamn retard making it incredibly obvious she brought the lolsuit for an improper motive."

And then back to the legal standard:

"Together, then, Hughes’s public comments reveal an intent to abuse the legal system in order to further a personal agenda that had little to do with the Copyright Act."

Specifically, the conduct was sanctionable because while being ostensibly a copyright action, her real intention was not to protect any intellectual property, but to stamp out criticism of herself and get revenge on an enemy.

You are actually allowed to have revenge as a motivation in bringing litigation, but it is not a good idea to state it up front or gloat about it, or bring lawsuits about other things like copyright just because copyright has a huge potential for statutory damages even if you can't prove any real damages, and you realize the defamation case you really want is a dead loss.

This is what is called an "improper collateral purpose" in an abuse of process lawsuit. While that argument wasn't advanced here, the language of the Court indicates Sullivan was at least contemplating these issues in determining whether sanctions were warranted. He didn't have to make a finding of subjective bad faith, and didn't quite do that here, but he certainly indicated a high level of displeasure with this behavior by the plaintiff.

I should note that for some reason, I keep referring to this as something like Rule 11 sanctions or anti-SLAPP sanctions but it actually isn't. This is an award of fees under Fogerty v. Fantasy, a leading copyright case where the prevailing defendant was awarded fees against an unreasonable lawsuit. Fogerty is, of course, John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival. A studio with which he later had a falling out ended up acquiring the rights to "Run Through the Jungle," a Fogerty-written CCR track.

Later, Fogerty released "The Old Man Down the Road." Fantasy sued him because it sounded like his previous song. In other words, this bunch of cocksuckers sued John Fogerty because he sounded too much like John Fogerty. This is the very definition of objectively unreasonable.

There was previously a principle in the copyright statute giving plaintiffs a discretionary award of attorney fees in part based on unreasonable behavior by the defendant, and this is what the statute said. In Fogerty, the court decided this principle applies both ways and unreasonable plaintiffs in copyright actions now have to abide by the same reasonableness rules as defendants, so there's a penalty for bringing nonsensical copyright suits to harass the defendant.
 
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Wes Mullen, legal legend.
Hell of a chin there.

Can you elaborate?
I mean his thread probably has plenty of examples, but I'll give you at least a couple:

He acted like he created the Kekistan meme and basically took it over, printing shirts and trying to profit off it as much as he could.

He also was being incredibly shady with Harmful Opinions during his whole expose on the Candid app. I don't know if the videos still exist, but there's a recording of a Skype call between HO and Sargon where he's acting incredibly sketchy.
 
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I guess that fistful of fish and cup of milkshake really fed his aura - since then he produced an actual landmark fair use case, and now is goading people into tackling Patreon. We've all laughed at him and talked bad behind his back, but now is the sweet summer day where we all come to the house of Don Sargone to kiss the ring, and thank him for his patronage.

It appears the mantle of The Reaper has been passed to @theralph

I'm no fan of Carl Benjamin, in fact his antics brought me to this website, but good for him. I wish him luck in his efforts to bring down Patreon.
 
I can't imagine that the plaintiff demanding the defendant pay $48k to settle the lawsuit after the court had already indicated that it pretty strongly favored the defendant helped any.

I mean the judge literally says it hurt her case

Judge said:
But while it is true that Hughes did make a settlement offer in this case, the offer hardly constituted a reasonable effort to efficiently resolve the dispute. Hughes’s lone offer – to settle this baseless case for $46,000 – came on April 10, 2018. (Doc. No. 47 at 1.) By then, the Court had already laid bare the weaknesses of Hughes’s claims during the parties’ pre-motion conference in early March (Doc No. 25 at 13 (“It seems to me you concede [in the complaint] that [the video is] mocking and anybody who goes to [Benjamin’s] site would understand it to be mocking. . . . [So] whether this case is decided in a motion to dismiss or on summary judgment, this is likely to be fair use.”).) As a result, the Court finds that Hughes litigated with an improper motive and that she never endeavored to efficiently and fairly resolve the litigation.

Man, what a win for the Don. Perhaps in the future other people won't be so damned stupid as to openly admit on social media that they intend to use the court of law as a political cudgel.
I wouldn't bank on that. After all what's the point of being a virtue signalling twat if people don't know about it, and thus can't give them the social media asspats they so desperately need.
 
Man, what a win for the Don. Perhaps in the future other people won't be so damned stupid as to openly admit on social media that they intend to use the court of law as a political cudgel.

He didn't even say he wouldn't rape her. He just went ahead and did it in a court of law.
 

Unbelievable, you don't get more winning than this.

Today, Carl Benjamin is a hero.

(Tomorrow he's a lolcow but let's let tomorrow wait.)

Benjamin points out that, hilariously, Sullivan has since the case started been appointed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. So if she appeals this case, he is on the appeals court, too. She can eat a gigantic bouquet of dicks.
 
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I don't understand all the hate for Sargon. What's objectionable about any of his ideals, other than refusing to jump off the "I like the NHS despite basically being a libertarian" bandwagon?
Smugness and condescension in general is only really warranted if you seriously know your shit and can run laps around the people you debate/make fun of/critique/whatever

I'm not really a huge fan of Ben Shapiro but this is why he remains likable despite being the most smug little rodent on planet earth. Like or dislike the guy, he's really fucking good at debating people and can also admit when he's wrong or fucked up.

Sargon is just high on his own farts 24/7 and thinks hes 200iq despite the fact that he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is and regularly embarrasses himself, so he comes off more like a 16 year old fat kid who wears a fedora around owning the christfags than he does a serious political commentator who knows his shit.
 
I love this judgement's double slap: slapping hughes with a tractor for being a narcissistic bitch who though she could use the legal system as a gun, while telegraphing her intent to weaponize the court.

And I love the backslap to the winning attorney's left cheek for asking so little for this case. We're talking hourly rates of 17,50$ and 45$ish for the paralegals, and the judge pretty much went "this is usually 150$, why are you asking so little?".

Best deal for a lawyer, or the lawyer sells himself short.
 
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