Court To Revenge Porn Bro Suing Twitter: You Agreed To Twitter Picking The Courtroom Every Time You Created A New Alt Account
from the pro-se-at-life dept
Craig Brittain's $1 billion lawsuit against Twitter is still rolling slowly towards its inevitable dismissal. Bringing with him his usual legal expertise -- which includes badly misreading the Knight Institute v. Trump decision and asking for some weird hybrid judgment/injunction/perma-unbanning -- Brittain has so far forced Twitter to… move his case to another venue. (via Eric Goldman)
Twitter invoked the forum selection clause of its terms of service -- terms Brittain agreed to time and time again as he created new accounts only to have them permanently suspended later. The terms say Twitter can move your lawsuit to its preferred venue (California federal court) and if you don't like it, well… you can just not use Twitter and/or sue Twitter.
Brittain's attempt to avoid having his Arizona lawsuit moved to California contains some rather novel legal arguments. First, he claimed Twitter's terms of service were invalid because [checks filing] it doesn't contain the mandatory "option" of arbitration. Here's the court's take [PDF]:
Brittain asserts that the Terms are unconscionable because they contain no arbitration clause and “have changed over time without arbitration.” Doc. 27 at 4. But Brittain cites no legal authority suggesting that Twitter is required to include an arbitration clause in its Terms. Nor has he otherwise shown that the Terms are unconscionable or illusory.
Second, he claimed it would be impossible for him to continue his doomed lawsuit in another state because he has no way of getting to California. It may be true -- and forum selection does tend to create unnecessary expenses for plaintiffs/defendants -- but in this case it isn't because the federal courts are accessible by those with limited travel options.
Brittain asserts that his status makes it “gravely difficult” for him to participate in the litigation. Doc. 27 at 2, 5. He notes that he “is traveling primarily by bicycle and/or public transportation to file, upwards of 40 miles per trip[.]” Id. at 2. But the Northern District of California permits filing by mail, eliminating the need for Brittain to bicycle or use public transportation to file court documents.3 The fact that Brittain is a self-represented, indigent litigant is no basis for not enforcing the forum selection clauses. As noted, the private interests of the parties must be weighed in favor of the preselected forum. See Yei, 901 F.3d at 1087. Brittain has not shown that litigating in California “will be so gravely difficult and inconvenient that he will for all practical purposes be deprived of his day in court.” M/S Bremen, 407 U.S. at 18.
Brittain also claims millions of social media users would cry out at once and be silenced if Twitter was allowed to take Craig's unwinnable lawsuit to California. Brittain asserts… reasons.
Brittain further asserts that enforcement of the forum selection clauses would “contravene a strong public policy of the venue in which the suit was brought,” and “the public policy of . . . the District of Arizona is superior to that of the requested forum.” Doc. 27 at 5. He cites the purported “public interest of over one billion total users,” including “tens of millions who have been censored, deverified, or suspended by Twitter,” but draws no connection between the interests of those alleged users and Arizona public policy.
The court is not swayed.
Twitter notes, correctly, that Arizona public policy favors enforcing forum selection clauses. Doc. 30 at 8. “Enforcement of a forum selection clause such as the one[s] at issue does not contravene any strong Arizona public policy as Arizona courts routinely hold that forum selection clauses are presumptively valid and that the party claiming the oppressiveness or unreasonableness needed to invalidate such a clause must meet a heavy burden of proof.”
Brittain's lawsuit is still alive for the time being. He'll just have to lose it in California, rather than in front of the home crowd.
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Filed Under: content moderation, craig brittain, jurisdiction, pro se, revenge porn
Companies: twitter
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Is Brittain having problems with "Twexit",
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As far as I'm aware, shrink-wrap agreements have been upheld in exactly one US case, in the 9th circuit, and that ruling was utterly wrong as it flies in the face of the Supreme Court's decision in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, which established the First Sale Doctrine by stating that exactly this kind of contract is completely void and worthless.
Unfortunately, it was not reviewed and overturned by the Supreme Court. Fortunately, I don't live within 9th Circuit jurisdiction.
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I agree that courts should reconsider the enforceability of click-through TOS agreements.
However, in order for a court to consider a legal argument, somebody has to make it. Brittain's argument for why Twitter's TOS is an unconscionable contract is uninformed gibberish by a contemptible creep with a fool for a client.
I wish better luck to future litigants in getting courts to reconsider whether TOS agreements are unconscionable. But ideally those future litigants will be represented by actual lawyers, not David Blade III.
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Again, the question you refuse to answer: how should a private institution, such as a website, impose rules on its users?
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Mason, you're bluffing and you're not very good at it. You do this pretty frequently. You say something incredibly vague like "the rule of law" or "the First Amendment" and act like that answers somebody's question. Has anybody ever fallen for that?
It's okay to say "I don't know." It's okay to acknowledge when you've identified a problem but you don't have a perfect solution to it.
Here's the thing: I agree with you on this. I believe that click-through agreements are unconscionable and should not be enforceable as legal contracts.
But when somebody asks me the question, "How can the Web as we know it operate at scale if every user has the right to negotiate the TOS?" the answer is, I don't know. That's a good question.
When someone challenges you, don't dig in and fold your arms and try to bluff. Nobody's falling for that "I already answered!" trick; it doesn't work when Chip does it and it doesn't work when you do it.
Being challenged is how we learn. It's how we assess weaknesses in our position (and again, it is our position; I agree with you).
"Rule of law!" is not an answer. It's vague to the point of meaninglessness.
Not having all the answers is okay. Nobody has all the answers. I don't have all the answers either. When people point out a weakness in my position, I take note of it. Sometimes I change my position. Sometimes I spend more time thinking about it and figure out an answer to that weakness.
You're a smart dude. But you really don't seem to take well to having your positions questioned. I suggest you work on that; you'll learn more that way.
Or you could just call me names and ragequit the thread again. That's another kind of bluff. But it's not fooling anybody either.
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I had no trouble following Mason's argument. He did already answer satisfactorily here.
Just because your reading comprehension apparently leaves something to be desired doesn't mean it's your opponent's fault. That's on you, Thad.
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Maybe it should - but it doesn't. Nor should it. A private institution should have every right to be able to exercise its freedom to espouse a certain religious viewpoint, for example, even though a public institution would rightly be forbidden from doing so.
Hopefully you accept that. If you do, I'm also interested in your answer to the question posed by the AC - if a venue is free to set rules for participating in that venue, which method should they use to state and have their visitors agree to those rules if not through a TOS agreement or EULA?
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Learn some reading comprehension already, dood!
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