Appeals Court Says Plaintiff In Anti-SLAPP Lawsuit Can't Lower Fee Award Just By Voluntarily Dismissing Lawsuit

from the piper-still-needs-paying,-son dept

In an unpublished opinion, the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has upheld awarded fees in an anti-SLAPP case.

Anti-SLAPP attorney fees awarded to a newspaper conglomerate as part of its legal battle with an Iranian-American attorney will stand, the Ninth Circuit ruled.

Shahrokh Mireskandari is a former partner in London firm Dean & Dean but was disbarred in England after an investigation by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority suggested that he was involved in a fraudulent telemarketing scheme.

Mireskandari claims the investigation was prompted by his efforts to prove that the Authority investigates minority attorneys more vigorously than white ones.

However, according to articles published by the British tabloid the Daily Mail — which is owned by Associated Newspapers (now known as DMG Media) — Mireskandari obtained his law qualifications from a mail-drop university in Hawaii and ran a telemarketing scam that misled people into believing they had won vacations.

Obviously unhappy with this portrayal, Mireskandari sued. And failed. The paper was mostly successful with its motion to dismiss. Anything left undecided by the lower court's decision is moot now because Mireskandari voluntarily dismissed his lawsuit, presumably because it was apparent he wouldn't win.

Both parties appealed the decision. The paper was looking for more fees to be awarded and Mireskandari was, unsurprisingly, hoping to mitigate the financial damage he'd inflicted on himself. Fortunately, the appeals court [PDF] has upheld the original fee shift.

Mireskandari asserts that the district court abused its discretion when it awarded the anti-SLAPP attorney’s fees against him because ANL did not succeed in striking all of his claims pursuant to its anti-SLAPP motion, and because the fees are unreasonably large. Of course, the mere fact that Mireskandari has now dismissed the action does not affect ANL’s right to recover appropriate fees, but the award is subject to the trial court’s broad discretion, and must be reasonable in amount.

This is the important part of this decision. To allow plaintiffs to simply abandon disingenuous lawsuits would undermine the aim of anti-SLAPP laws. This tactic, of course, isn't solely limited to these types of lawsuits. We've seen no less than the US government voluntarily dismiss cases without prejudice (leaving it the option to try again later) in hopes of preventing legal fees from being awarded. In some cases, plaintiffs have gotten away with this. Voluntarily dismissing a lawsuit that a plaintiff appears destined to lose allows legal bullies to force defendants to spend large amounts of time and money defending themselves while preserving the plaintiff's option to walk away before being ordered to compensate the opposing party.

No such luck for Mireskandari.

[W]e cannot say that the fee award was unreasonably large under the circumstances. The district court reduced ANL’s fee award by fifteen percent across the board because it determined that there was some overbilling. When properly explained, that approach is satisfactory. See Gates v. Deukmejian, 987 F.2d 1392, 1398 (9th Cir. 1992). The district court carefully delineated its reasoning in deciding that a reduction was required. Overall, it said enough to allow our review of its exercise of discretion.

Not only that, but Mireskandari is still personally responsible for previous litigation misadventures.

Mireskandari also asserts that the district court erred when it imposed sanctions upon him for his violation of the court’s scheduling and other pretrial orders. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(f)(1)(c), 16(f)(2). He argues that once he dismissed the complaint, sanctions for his past breaches of the district court’s orders were improper. We see no justification for holding that a voluntary dismissal precludes issuance of a sanctions order.

With this failed appeal, Mireskandari is on the hook for legal fees in multiple nations.

A bogus lawyer who was ordered to pay £1.4million in legal costs after being exposed by the Daily Mail and then struck off has been ordered to pay a further massive sum after abandoning an appeal.

Shahrokh Mireskandari, 53, has been given until April 4 to pay more than £230,000 in additional costs after being condemned by a leading judge for 'wholly abusive, unreasonable and manipulative conduct', including attempting to get the appeal hearing adjourned.

And his own legal bills are likely impressive in their own right.

Mireskandari was represented by 17 barristers at the misconduct hearing, but panel chairman Jacqueline Devonish said that allegations of dishonesty had been proved.

Courthouse News also reports that Mireskandari is listed as the plaintiff in seven related US lawsuits -- all of them filed within the last five years. There's nothing quite like quitting (at least once) while you're seriously behind.

Filed Under: anti-slapp, dismissal, fees, shahkrokh mireskandari

John Steele Dismisses His Defamation Lawsuit Against Alan Cooper And Anonymous Internet Critics

from the perhaps-he's-got-other-things-to-worry-about dept

Today's quite a Prenda Law day around here. While the focus has reasonably been on the upcoming showdown on Monday, where Judge Otis Wright has ordered all of the Prenda players to be in his courtroom on Monday, John Steele has apparently dismissed his defamation case against Alan Cooper, Cooper's lawyer Paul Godfread and a bunch of anonymous commenters who have been mocking Steele mercilessly for months. Perhaps Steele realized that the case would open him up to discovery, which could reveal some things he'd prefer not to reveal to a court. Or, perhaps, he's suddenly realized that he's going to be busy dealing with the fallout from the Wright hearings. Or, perhaps there's another strategy as yet unrevealed. Given Steele's history of searching for and testing out all kinds of loopholes in the hopes that something works, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that this isn't the last we hear concerning this attempt to "out" his critics.

Filed Under: defamation, dismissal, john steele, prenda, prenda law, slapp
Companies: prenda, prenda law

Prenda's Brett Gibbs Tries To Avoid Answering Questions About Alan Cooper By Dismissing Case

from the cut-and-run dept

Another day, another story of questionable activity on behalf of copyright troll Prenda Law in regards to Alan Cooper. As you may recall, Alan Cooper, who was employed as a house caretaker for copyright troll John Steele (of Prenda Law, though at times he denies this), raised some concerns with the court in a few cases involving some mysterious shell companies -- AF Holdings and Ingenuity 13. At issue: the CEO named in the court papers for those companies was named Alan Cooper, and caretaker Alan Cooper believed that Steele or others at Prenda had faked his identity, as he had nothing to do with any of it. While Cooper has since sued Prenda and John Steele, this issue showed up in some other cases.

In one case involving Ingenuity 13, Prenda was represented by lawyer Brett Gibbs. Opposing lawyer Morgan Pietz asked Gibbs to confirm whether or not Ingenuity 13's Alan Cooper was a different Alan Cooper than Steele's caretaker, leading to a ridiculous conversation in which Gibbs played dumb and refused to answer the simple question. Pietz than took the issue to the court, who ordered Gibbs to answer some questions about Cooper. Gibbs' response was to claim that the judge should be thrown off the case for bias. Since that failed, Gibbs has moved onto the next strategy.

Simply try to walk away. He filed a notice saying he was dismissing the case (though he could file it again at some point). Effectively, he's trying to cut and run before having to answer those questions about Alan Cooper. Of course, in a situation where he should be trying to get out of court as quietly as possible, he chose, instead, to give the judge the equivalent of the middle finger: whining that he was dropping the case because the judge had made it "futile" to continue.

Plaintiff maintains its contention that it is factually impossible to identify a John Doe through an IP address without obtaining ISP subscriber information; as such, Plaintiff now dismisses this action without prejudice in order to avoid the futility of attempting to litigate these cases under such circumstances.

Of course, that's got nothing to do with anything. Gibbs appears to not want to answer the questions. Unfortunately, he may not be so lucky. After the case was already dismissed, the judge ordered a status report, and a future conference, concerning the questions raised by Pietz.

As a lawyer explained to the Fight Copyright Trolls site, it appears that, while the judge can't stop the case from being closed, he can still continue this line of exploration:

...the Judge retains authority/jurisdiction as to all remaining collateral issues such as sanctions as well as potential inappropriate conduct of counsel/parties. I believe that since the discovery order was issued after the dismissal, it is likely that the Court sees the dismissal as potentially motivated to hide inappropriate conduct or even perjury etc… Technically the judge could still allow discovery on the Alan Cooper issue or even order Gibbs or Steele or even “Alan Cooper” to appear and testify. If they refuse, the court can invoke its plenary contempt power. That’s when the ____ hits the fan.

We'll see where this goes, but Gibbs trying to sneak out on answering the questions, while at the same time whining about it to the judge, just seems to be him asking for trouble.

Filed Under: alan cooper, brett gibbs, dismissal
Companies: prenda, prenda law

Charles Carreon Stops Digging, At Least For The Moment: Dismisses His Lawsuit [Updated]

from the put-down-the-popcorn dept

Well, we may have found at least a temporary answer to the question of "just how far will Charles Carreon dig?" According to Mark Lemley, one of the lawyers representing IndieGoGo against Carreon, Charles Carreon has just dismissed his lawsuit. One hopes this means that he's finally realized that this entire process was a mistake. A broad apology for massive overreaction after massive overreaction from Carreon (and his wife who apparently referred to us at Techdirt as a "nazi scumbag") might be nice, but if it's just a general admission that he had gone too far, that seems good enough. Of course, given how far he went, and his repeated insistence on not giving up, I do wonder if this is really the end of all of this. Somehow I doubt it. This is a voluntary dismissal, which means he could refile. But, for a brief moment, it appears that he's stopped digging.

Update: Carreon is apparently declaring victory, claiming that the lawsuit gave him what he wanted. Uh, yeah. He sued to make sure that Matthew Inman and IndieGoGo did exactly what they said they were going to do... and then when they did exactly what they promised to do, he claims that's a victory? At best, he did two things: had Inman limit the donations to just two charities rather than four, and made Inman take some of his own money out of the bank to photograph it (as promised) for Funnyjunk, rather than use the actual money raised during the IndieGoGo campaign. If his goal there was to force that to prevent embarrassment I don't see how that's a victory. Does anyone honestly believe that Carreon came out of this with a better reputation than if he'd just let the original plans happen? Carreon could still face requests for legal fees from those he sued, though it wouldn't surprise me if they all just dropped it. Carreon seems to think the newfound attention he's received is a good thing, which just shows how completely out of touch he is. As Ars Technica notes:

But if the defendants pursued attorney's fees, the attention might be worth it for Charles Carreon. After asking for comment on his voluntary dismissal of charges, Carreon lilted over the phone, "I'm famous, I'm notorious." Which, from the looks of it, is exactly what he wants.

There are times that it's worthwhile to be notorious. And there are times that it's not. This is the second one.

Filed Under: carreon effect, charles carreon, digging, dismissal, matthew inman, the oatmeal
Companies: american cancer society, indiegogo, national wildlife foundation