Prenda Law Tries To Dismiss Case After Being Accused Of Directly Violating Judge's Orders

from the these-guys-again? dept

We've been covering a number of stories about copyright trolling law firm Prenda Law lately, and each time, we're somewhat amazed at their really brazen attempts to abuse the court process to basically get information which they can then use to pressure people into paying Prenda not to be sued over copyright infringement. Some of the more amazing cases we've highlighted include the one in Florida where the judge accused Prenda of fraud on the court after a court hearing that was worthy of a comedic movie. And then there's the ongoing questions about the mysterious Alan Cooper who may or may not be Prenda founder, John Steele's, housekeeper, rather than an actual executive running a firm that Prenda is representing. Oh, and let's not forget Prenda's big bag of tricks in another set of cases. Basically, every time Prenda Law / John Steele pop up, it's not long before serious questions follow.

So... here we go again. The site DieTrollDie has the story of a Prenda case in Colorado against one William Cisa and "1385 "joint tortfeasors." Basically, Prenda is trying to get information on 1,386 people... from whom they will then demand settlements. Unfortunately, the judge in that case initially allowed "discovery" to go forward, allowing Prenda to get some info on all of those people. Eventually, the magistrate judge realized that something sketchy was going on and reversed the order on discovery and killed the outstanding subpoenas to ISPs for info. The magistrate judge, Kathleen Tafoya, also made it clear to Prenda not to contact anyone whose info it had received:

Insofar as any personal identifying information of the non-party “joint tortfeasors” has already been provided to Plaintiff from the “joint tortfeasors’” ISPs, Plaintiff is prohibited from further communicating with these subscribers.

Sounds good... except that the anonymous person behind DieTrollDie noticed that a lawyer hired by Prenda, Timothy Anderson, had been filing lawsuits for Prenda in Virginia -- including some against the people associated with the IP addresses uncovered in the Cisa case. And, remember, the CO court made it clear that Prenda is prohibited from communicating with those people... and yet it's filing lawsuits.

The person behind DTD sent an email to the court alerting it to this likely violation of Judge Tafoya's order... and soon after that Anderson sought to dismiss the Cisa case entirely, without bothering to respond to the claims of violating the order. Whether or not the judge decides to do something about this, I imagine that the judges in the cases in Virginia may be informed about the background here...

Filed Under: copyright trolls, john steele, prenda, tim anderson, william cisa
Companies: prenda, prenda law