Craig McLaughlin’s Comments

• Apr 19th, 2013 @ 3:39pm

  Slep-tone Lawsuit Development

  on 97 Las Vegas Karaoke Locations Sued By 'Righthaven Of Trademarks' Demanding $500 Million
  There have been a number of developments in the Slep-tone mass lawsuits since the most recent comment here. One pertains to a case that Slep-tone filed in Los Angeles naming over 70 defendants, karaoke jockeys and venues. I had the pleasure of representing two of the defendants. Not unlike many of its other income producing cases where Slep-tone sued its own customers, many defendants had settled with Slep-tone. We even paid Slep-tone $5,000 in nuisance value settlement. However, Slep-tone failed to dismiss the case as required by the settlement agreement. So our fight continued. Since it did not file any pre-trial papers or appear at the pre-trial conference, Judge Otis Wright, II, called the parties "comatose" and dismissed Slep-tone's claims for failure to prosecute. We then filed a motion for fees as the prevailing party under the Lanham Act. Slep-tone failed to timely oppose, brought in new counsel and blamed it all on its original lawyer. But Slep-tone had known many months prior of multiple missed deadlines by her in the Las Vegas case and did nothing about it. In fact, Slep-tone had blamed her there too. Judge Wright had none of it. I am happy to report that Judge Wright granted our motion and awarded all fees claimed. In his order, he called Slep-tone's case a "shakedown" and that they took "trolling to the next level." He also found its conduct to be in bad faith and vexatious. A blow-by-blow account can be found on the blog of Las Vegas lawyer, Robert Kossack.
  http://soundchoicelasvegaslawsuit.com/los-angeles-court-orders-slep-tone-to-pay-suganos-attorneys- fees-by-a-date-certain/
  Other parts of the blog reveal that Slep-tone has sued its investigator APS and Steve Brophy and provided as an exhibit to the complaint its agreement with them contemplating suits of 1000's of defendants.