Rich Fiscus
5 Jul 2008 16:58
As we reported 2 weeks ago, Universal Music Group (UMG) wants to dismiss a long-running file sharing lawsuit against Marie Lindor. UMG's lawyers are trying to get the lawsuit dismissed without prejudice, which would mean they make no admission of being wrong, and are therefore not liable for Ms. Lindor's legal expenses. This is based largely on the claim of "false statements and misdirection" by the defendant and her lawyer, Ray Beckerman. They've even gone so far as to request that Ms. Lindor pay their legal costs.
Mr. Beckerman is well known for his blog detailing lawsuits filed in the RIAA's war against their customers. Not surprisingly he's written a response to the judge hearing the case in which he rebuts UMG's claims of victimization at the hands of the defendant.
He denies their assertion that he's attempted to block legitimate discovery attempts, saying his client made it clear to the plaintiffs from the beginning that she was available to be deposed at any time, and also that they instructed her children to cooperate as well.
There are a number of problems with UMG's claims about Ms. Lindor's supposed attempts to impede their investigation. The most important is simply that early on in the case it was established that the defendant hadn't engaged in any file sharing, and probably wasn't capable of doing so even if she wanted to. Given that knowledge they surely had a responsibility to drop their case against her unless they already had proof she was somehow responsible for helping the responsible party.
Instead they decided to continue pursuing the case in order to get access to information about other people who might have been responsible for the alleged copyright infringement. Had they dismissed instead there would have been no legal claim for them to depose her children or request that they turn over their own computers to be inspected by RIAA investigators.
Essentially the RIAA's position seems to be that once a defendant has shown the case against them to be without merit its that person's responsibility to assist investigators in figuring out who's really to blame. The law or legal principle that such a theory would be based on has yet to be identified.
If you don't have evidence that the defendant did what you claim it's generally accepted your case is done. It's your own responsibility to develop a different case against a different defendant.