Righthaven Archives
Past stories related to the Righthaven copyright lawsuit campaign
Two groups today asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to shut down Las Vegas copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC in that state.
Citizens Against Litigation Abuse Inc. and the Lowcountry 9/12 Project asked the court to find that Righthaven’s business model is the “unauthorized practice of law” and to “enjoin Righthaven from operating in South Carolina.”
The Lowcountry 9/12 Project is a South Carolina Tea Party group headed by Dana Eiser, who was hit with a no-warning copyright infringement lawsuit by Righthaven Dec. 2 after a Denver Post column showed up on its website.
Attorneys for Eiser have fired back, hitting Righthaven with an updated counterclaim and suing it in a South Carolina court.
Eiser says someone else posted the column on her group’s website and that the post was protected by fair use.
In her counterclaim, she accuses Righthaven of racketeering and filing fraudulent copyright lawsuits, among other things.
Today’s petition with the South Carolina Supreme Court focuses on Righthaven’s business model of sharing lawsuit revenue with its media clients, which are Stephens Media LLC, owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal; and MediaNews Group, owner of The Denver Post.
Attorneys for Eiser, led by Todd Kincannon in Columbia, S.C., say in today’s petition that Righthaven’s 274 lawsuits over R-J and Post material are part of a business model that “is blatantly the unauthorized practice of law, in South Carolina and everywhere else.”
Righthaven is not a law firm. It’s a company half owned by Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson and half owned by the same investors who own Stephens Media.
Today’s filing says it’s “black letter law” that a nonlaw firm “entity in the business of seeking (lawsuit) assignments, pursuing litigation in its own name and splitting the proceeds with the assignor commits a fraud on the court and the unauthorized practice of law.”
“After scaring the living daylights out of its targets with no-warning lawsuits seeking inordinate amounts of money, Righthaven approaches the target and tries to leverage a cost-of-defense settlement, which it splits with its client,” the complaint says.
The filing notes Righthaven has been threatened with sanctions for failing to disclose that Stephens Media was an interested party in its Nevada lawsuits — and that after it was hit with the sanctions threat, Righthaven started disclosing that MediaNews Group is an interested party in its Denver Post cases.
“Righthaven’s subterfuge was a calculated attempt to conceal the true nature of its relationship with its clients,” the filing said. “The true nature of the transaction is a contingency fee representation agreement for legal services. But Righthaven could not legally enter such a contract, because it is not a law firm. Not only was Righthaven engaged in the unauthorized practice of law, it committed fraud on an enormous scale to conceal its illegal conduct.”
Stephens Media and MediaNews Group haven’t said why they contracted with Righthaven for copyright infringement lawsuits.
Copyright expert and assistant clinical professor Jason Schultz of the University of California-Berkeley’s Boalt Hall Law School offered theories on that today in a separate court filing in which he argues Righthaven lacks standing to sue over R-J material.
The filing was made by Schultz in his capacity as an “amicus,” or friend of the court.
“Amicus has wondered all along why Stephens Media did not file this case, and the other Righthaven suits, as the named plaintiff, thereby ameliorating any of these standing problems,” his brief said. “After all, from what amicus can tell, all of Righthaven’s employees are Nevada Bar members with admission to this court. Thus it would have been far easier for Stephens to simply hire these lawyers as outside counsel to sue on its behalf.
“Much like other contingency fee relationships, the financial relationship in the (Stephens/Righthaven lawsuit contract) could have been part of the attorney-client retainer agreement.
“Amicus has no answers to this question, but one could speculate that (somewhat ironically) Stephens wished to keep its name out of the press or attempt to avoid the burdens of litigation such as discovery, attorney’s fees, costs or sanctions,” Schultz wrote.
Today’s complaint in the South Carolina Supreme Court says Citizens Against Litigation Abuse is a South Carolina nonprofit group “interested in preventing and opposing truly abusive litigation” focused on political speech and “strategic lawsuits against public participation” lawsuits.