Thursday, February 12, 2009

Expedited discovery motion denied in Elektra Entertainment v. Does 1-6, due to RIAA's failure to prove "urgency"

In Elektra Entertainment Group v. Does 1-6, plaintiffs' new case against David Licata's wife and children following the dismissal of Elektra Entertainment Group v. Licata in Cincinnati, Magistrate Judge Timothy S. Black has denied the RIAA's motion for "expedited discovery".

The Judge distinguished the uncontested cases against ISP's which the RIAA lawyers had cited, and ruled, among other things, that:

-"expedited discovery is not the norm. A party seeking expedited discovery must show good cause for departing from the uusual discovery procedures."

-"Good cause for expedited discovery is contingent on urgency. 'The court must protect defendants from unfairly expedited discovery.' Notaro v. Koch, 95 F.R.D. 403, 405 (S.D.N.Y. 1982)." and

-"The Plaintiffs cannot create urgency by naming Doe defendants. The use of Doe defendants is disfavored by the federal courts. [citations omitted]"
February 5, 2009, Decision Denying Motion for Expedited Discovery



Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The conclusion is about the most reasonable thing that a judge has ruled on about these ~30,000 cases.

Now if we could just get a judge to rule that the plaintiffs must "effect service of the complaint upon (a) named defendant(s)" from the beginning of this RIAA crap, then these illegal cases would be shut down before they even started.

My hat goes off to Magistrate Black for this. I just hope he continues to shows more common sense as this progresses.

Alter_Fritz said...

good to see one more judge that sees the gaming of the evil4 lawyers!

P.S. One point though where judge Black might have made a tiny error:
page two sentence one.

If i remember correctly it started with a jon doe suit, then dismissal, then named licata, then doe again.
so the case his order is about now is not the second but already the third about the same allegation(s), isn't it?

Alter_Fritz said...

P.S.
after rereading an older order(*) of judge Black and his reasoning there I think I must reverse my "analysis" of him.
I think I must wight his current order under a different light.
Back then he granted plaintiffs dismissal "without" and denied fees for Licata.
While I'm not saying anything about fairness, with this prior events reminded I find it "interesting" that he grants plaintiffs this extension again even though he himself mentions how bad plaintiffs have behave in this 3rd doe case by "playing" and disrespecting extremely the time-and deadlines that your courtrules normally dictate.
His argument that he "wants to be nice" to plaintiffs by making use of his discretion that the law provides to him to give them more chances to do the stuff even though they have disrespected the rules to flagrantly, feels at least to me now that he is not so 100% impartial fair as a judge should be.

(*) http://beckermanlegal.com/Lawyer_Copyright_Internet_Law/elektra_licata_080822DecisionMagistrate.pdf

Alter_Fritz said...

oops, mea culpa! No disrespect meant.

http://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/gewichten.html
is the vocable I wanted to use, not
http://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/Wicht.html

Anonymous said...

Alter_Fritz:

You just hit it right on the head. If judges cut too much slack to plaintiffs and thereby stick a huge legal bill to innocent defendants, that's not justice. This should be quite obvious, but apparently isn't.

-yt

Anonymous said...

Per the order, the plaintiffs have 21 days (from 2/5/09) to effect service upon (a) named defendant(s).

So, what happens if the Licatas have a 2 week vacation scheduled and can't be reached?

JZ