Judge: don't bring me any more anonymous file-sharing lawsuits

For a lawyer, it's bad enough when a federal judge wants to talk about your “ill-considered lawsuit” that has “abused the litigation system in more than one way.” It's worse when that judge tells you that facts in your case “were not as asserted" and that case filings “did not really comply with the subjective and objective good faith requirement." And when the judge says that your complaints about the fraudulent behavior of others are "ironic," you know this is not a judge you want to see again.

But former divorce-lawyer-turned-copyright-hound John Steele isn't deterred by mere judicial rulings about the defects of his peer-to-peer file-sharing cases. Steele is responsible for most of the mass file-sharing litigation currently conducted in Illinois federal courts, and after receiving the above dismissal from Judge Milton Shadur, he continued to file cases.

On May 4, he filed a case on behalf of New York company Boy Racer, which is "considered a premier name within the alt-porn niche," over the alleged file-sharing of its film L.A. Pink. Federal complaints are randomly assigned to a judge at the district court in which they are filed, and on May 5, the Boy Racer case ended up on the docket of Judge Shadur.

On May 6, Steele dismissed the case he had brought only two days earlier. But Shadur wasn't going to let Steele just slink away. Though federal courts can indeed be slow, it took Shadur only three days from the case assignment to issue a memorandum order that opened with these words:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/judge-dont-bring-me-any-more-anonymous-file-sharing-lawsuits.ars

Is to just payment of the beer and travel money that is due, and many experiences.

#1 - 5 on every lawyer's list of "things NOT to do."

I clerked for a couple of trial judges at the state level. My first boss told me to "go over everything the XYZ firm ever submits when they are before me" because that firm had tried to pull a fast one on him several years before. There is a lot of slack in many lawsuits. Getting on the wrong side of a judge is a good way to insure that none of it will ever be cut for you.

a friggin defendant.