Lawfare
The american legal system basically allows anyone to sue anyone for any reason resulting in a lot of innocent people feeling obliged to pay loads of money in legal fees in order to defend themselves against these nonsense lawsuit.
A lot of states have attempted to 'fix' this by anti-slapp laws but that does not actually adress the fundamental problem and people are still circumventing it by suing in one of the states that do not yet have such legislation.
In that case they did manage to avoid paying tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees but that's not always the case unfortunately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7EmO9uVB-Y
The complexity and bureaucracy of the system makes it very hard for people who are not lawyers to navigate the system. Thus we end up in a situation where lawiers get loads of resources while loads of innocent people get financially destroyed by exorbitant legal fees.
mariocerame wrote:
Jeez man, annihilated? I dunno.... but it is a good result though especially for pro bono work. I would add that we had a complex decision tree for some 7 additional steps after removal:
1) seek sanctions if they didn't amend their complaint to have a non-frivolous cause of action, then
2) challenge personal jurisdiction in OH, then
3) if we were still in OH
3a) try to apply foreign anti-SLAPP laws from FL, TX, NJ, or VA, which may or may not work; or
3b) if they lost on PJ in OH then anti-SLAPP motions in whatever relevant jurisdiction they took it to, being FL, TX, NJ, or VA, then
4) challenge whatever non-contractual claim they amended, if possible, in a m/dismiss, then
5) challenge subject matter jurisdiction as to the preliminary injunctive relief sought, to narrow the issues, then
6) we'd be using the discovery process to bolster the factual basis of your video and prepare for the m/summary judgment after discovery, and,
7) if and only if appropriate based on facts uncovered, refer the matter to a gov't agency for review. We had all this planned out, as well as what was discussed in the video, before we demanded they amend or withdraw. We knew what we would do and were ready to do all this and knew we could do all this. Only then we made a demand.