My motion to dismiss The Dread Pro-Se Kimberlin’s second amended complaint in the Kimberlin v. The Universe, et al. RICO Madness is now posted on PACER.
The motion speaks for itself, so I don’t intend to make any comments particularly directed to it until the court has ruled on the motion.
“6 It may be that Plaintiff is reluctant to bring such a lawsuit on behalf of his non-profits because of the expense of hiring a lawyer and the ethical limitations constraining arguments presented by a member of the bar.” Heh.
That line made me snort out loud. Lol
Thanks for raising the jurisdictional issue. I don’t recall any of the other motions raising the issue.
Always give the judge the easy-out…
Yes, federal judges love to throw out cases on this basis alone, as a certain deranged cyberstalker will find out soon enough.
Jurisdiction can be raised at any point during the proceedings, including by the judge.
Quite a few of the defendants cannot raise that issue: diversity applies. Hoge can raise it because diversity is not an issue with respect to him.
My preceding comment makes little sense as written. What I meant to say is that if the court agrees to dismiss the ostensible federal claims, then the federal court has no remaining jurisdiction over Hoge because there is no diversity with respect to Kimberlin’s state claims against Hoge. That argument will not work for many defendants. It may apply only to Hoge.
Are you sure? I’m pretty sure that any defendant can raise the issue of subject matter jurisdiction to the court at any point in the proceeding.
The court currently has jurisdiction as the case raises issues of Federal laws (28 U.S.C. § 1331). But if the Federal laws are dismissed, then the court would have to rely on diversity jurisdiction (28 U.S.C. § 1332). Since all of the defendants are not diverse from all of the plaintiffs, the court would lack jurisdiction over the case and it would have to be kicked back to state court.
I see some unredacted addresses in the appendices. Should they be there?
Thanks, fixed it.
No problems. I have been following the affairs with BK and BS since Aaron’s first postings. Although I suspect my politics are way to the left of most of the posters here, I live in a country that has no 1st Amendment rights and weak anti SLAPP laws so I have an keen interest in promotion of free speech.
Good on you, TK, for seeing past the (irrelevant) politics and focusing on the principles involved.
I’m confident that most here share that view, principle>politics, including our host. And you’d be surprised how many here veer to the left in their politics too. 😉
Although I think I should change my name here. I’ve just realised it looks too close to some other initials. Contamination by alphabet association?
I haven’t seen a retraction yet from BS for calling you the RICO Racketeers. It puts you in a false light and causes emotional distress. Don’t forget his other moniker, the Defamatory Five.
Reader
This is not helpful. When the RICO case vindicates the defendants (as it will sooner or later), just waiting is a per se libel case against BS for that appellation. He forgot the very careful word that real journalists use, namely “alleged.” He must have gone out for a mayo break during the three minutes that his journalism school covered that little nicety.
Let’s hear it for the Hellman’s break!
I was being facetious, based on one of his tweets and BK’s false light claims.
Reblogged this on Dead Citizen's Rights Society.
Reblogged this on That Mr. G Guy's Blog.
I imagine to attorneys and lawyers, watching pro se’s present legal arguments is sort of like watching Peter Griffin trying to speak Italian. It was a good motion, for a pro se litigant, but there was a LOT of stuff that didn’t belong in this motion, which is why a lot of these arguments did not appear in the other Motions.
Put another way, you did a good job trying to speak the lingo, but it was also pretty clear at times you don’t know the language or when it is appropriate to make certain arguments. I don’t mean to be unfairly critical, no one can reasonably expect a polished lawyerly argument from a non-attorney, not to mention attorneys spend a LONG time and a LOT of money to learn how to understand and interpret the law in order to draft legal argument.
I have no intention of helping BK nor making the gentle host feel bad about what is a respectable try, so I won’t pick this apart or comment further. I also do not want to give the impression that this motion will not be successful, I believe all the motions to dismiss will likely be granted – I put the likelihood at 85%.
If this judge holds pro se filings to a high standard, that’s great! Because then, there would be no excuses for Brett “over 100 lawsuits” Kimberlin’s extreme and pervasive bad faith.
Brett Kimberlin submitted what is in the final analysis a political document. When the legal insufficiencies of his complaint were expounded by a number of lawyers, Brett Kimberlin begged the court for the opportunity to amend his complaint again. Instead of addressing the legal defects of his complaint, Kimberlin wrote an even longer and more convoluted political document. In both cases, Kimberlin grossly abused his privilege of attacking his enemies with immunity from libel and slander laws. This lawsuit simply isn’t following regular order. In a real lawsuit, victory is judge ruling in your favor. In a political battle, the winner is the one come out of the lawsuit stronger than when he entered it.
When Papa John’s was sued for tortuously claiming its pizza tasted better than it rivals, it won the legal battle when the judge ruled in its favor, but, lost the public relations battle when its lawyers argued the claim was “puffery.” Brett Kimberlin never had any realistic chance of winning this case. He was merely hoping someone would settle, or the defendants would walk-back their words. You have to ask if after the lawsuit is dismissed, dropped or lost, was John Hoge better off [, and/or Brett Kimberlin worse off,] for pleading as he did? I for one say, “Yes!”
We might have to wait for the book to come out before we know for sure whether Hoge’s strategy was formed along the lines you said. As for Brett, I agree with your main points but there is one theory I would like to add about why he added the idiotic Team Themis garbage.
Brett often is looking for a parade to get in front of, and a hot current political issue to insert himself into. If you want to see a truly funny example of this, look at Op-Critical’s video “Anonymous” (no need for sound to be on to find the humor). The words “Team Themis” are sort of a “dogwhistle” to a few paranoid people who identify themselves with Anonymous. How few? Fewer than Kimberlin must have estimated. I believe the hope was to rally a bunch of online activists who would help snowball publicity and ill will against his enemies.
If this plan sounds stupid, that actually doesn’t mean my theory is necessarily wrong, just that it requires Brett to have a tin ear about how he appears to the public. So if I’m right, yes the plan IS stupid and it didn’t work.
Relatedly, I believe his basically arbitrary and seemingly illogical choice of defendants was also actually partially devised in the hopes of pushing some peoples’ buttons to attract ardent enemies of those defendants. That didn’t work either.
Agreed. My biggest complaint is where Hoge should have cited some cases in support, but didn’t; and when he failed to expound on arguments that needed a bit more explanation. Basically, Hoge focused more on the factual issues instead of the legal ones. But Hoge at least has a coherent argument and writing style.
TDPK is bad writing mixed with crappy legal arguments.
Still, he’s the best lawyer I have ever seen who was meant to be a quantum mechanic!
😉
If my motion to dismiss were the only one the judge was going to see, I would have taken a very different approach. However, many of the points of law related to dismissal of the suit are being ably argued by the lawyers for other Defendants. Given the 50 page limit on a motion (a local rule) and 82 pages of nonsense in The Dread Pro-Se Kimberlin’s second amended complaint, you should not be surprised to see a certain level of specialized focus in many of the MTDs. Remember, there are over 20 Defendants, and 12 of us have now filed 6 MTDs. There should be more coming. I believe that taken as a whole they will devastate TDPK’s case.
From your lips to God’s ears!
Not trying to cause offense, I was agreeing with Esodia above. I don’t want to pick too much, but there were a few things I saw that a lawyer would have treated differently.
The court doesn’t consider all of the dispositive motions as a whole, each is considered on its own merits.
Since most of the MTD argue that each of the federal questions Kimberlin raises are legally specious, I would think the judge would dimiss those counts against even those defendants that don’t file a MTD. The state claims are even more problematic as they are not only legally specious, but, untimely and filed in the wrong jurisdiction.
I’m sure there is an optimal MTD for each defendant that would overlap considerably. But, that would result in a single opposition to all MTDs that would be optimal for plaintiff as well. If past is prologue, Brett Kimberlin is going to reply with yet another political document that consists little more than blowing smoke, hand waving, and table pounding. If past is prologue, it will be pretty much universal across all the defendants. To the extent that the MTDs show a diversity of arguments, Kimberlin’s lack of seriousness, and good faith, in addressing the legal issues at hand will be exposed.
One of the arguments I wanted made was noting Kimberlin’s lack of specificity. Kimberlin has both been vague in general, and, he has abused “imputed” in particular.
If one were to report on the OJ back in 1992, one might note the timing of the injury on his hand, the Bronco chase, the previous stalking of his ex-wife, etc. After laying out the facts a reasonable reader may very well have jumped to the conclusion OJ Simpson murdered Nicole Simpson. Laying out the facts and letting the reader draw their own conclusions must be safe harbor. Allowing Kimberlin to argue that laying out facts “imputes” conclusions means that any person can sue the press for libel, and survive a MTD, imposing the resulting cost and complexity of answering discovery simply by claiming negative implications. That would chill free speech.