One the obvious purposes of Team Kimberlin’s lawfare has been to try to use the discovery process in civil suits to dig up dirt to use against their perceived enemies. This Acme Legal Citation Du Jour ran five years ago today.

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The Cabin Boy™ will not get any IP information from Hogewash! without either a valid subpoena or discovery interrogatory.

In order to get a subpoena prior to discovery, he will have to comply with the requirements in Independent Newspapers, Inc. v. Brodie, 407 Md. 415 (2009). He will have to make a prima facie case of defamation for each individual about whom he seeks information. Because he is suing in a federal court with tighter pleading standards than a Maryland state court, he will have to plead with particularity, and I will only provide information that the court specifically orders given. He won’t get thousands of IP address unless he specifically asks for that many one by one.

Of course, that presumes that his case survives. If the court takes note of the fact that he has admitted in his Application for pauper status that he has more income (almost 2X the federal poverty level for a family of two) than is allowed, the case will be kicked out. If he’s allowed to proceed in forma pauperis, the LOLsuit must then be screened for frivolousness, maliciousness, and failure to state a claim. Let’s pretend that it gets past that screening; there will still be motions to dismiss. If the LOLsuit makes it over that hurdle, the Cabin Boy™ can then file a discovery interrogatory. He will then find that discovery may not be as open-ended as he thinks. He will also find that it’s a two-way street.

BTW, if the LOLsuit makes it past the motions to dismiss, no one should be surprised if one or more defendants make counterclaims and/or adds counterclaim defendants.

The Gentle Reader should not worry about any of this. I only log the IP addresses of the Insightful Commenters who contribute to Hogewash!—and the Ill-mannered Harassers who attempt to troll the blog.

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That post was written in the context of LOLsuit III: The Search for Schlock, and that particular bit of nonsense was killed off after only two weeks when the presiding judge realized that the court had no jurisdiction over the case. Schmalfeldt has never been successful using discovery.

The Dread Deadbeat Pro-se Kimberlin did manage to get his hands on a large number of emails during discovery in the Kimberlin v. Frey RICO Remnant LOLsuit, but he never was able to use any of them effectively. He did try to use some of them in the Hoge v. Kimberlin, et al. case, but when he tried during the trial, the state court judge said that he wouldn’t prevent TDPK from introducing them, but that Kimberlin would be on his own explaining to the federal judge why the protective order was violated. Kimberlin chickened out, which is a shame because I would have introduced the same emails myself if I hadn’t been bound by the protective order as well.

It’s safe to say that Neal Rauhauser’s theory of pro se lawfare has been a spectacular failure—at least as far as implemented by Team Kimberlin.