Advokat Merl Ledford III går til verket

Advokat Merl Ledford III har en klient som mottok RIAAs brev med tilbud om å betale $3750 for å slippe rettslig forfølging. Klienten betalte ikke, ei heller svarte de på brevet, og RIAA tok ut stevning mot ekteparet Merchant. Advokaten har i et meget godt skrevet brev tatt tak i alt RIAAs advokater gjør galt, og brevet er en fornøyelse å lese. Jeg har tidligere skrevet om RIAAs uestetiske taktikk, og det er godt å se at ekteparet Merchant får fullt utbytte av pengene de bruker på denne advokaten. And then some!

Advokat Merl Ledford III tar ikke RIAA ved hornene, men sparker godt, hardt og velfortjent midt i skrittet. Her er noen utdrag fra brevet, som du kan lese i sin helhet her:

The Evidence Code sections are quite clear: settlement negotiations of all kinds may not be used to prove the validity of any claim or defense. Mr. Merchant has and had no more duty to respond to attempts to "sell" him one of your clients' boilerplate, non-negotiable $3750 settlements than he has to return cold calls from pushy life insurance salespeople. If your client (and your law firm?) are seeking probable cause shelter in a settlement negotiations house of straw (as suggested by your March 23 letter), all of you should consider the prevailing winds of the Evidence Code before making yourselves too comfortable. Straw will burn.

Your client take the position that my middle-aged, conservative clients should speculate regarding the identity of persons your clients' claim used their AOL account to download pornographic-lyric gangsta rap tracks as predicate to possible case resolution. In an age of Wintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the only tech-savvy response to such a request is, "You've got to be kidding."

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