The LA Times was expecting good news yesterday: that, because I’d be unable to raise $75,000 cash bond to continue my lawsuit for defamation and wrongful termination, and defend myself from their perverted “anti-SLAPP” motion.
Sadly for them, they were informed that the bond had been filed and had been received by the court. Thanks to more than 750 contributions through my GoFundMe crowdfunding page, my case will move forward.
In the Times’ ongoing attempt to prevent a jury from hearing about their sleazy collusion with the Los Angeles Police Department and repeated lies to Times readers, attorney Kelli Sager, however, complained that the bond “had omitted several defendants who are part of the litigation” and “said she was concerned the omissions would prevent the defendants from enforcing the bond.” The space on the form doesn’t have enough room for all the defendants in the case.
The judge ordered Sager and my attorneys to confer in order to fix the bureaucratic detail.
My attorney Carney Shegerian Carney Shegerian called the Times’ anti-SLAPP motion “borderline frivolous.”
“The thinking behind it, unfortunately, is really you just scare plaintiffs because there’s a huge fee-shifting component to it that can be applied and so plaintiffs can get very scared,” Shegerian told Courthouse News Service. “It really just chills civil rights litigation and it chills defamation litigation like this one.”
5 Comments.
I noticed from the copy of the bond (on your site) that not all defendants were listed, but space didn’t allow. What do your attorneys say? Would an addendum be possible in order to silence these malcontents?
What does “prevent the defendants from enforcing the bond” mean?
@Natasha, It means that, if the defendants prevail in their anti-SLAPP motion, they would be entitled to ask the court to turn over the $75,000 bond to them.
Isn’t the logical extension of this reasoning that if a defendant isn’t specifically named (according to defense) they would have no access to the money that was bonded?
In ruling on Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc, the “Supreme” Court dealt a blow to class-action suits against Big Money. However, I ran across this recently, giving me some hope.
CA has tried to be friendly to the 99% with anti-SLAPP legislation and Deep Pockets laws, but the 1% are, as always, better armed. (pocketed?) Ted has a tough row to hoe, indeed, but CA is one of the better places to try.
I have sued a large corporation, and they spent far more money trying to weasel out of it than it would have cost them to settle in the first place. They used every dirty trick in the book – they impeded discovery, coached witnesses on how to lie under oath, etc, etc. In each case, the burden of proof was on me to prove them wrong – at my own expense.