Thompson Kotaku Suit Dismissed

So, just yesterday we discussed Thompson's suit filed again Kotaku. Just as quickly as it came, it went. "Federal District Court Judge Paul Huck has dismissed a complaint filed Wednesday against Gawker Media, parent company of the popular Kotaku game blog. In his ruling, Judge Huck wrote that controversial attorney Jack Thompson had failed to follow the proper federal court procedure for amending a complaint." As the story says, "So, how's that Law 101 class going?"

Court procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

While people may think that filing various types of complaints and following through on them the proper way is fairly straightforward, it's often not as well-documented as you would think (although I would hope a qualified attorney would know what he/she was doing!). I'm currently acting as unofficial secretary to a pro se litigant in a Delaware divorce case, and digging up the information about the whole process is fairly painful. (IANAL, but I've always wanted to pretend to be one! [Thanks, George Castanza.]) There are some good references on divorce law (expensive to purchase, but available in some large libraries), and there are other references that detail previous cases as exhibits on how things /were/ done, but that doesn't tell you how things /should be/ done in your case. (I think there is a "Divorce for Dummies," but I'm not sure I would put my full faith in it.) Since most public policy is derived from the results of previous cases, not necessarily from any passed legislation, you have to either get access to the cases (not such an easy task in Family Courts), which involves paying fees to the Clerks of Court and knowing ahead of time which cases will be relevant, or finding attorneys who will advise you (sometimes you can get unofficial legal advice from a lawyer for much cheaper than being officially represented).

Even if you can look over forms, case histories, and books and online documentation to give you a "rough idea" of what to do, you can easily miss a certain poorly-documented step or submit the wrong paper or not use proper wording in a Plea, Motion, or Answer, and be unable to actually achieve your goals of contesting, property division, or ancillary support.

There are more and more free unofficial-advice or legal-chat forums online, and I think there's a few online HOWTOs for filing a Complaint against a source of UCE, named or unnamed, but I think there are lots of opportunities for semi-qualified legal advisement in various discounted or inexpensive ways. (I know there are some resources for representation for battered or deprived women and other such things for Family Court, as well as groups that might offer support in cases revolving around children, but I haven't seen any comprehensive directories of such services online; I know there are some in books, but, I'm an Internet whore, and I want everything to be online or at least referenced online!)

I'm curious about any other /.'ers involved in pro se litigation, either as a designated party or in an unofficial capacity (e.g., nonrepresenting legal adviser or unofficial secretary), especially about spam cases. Any good websites for this? (Yeah, I know, there's Google, but I figure maybe some people who know of Really Good Places to Look(TM) are hanging around.)

Don't get too excited

[nenya]

The case was not dismissed. The judge simply called Thompson for failure to follow the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which only allows a complaint to be amended unilaterally once. If a party seeks to file a second amendment to their complaint, Rule 15(a) [cornell.edu] requires that that party seek the leave of the court or the consent of the adverse party, and such leave or consent must be granted "where justice requires".

Thompson is free to seek the consent of the adverse party or the leave of the court. If the case can't go forward unless the complaint be amended and the amendment required isn't too drastic, the FRCP generally require the amendment to be allowed. Thompson just forgot to ask is all. Still, the fact that he botched this uses up the judge's patience, and makes it marginally less likely that the amendment will be permitted.

I haven't read the complaint, so I don't know just how bad this is for Thompson, but his case is still pending.

Re:Good news, but it could have been better.

[nenya]

Actually, the case itself was not dismissed. The news story got the facts wrong. The judge struck the amended complaints from the record, but at this time the case is still pending on the original amended complaint. This ruling doesn't really mean anything.

Re:Good news, but it could have been better.

[HappyHead]

As far as I could tell from reading the complaint itself, the part against and about Kotaku was the ammendment that got struck - the rest of the lawsuit is conspiracy charges against the Florida Bar Association. Reading it through reminded me of a grade appeal I got from a student once - over 200 pages of ranting about conspiracies and all of the people out to get him, and only one sentance actually related to the course, and his grade in it. (Only stating that he was appealing it, nothing more.)