Referee Recommends Disbarment For Jack Thompson 280
spielermacher writes "GamePolitics is reporting that Jack Thompson — the lawyer every gamer loves to hate — has apparently lost his court case and is facing disbarment. The Referee in the case has gone beyond the Florida Bar's request for a 10-year disbarment and is recommending a lifetime ban. From the Final Report issued by the court: '... the Respondent has demonstrated a pattern of conduct to strike out harshly, extensively, repeatedly and willfully to simply try to bring as much difficulty, distraction and anguish to those he considers in opposition to his causes. He does not proceed within the guidelines of appropriate professional behavior ...' All I can say is that it's about time."
It's not just lifetime disbarment (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Owned (Score:4, Informative)
Shouldn't that be "PWNED!"?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Thank Goodness (Score:5, Informative)
It's not even the state of Florida. It's the Florida Bar, which is a professional organization set up by the Florida Supreme Court. So while it was granted authority by the government of Florida, it isn't part of the government of Florida.
Re:It's not just lifetime disbarment (Score:4, Informative)
107,000 gallons if you like home brewing very good American swill. A little less if you go for real beer. Less if you go for chinkweiser and not enough if it's German beer. ;)
Re:Sorry, but I just have to do this... (Score:3, Informative)
One contract that I was at had an incompetent DBA. (The first time I began to question her abilities was when she asked if changing the desktop bitmap would impact system performance).
It does. At least on very old computers with little RAM, if you had a large desktop image, it'd have to swap it from disk to display it, so the desktop would take very long to display. I still remember the days...
Re:Good riddance to bad advocate (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Singlemindedness (Score:2, Informative)
Re:IANAL (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disbarment [wikipedia.org]
"However, under the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which have been adopted in most states, disbarment in one state or court is grounds for disbarment in a jurisdiction which has adopted the Model Rules."
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
This story is misleading, nobody read the PDF? (Score:3, Informative)
I have to question the journalism skills of a gaming site. Just like slashdot, they are very quick to do stories that promote a certain way of thinking, correct or not. Here's a bit of the PDF they built the story on:
"It is apparent that other costs have or may be incurred. It is recommended that all such costs and expenses together with the foregoing itemized costs be charged to the Respondent, and that interest at the statutory rate shall accrue and be payable beginning 30 days after the judgement in this case becomes final unless a waiver is granted by the Board of Governors of the Florida Bar. It is further recommended that Respondent shall be deemed delinquent and ineligible to practice law persuant to R. Regulating Fla. Bar 1-3.6 for failure to timely pay the costs assessed in this proceeding."
It looks more, to me, he's in trouble with just Florida, but only if he doesn't pay his fees on time. My understanding is, he could skip paying this. I don't think he's commented on what he'll do, but it's highly likely he'll pay like any other lawyer and be able to continue pestering people in Florida. Regardless, he has 49 other states to harass.
Re:This story is misleading, nobody read the PDF? (Score:4, Informative)
Congratulations, you can read the last page.
The bit about costs is separate from the rest of the recommendation. If the Supreme Court adopts the referee's recommendation, he'll be disbarred for life. That's pretty much standard language they probably include where you temporarily lose your license if you don't pay the costs of the proceedings against you. If the final punishment was simply a reprimand, then the failure to pay would become more important. The costs issue is a separate punishment from the disbarment.
In many states lawyers are suspended each year for failing to pay their bar dues. As soon as they pay them, they're reinstated.
Re:This story is misleading, nobody read the PDF? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good riddance to bad advocate (Score:3, Informative)
Although the orbits intersect, when you get back to where you started, the ISS is slightly behind, so you won't run into it.
It's actually another good example of a violation of common sense in orbital mechanics - you have to decelerate to speed your orbit up, and vice versa.