A long awaited ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is out. Circuit Judges Harry Pregerson Richard Tallman , and Jacqueline Nguyen affirmed district court’s award of attorney’s fees (including a punitive multiplier, and a second supersedeas bond order) imposed by Judge Wright against Prenda principals (John Steele, Paul Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy [ deceased ]) in 2013.

The oral argument took place a year ago:

Congratulations to Morgan Pietz, Nicholas Ranallo, Jason Sweet, Erin Russel, and many others who contributed to Prenda’s dishonorable finale.

One scam is down, more to go.

Since the order is short (12 pages), descriptive, and isn’t dealing with complex legal issues, there is nothing to analyse, explain or comment on. Just read it.



Ninth Circuit's decision affirming Judge Wright's Prenda order is brutal in its matter-of-fact brevity accepting his conclusions. — (((Popehat))) (@Popehat) June 10, 2016

Put another way, Ninth Circuit thinks the record so self-evidently shows Prenda to be crooks that not much discussion is necessary. — (((Popehat))) (@Popehat) June 10, 2016

Coverage

…and now for something completely different (and so painfully clueless that I struggle to keep my eyeballs in the sockets). Written by a Harvard law professor, no less:

Bloomberg: Porn, Copyright Law and a Raised Judicial Eyebrow But it remains noteworthy that the district judge reacted so strongly to the trolling scheme, and that the Ninth Circuit was happy to wink and let him get away with it. Essentially, Prenda’s conduct was barely unlawful. Without the misrepresentation, it would have been completely legal. What made the judges angry was the fact that Prenda made the legal system look foolish — by drawing attention to how the law could be used to enforce a scheme that Wright called a “legal shakedown.”

Tl;dr: forget about a myriad of instances when other courts ruled against Prenda and sanctioned its attorneys, forget that Steele and Hansmeier are about to be disbarred, forget an imminent criminal indictment — it was all Judge Wright’s whim.

You may say that the author is naive, I disagree: don’t attribute to naivete what can be adequately explained by snobbery.

Update

6/15/2016

Today Morgan Pietz and Nick Ranallo filed a request for attorney’s fees on appeal and motion for fees as damages (scroll down for the exhibits, which include a hilarious 2013 email from Prenda’s appellate attorney, Daniel Voelker, to Morgan Pietz). The defendant asks for $65,611 in fees and $795.30 in costs.

In related news, the Ninth Circuit denied Hansmeier’s application for admission to the bar of the circuit for failure to file status reports — as was ordered in May 2013, when the appeal was filed.