For a lawyer, it's bad enough when a federal judge wants to talk about your “ill-considered lawsuit” that has “abused the litigation system in more than one way.” It's worse when that judge tells you that facts in your case “were not as asserted" and that case filings “did not really comply with the subjective and objective good faith requirement." And when the judge says that your complaints about the fraudulent behavior of others are "ironic," you know this is not a judge you want to see again.

But former divorce-lawyer-turned-copyright-hound John Steele isn't deterred by mere judicial rulings about the defects of his peer-to-peer file-sharing cases. Steele is responsible for most of the mass file-sharing litigation currently conducted in Illinois federal courts, and after receiving the above dismissal from Judge Milton Shadur, he continued to file cases.

On May 4, he filed a case on behalf of New York company Boy Racer, which is "considered a premier name within the alt-porn niche," over the alleged file-sharing of its film L.A. Pink. Federal complaints are randomly assigned to a judge at the district court in which they are filed, and on May 5, the Boy Racer case ended up on the docket of Judge Shadur.

On May 6, Steele dismissed the case he had brought only two days earlier. But Shadur wasn't going to let Steele just slink away. Though federal courts can indeed be slow, it took Shadur only three days from the case assignment to issue a memorandum order that opened with these words:

It seems that attorney John Steele (“Steele”) might be well advised to stay away from Las Vegas or other casinos, because his current filing on behalf of plaintiff Boy Racer, Inc. has—despite odds in the range of 25 to 1—been assigned at random to the calendar of this District Court, which had previously been the recipient of another random assignment of a Steele-filed action (that one being CP Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-300, No. 10 C 6255). This Court had ended up dismissing the CP Productions action for the reasons stated in its February 7, 2011 memorandum order and its February 24, 2011 memorandum opinion and order, which (among other reasons) rejected attorney Steele’s effort to shoot first and identify his targets later.

Shadur went on to say that he doesn't want to see any more of these "John Doe" cases that bring a huge list of IP addresses against people who may or may not even live in Illinois. "It would seem feasible for Steele and his client to pursue the normal path of suing an identifiable (and identified) defendant or defendants rather than a passel of 'Does,'" wrote Shadur. "Moreover, that practice would also facilitate the determination as to which defendant or defendants is or are amenable to suit here in Illinois."

The case was dismissed, and Shadur noted that "Boy Racer is free to advance its copyright infringement claims against one or more identified defendants on an individual basis or, if appropriate, a plausible conspiracy theory." But it's quite clear that at least one federal judge simply will not entertain these cases in their current form.

Still, that's not stopping Steele. He has continued to file new cases in May and to pursue old ones—so long as they don't end up before Judge Shadur. And, at odds of 25:1, he should be able to avoid too many more run-ins with a judge who quite clearly would prefer never to see him again.