Yesterday defense attorney Francisco Ferreiro appealed a federal court’s decision denying attorney fees in Malibu Media v. Leo Pelizzo (FLSD 12-cv-22768).

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first appeal (CA11 14-11795) of a court decision in a Guardaley-driven lawsuit. M. Keith Lipscomb and its “client” X-Art are slowly but surely following Prenda’s footsteps. Prenda’s appellate experience so far was a total disaster for its disgraced attorneys, and I hope the same fate is awaiting Keith Lipscomb, Michael Hierl, Paul Lesko et al (the list is depressingly long).

To refresh your memory, the Pelizzo case was probably the most disgusting porn troll’s assault on an innocent citizen. 100% knowing that Mr. Pelizzo had absolutely nothing to do with the alleged infringements, Lipscomb continued twisting the defendant’s arms for months.

The apogee of douchebaggery was an email to the defense counsel (again, keep in mind that at that time Lipscomb knew with absolute certainty that the defendant is innocent):

[…] you should counsel [your client] that when he loses, he will lose everything he owns and owe my clients hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mark these words, your client’s decision to reject a walk away will be the worst decision he will ever make.

The reason behind this stinky vitriol was the defense’s rather modest request for attorney fees. While making millions on selling out his compatriots to the German Mafia, Lipscomb went postal over about five thousand dollars.

Why didn’t Lipscomb cut and run earlier, as soon as he realized that he targeted a wrong person, when hostilities didn’t go that far and when it was much cheaper to buy his way out of the looming PR disaster? I have no idea. I can only speculate that he thought that admitting a mistake would endanger his future shakedown activities, or the enormously swelled ego of our insecure ostensive Christian was the actual decision maker.

Unfortunately, Judge Patricia Sietz only partially granted attorney fees to the de-facto prevailing party — defense. The defendant didn’t think it was fair, hence the appeal:

While federal judges continue buying copyright troll’s lies and closing their eyes to the obvious fraud, I want to believe that appellate judges think not only about following the letter of the law, but care about its spirit, about the negative societal impact of decisions made by the lower courts.

I wish Francesco Ferreiro and his client to prevail.

Updates

9/16/2014

On 9/15/2014 the troll filed the appellee’s brief and a motion for attorney fees (which is unusual and inexplicably douchy, IMO).

tl;dr: Lipscomb is a good guy who didn’t shake down a clearly innocent person over barely legal, illegally produced pornography. Even more, Keith went to great lengths to save defendant’s money (furthering the purposes of the Copyright Act in the process)! On the other hand, Leo Pelizzo and his counsel Francisco Ferreiro are bad guys who have been trying to shake down our paragons of ethics by frivolously multiplying proceedings. Well… Hypocrisy is a bottomless pit.

10/9/2014

Today Francisco Ferreiro filed defendant’s response in opposition to Appelee’s motion for attorney’s fees and costs.

10/8/2015

The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the lower court ruling and declined to hear the case de novo.

Followup