A third costly loss for the embattled porn trolls at Prenda Law has been made official. On Thursday, the judge in a San Francisco case called AF Holdings v. Navasca held a hearing regarding whether or not Prenda, which had already given up on the case itself, should be required to pay attorneys' fees. US District Judge Edward Chen spoke with Prenda lawyer Paul Duffy by telephone. He asked why he shouldn't award attorney's fees to defense lawyer Nicholas Ranallo.

It was Duffy's last chance, and apparently he blew it. Yesterday Chen issued a 9-page order requiring AF Holdings, essentially a Prenda shell, to pay a total of $22,531.93 in fees and costs. That's just slightly less than the $23,554 Ranallo had asked for.

The fee order is yet another dig at Prenda's shoddy methods of doing business. "AF's case was frivolous and objectively unreasonable in that it never presented any evidence... to support its claim that it has standing," began Chen. "[T]he signature by Alan Cooper appears to have been a forgery, as Judge [Otis] Wright concluded in his recent sanctions order. In its papers, AF suggests that there was no forgery... but this is sheer speculation."

There were other problems with AF's behavior too. The case "was not based in an adequate factual investigation." Navasca lives in a house with several other family members, and Prenda lawyers fingered him as the alleged infringer "simply because he best fit the demographic that is attracted to its content." After the judge noted that other members of Navasca's family also fit that profile, AF changed tack, arguing that "Mr. Navasca was the likely infringer because he works in technical support at a gaming company and is the most knowledgeable person in the household about computers."

Then Chen moved into Prenda's litigation behavior, which featured unnecessary "emergency motions" and claims of spoliation (Navasca's use of the CCleaner program) that never had much to them.

"AF's business model was to sue people for downloading pornography in order to coerce settlements," continued Chen. And despite Duffy's protestations to the contrary, Chen remains very concerned that Prenda did indeed plant links to its own porn on The Pirate Bay to induce downloading:

Mr. Navasca has offered evidence—the Neville declarations—which indicate that persons affiliated with AF used the alias “sharkmp4” to post links on the Pirate Bay website to many of the copyrighted works in order to induce users to download the works so that they could then be sued for copyright infringement. This evidence corroborates Judge Wright’s finding that the motivation for this and similar suits is to sue and coerce settlement. The Court acknowledges that AF has in its brief attacked the Neville declarations as unreliable on various grounds... But notably, what AF has not done is offer any counter-evidence such as a declaration from Mr. Steele in which he denies that he is “sharkmp4” or other evidence that AF did not take steps to induce users to download the subject works. This evidence could easily have been offered by AF as a part of its opposition brief. AF’s failure to submit any factual denial under oath is telling.

Prenda can appeal this order, but last time it tried to appeal, it didn't manage to pay the filing fee.

This fee order is just for losing the case. Copyright law has more liberal fee-shifting rules than other areas of litigation. Chen has also agreed to hear a separate motion regarding whether or not AF Holdings/Prenda should be sanctioned, as well. The sanctions argument has not yet been fully briefed.