Presumably, the studios would ask for an injunction together with their summary judgment motion.
CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar
- Thread starter Richard Baker
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I don't think this strategy can ultimately be productive. I mean look he is ripping off copyright with the models and he wrote a licensing agreement to license game pieces with Trek ships, without a license from C/P. They will find that, he bragged about it in the podcasts. There is a million dollars to account for and for the most part just an asset he intended to pocket (owned by Axanar Productions, solely owned by Alec), with the *next* million dollars being proposed for the actual filming. Its indefensible.
A martyr cannot be so venal in a situation that they disqualify themselves as an object of sympathy. If information emerges that fills in what has been seen so far, especially any smoking gun knowingly-acting-to-profit-off-of-studio-IP intent emails, there will be no martyr. Just fried eggs.
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If the judge does what I think he will and issues a summary judgement for C/P, I really can't see his lawyers being willing to go the appeal route, especially if the ruling is as harshly worded as I think it will be. (Notice how I'm hedging all this). Perhaps Ranahan thinks there might be some new legal ground on "fair use" to be plowed on appeal, but if Peters gets hammered badly enough, I don't there's going to be any real grounds for appeal. It just occured to me that an appeal of a summary judgment would involve convincing an Appeals Court panel that the trial judge was wrong to issue the ruling and at best send the whole thing back to square one. (Since I'm not a lawyer I hope anyone who knows better will speak up if I'm wrong) I doubt if W&S would find that very appealing. Of course since LFIM is a "lawyer by training" he might be arrogant enough to try to file an appeal pro se, but I think even his gall has some limits. If I turn out to be completely off base, everyone who's so inclined can save this post for point and laugh material in the future.
My experience is in New York civil courts but this is how they ran and I don't imagine it's much different. Keep in mind, too, the last time I conducted a deposition was in 1990 although I was deposed in my capacity as a legal insurance auditor back in I believe it was 1999. Anyway -
Allow me to give you a very real fact pattern (sorry if this is long but it should give you an idea of how these things work). Plaintiff temporarily loses her hair when she is given a permanent wave in a salon. She sues the salon. The salon impleads as a third party defendant my client, the manufacturer (with me so far?).
Salon's lawyer asks a ton of questions of the plaintiff. There are five people in the room. Me, plaintiff, her lawyer, the salon's lawyer, and the court reporter. Defendant salon's questioning goes into liability but also damages, so they ask about doctor's treatments and bills, any hospital stays, etc. If my client had been a direct defendant (or if I was handling the salon), I would have asked those questions as well. In any event, it's not a super-serious injury. The main injury is social humiliation, you know, good old emotional distress. Defense's questioning takes maybe 2 hours, something like that. Totally typical for such things. Defense says they'e done and now it's my turn.
I ask only one question: Did anyone ever tell you which permanent wave product was used on your hair?
Plaintiff says no.
The salon's rep is then deposed. So now it's six people in the room because the plaintiff has the right to be there. Defense could have been there but they chose not to. Plaintiff's lawyer (they are named first, so they go first) asks about methodology, that sort of thing. It all takes maybe 45 minutes or so.
I then get to go. I again ask exactly one question: Do you use specific permanent wave solutions or does the salon just mix up a batch at the start of the day?
Defendant's rep says we mix up a big batch at the start of the day.
Now my client gets to be deposed. Again, the plaintiff stays although the defendant's rep has gone back to work and is off the premises. Defendant's lawyer questions my client first because they have the direct claim. Then plaintiff's lawyer goes (his claim is more indirect). They both ask about methodology. They both ask about sales records to this particular salon.
I take notes on the things requested so I can fulfill them or decide to object to them. I object to anything that is irrelevant (fun fact: in New York, you can and often do stipulate to allow no objections except those as to relevancy. So almost anything goes if it can be tied back to the case). This takes another 45 or so minutes.
We finish up and defendant's counsel leaves. I ask plaintiff's counsel if he will be directly claiming against my client. He says he doesn't think so, asks me how I've been (you get to know your adversaries as you often see the same people a lot).
I go back to the office and talk things over with John, the senior partner in charge of product liability claims, and Dave, the managing partner.
I get my client's sales records. There are no records of selling directly to this particular salon.
I move for summary judgment. I win.
So - long story only slightly longer - we go through a fairly elaborate little dance and it's all choreographed based upon who is named first. If there is redirect, it's often short. And I didn't usually get away with just one question apiece to the other sides. But this one was clear: there was no clear connection between my client and the plaintiff. The plaintiff's best case was against the salon, which was definitely there. But my client? Not so much.
What will happen here? Probably AP will be questioned first, by L & L's lawyer and then by his own counsel if they see fit.
Note: he can't be questioned by the other counsel in the room. Why? Because they have no claim against him.
Is there an advantage to Terry M's dual representation? Only to potentially question any of the parties, and I don't think W & S lawyers would throw AP anything other than softballs. And plaintiffs have not sued Terry M, so why would counsel want to question them? They are getting that bite of the apple on AP's behalf. Again, wacky and baffling.
And thank you for reading m'story.
Alec Peters will go as far (and as long) as W&S are willing to work Pro Bono. It remains to be seen if they'll stick with Alec through any appeals process (assuming one is needed -- I think it WILL be if Alec wants to continue to fight, but just being fair as the case in chief hasn't been fully adjudicated yet.)
As for the the Discovery phase of the current lawsuit - you can be 100% certain Alec Peters is using money to pay for it gotten from his donor store - which he sees as separate from the KS and Indegogo pledged funds - so he can continue to claim "no donor funds are being used for the lawsuit". That said ALL the donor funds are going to pay rent on his Studio location - with it's new carpet, offices and Propworx storage <--- Basically he's paying the highest rent for office space because the 'studio' remains unused; but hey in his eyes that's what the donors agreed to.
As CBS asked for an accounting of that money, can't this come back to bite him on the ass? When asking for summary judgement, would any information about the revenue he raised in the donor store be included in the request?
Just how does it affect the overpaid suits at CBS? Hell the fans won't even accept it as canon so what's the problem?
JB
JB
Wow! I didn't realise this thread had been going so long or had so many, many pages to it! 
JB
JB
Wow! I didn't realise this thread had been going so long or had so many, many pages to it!
JB
If you are unfamiliar with the criticisms of the Axanar project, go to the Axamonitor website to get the factual background. The revelations have come gradually since January and a lot of odds and ends have made for a real mini-series, like JJ Abrams and Justin Lin pushing CBS to settle, responded to by Axanar not working with that golden gift, but instead countersuing. You're joining a movie in progress.
As to what's wrong beyond whether fans would care, the studios care. Axanar went way way beyond the comfort range the studios held open for fan films to work in with "just dont make a profit" guidelines. The details of how Axanar did this are numerous and confounding. The lawsuit is probably going to leave scorched earth behind. But Axanar thinks they can win, and continue to defend the use of Trek IP to pay for building a studio, salaries, etc, and continue to claim that Trek IP does not really exist because you can reduce any unique aspect of Trek like Vulcans into component parts which are so small that they are no longer unique to Trek. And that's just a taste of the nonsense trying to defend diverting a half million dollars to building a studio for future non-Trek productions on the back of a Trek fan film fundraiser.
Short answer: if they don't stop thieves today (Axanar raised a million bucks and possibly more on the back of property they don't own), what would stop thieves tomorrow?
Long Answer: start with post one of this thread....
I can see a:
"Terry was our IT person and he took all the that data with him. We tried to get him to give it back, but he refused. He should have it. We've done all we could in good faith to provide the data we had available to us. You may need to go through what he provided you..."
response from Axanar to L&L. And yeah, I doubt Terry really kept anything (or admit he has anything) IF he still hopes to get more money on the side from Axanar; or just really doesn't want to deal with the lawsuit as he wasn't named. Unless it was all backed up by an outside ISP or CDN and L&L find that out and get a warrant, there's no way they can prove what Terry did or didn't take - or still have to turn over.
Terry might have felt stiffed by Alec Peters, but I'm sure he won't turn over anything that makes him look bad, when he can just claim - "Sorry I was so upset about the whole situation, and that data took up a lot of space, and I just didn't see the need to keep it after Alec refused to hold up his side of the bargin..."
Even though Terry Macintosh wasn't named in the civil lawsuit, IF anything develops on the Criminal side, and California decides to prosecute own the road; I don't see Terry wanting to keep anything that even might be considered self incriminating on the 'fundraising' side.
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Yeah, but it does fit, so we can't acquit
EDIT: Crap, Ryan, we had the same idea. Yours came out better
Your Honor, I will submit to you proof that this man has no talent what's so ever."If the uniform don't fit, you must acquit."
"Oh wait ... it does ... never mind."
..........................
Behold....one sleeve is much longer than the other?
You dare to call this infringement?
If it don't fit, you must acquit !
I think what Terry might have which is important is his copies of emails and documents, texts and voicemails. But if he signed an NDA, I suppose he might open himself up to an Axanar lawsuit if he had them, admitted he had them, and turned them over. If he deleted emails as per a hypothetical NDA requirement, and the ISP could restore them, might C/P be able to subpoena the backups? Not clear on the law here. My first guess would be he was still working with Axanar when the lawsuit hit, so the court's intention that records be preserved from then on might shield him. He might be able to say he was preserving records specifically to comply fully with the court order, should subpoenas require the records from him
. No real idea, he isn't a party to the lawsuit, it might not be his responsibility to do any recordkeeping, but a legally-minded citizen might do it anyway (?). W&S, if they were his attorney, might then be in a position to know in advance
that this data existed and advise
him if he intended to share it.As far as 'the data' (the mailing list of donors and their donations), it might have been some semi-cleansed form of the mailing list and donations up to a point. It could matter to C/P if (hypothetically) they could compare any data of a (presumably deleted) 'Terry' version to Axanar's version, on the off chance sales of models or the like somehow had gone missing from the Axanar version of the donor data.
But the details from the list might not matter at a fine grain. If C/P could prove a 100 kit run of D-7s was sold and delivered to Axanar, and there was evidence of having sold say 30 of them, maybe it wouldn't matter wrt/ to showing intent worthy of large penalty whether more were sold. Not sure.
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"If the uniform don't fit, you must acquit."
"Oh wait ... it does ... never mind."
THAT's fitting?!?
Pretty sure a subpoena trumps a non-disclosure agreement. And the NDA can't force him to delete e-mails and such. Now, I'm on record up-topic stating that I believe he had an legal/ethical responsibility to return any and all databases with donor PII (personal identification information) and then delete the same from his personal computer storage devices. But other than that? Nope. He can keep or delete all e-mails as he sees fit. I've signed NDAs before, and there was nothing in any of them about purging my personal systems after I left. Unless Axanar had rules against using personal e-mail and such for official business while he was there, Axanar has no case to sue. And it's doubtful that they had such rules given how much we know they used Facebook and Twitter for exchanging messages among the staff.
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