CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

Why would he need permission? Appeals of final judgments to the Courts of Appeals (i.e., the 9th Circuit) are by right in the US. Permission would only be required for a further appeal beyond the 9th Circuit to the Supreme Court (which is unlikely in this case).

 

Yes there are from the amounts I quoted and possibly more. I know of one donor who donated 5 digits, that was supposed to have a guest spot in the film and was pretty devastated by this whole thing. I must respect their privacy so I cant give out any other info than that. You don't get to 1.4 million in crowd funding with out some 5 digit donors.

 

Would the fact that Peters was sued to stop the film, and that he specifically mentioned this as possibility protect him from being sued by donors?

 

Thing with that is Peters will say it's Cbs's fault the film was not made, which is hard to get around in court unless there is absolute public documented proof that Alec spent on the money on personal items. Even with that, it would still be hard to say he would not of got the film made if CBS did not sue him.

 

He has a contract with his donors. If fails to deliver the film he has breached it and they are entitled to a refund, not least because he held himself out as having permission to make the thing by agreeing to the crowdfunding terms of service, the platform on which he advertised himself.

 

What Peters should have done last year when presented with the lawsuit is this:

- Immediately suspend all work on the production and any spending of donor money.

- Put all Donor money in an escrow account and not touch a dime of it.

- Lay off any employees and volunteers until the lawsuit is resolved so you can protect them from possibly legal issues if they continue to work on Axanar. This includes RMB, Terry, Diana, everyone! (In other words, be a man and DON'T let others risk going down with you!)

- Tried to work out an Immediate settlement with CBS last January.

- If no settlement can be reached at that time, get legal counsel.

- After 2 months, break the lease and give up the studio so you are not paying monthly rent!! Also, obvious don't continue to put money into the studio! (Carpet anyone? )

- If after 3 to 4 months if there is still no resolution with CBS, return what you can of the donors money. He should have been able to return ALL of the Indiogogo donor money (if the money was frozen in escrow account in December), He obviously could not return the Kickstarter money since it was mostly all spent at the time of the lawsuit. However, if there was any of the money left he should have tried to pay the smaller Kickstarter donors back first, this would have reduced the overall amount of donors he would have to owe.

I think if he would of taken these steps with would have been a lot better for him.

 

Still, it's not going to be an easy sell in court, especially with some provisions in the Kickstarter and Indiegogo TOS wording. I would love to see the donors sue, just being realistic about some of the roadblocks that might come up.

 

Quite.

 

The Organians prevented their fleets from engaging, but not the state of war.

Kirk speaks in the teaser of having gotten a war that they didn't want: "Well, there it is. War. We didn't want it, but we've got it."

Kor says it is war: "I respect you, Captain, but this is war, a game we Klingons play to win."

And Ayelborne speaks of stopping the war in progress at the episode's climax: "It is no trick, Commander. We have simply put an end to your war."

It was only the Organians' incorporeal nature that prevented them from being innocent casualties of the war; otherwise some of them would have been casualties.

But, whatever semantics we might or might not agree on, of course, that brief war without major engagement couldn't possibly be any war with respect to the issues in question regarding Axanar.

 

AxaMonitor marks the Axanar copyright lawsuit's one-year anniversary with an Illustrated Guide to the coming courtroom antics! Available now in:

• screen resolution PDF (10 MB)
• e-reader compatible ePub (2.5 MB)
• high-resolution printable PDF (30 MB). Excerpts:

 

There was never an injunction, so AP could have gone ahead and made the movie--if he hadn't pissed all the money away.

 

Are you talking about "permission" from Winston & Strawn? As was mentioned upthread you can appeal anything under our system. My non-expert understanding is that just about any judge's ruling anywhere along the line could be grounds for an appeal, although there certainly is no guarantee that the appeal court would give them the time of day. I would think W&S would consider appealing if they think there is a possibility of a favorable ruling on some point that they are trying to make, but at this point, my guess is that they would just wish AP good luck and tell him he is free to seek other counsel.

 

I can only imagine the frustration they felt seeing Peters and his disgusting horde of parasites living the good life with donor money safely in their wallets.

The lawsuit was the best thing that ever happened to Alec Peters, it provided him with an excuse to never fulfill his obligations and instead play the victim forever.

And those guys that left the shelter of Axanar and became, in some peoples eyes, somewhat heroic for doing so (!) you're as bad as your old friends, you only left because you realised you were never going to get as big a share of other peoples money as you felt you "deserved".

 

Alec Peters clearly is prepared to lose at the district court level, as he indicated in his bizarre Second Life interview in September.

He's also clearly counting on Winston continuing to represent him, as he's recently begun citing Erin Ranahan's supposed 5-0 record on appeals to the Ninth Circuit.

 

Can a lawyer-by-practice fire their client or void a previous agreement to represent them if the first trial is so one sided and winds up in a massive win by the other party?

Par example: Peters gets his ass handed to him by the upcoming trial because (oh noes) 90% of the jurors can't tell the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars, much less Star Trek and Axanar. CBS wins hands down and gets everything they want. Alec could appeal because, why not? He hasn't had to spend much up to now.

But W&S see how doomed the appeal would be and back out.

 

They'll appeal based on Judge Klausner's conduct in the case. You know as well as I that all they need to appeal is to say :

"Judge Klausner denied X or allowed Y when he clearly shouldn't have; and as a result, my client did not receive a fair adjudication of this matter..."

Whether or not W&S continue to represent Axanar/Alec Peters is irrelevant as to whether he'll appeal. I say this because I never thought that any law firm that looked at this situation would line up to represent Mr. Peters pro bono in the first place - or think they had a 'winnable/able to get a positive settlement for the defendant' type of case here. If he could find a lawfirm l;ike W&S to take the case; I'm sure he'll be able to find/get another to handle the appeal (assuming he looses of course as the case hasn't gotten to the verdict/damages phase yet.)

maybe he'll find some firm who somehow thinks there's a chance the Ninth Circuit would use this to make a statement regarding copyright. Asd liberal as the Ninth Circuit is - I don't think even they would go so far as to use this case for something like that. but I'm sure there's some loons who might think so.