REMEMBER THAT THE 99% TRULY DO GIVE THE 1% A BAD NAME!
The
Great Texas Courtroom Blunder Could Cost Us All
The
Godfather author
Mario Puzo once said one lawyer with a briefcase can steal more money than 100
men with guns. Anyone curious how much can be stolen by an army of lawyers with
briefcases need look no further than an outrageous jury verdict in Texas that
twisted a simple breach of contract claim into a three-quarters of a billion
dollar windfall. The verdict is not just a case study of win-at-all-costs legal
tactics, but a potential watershed that, if not reversed n appeal, could
throttle the development of new technologies and inflict irreparable damage on
intellectual property rights.
The saga begins in 2015 when realty firm Title Source, Inc.
(now Amrock), entered into a $5 million contract with a small startup company,
HouseCanary, for the development of a “revolutionary” mobile app to create
property appraisal reports to predict home resale values. Valuation models are
quite common in the real estate industry, readily seen by home buyers on sites
such as Zillow or Redfin. The data-based algorithm HouseCanary promised to
deliver would be entirely new, with cutting-edge technology and proprietary
data models.
There was just one problem; HouseCanary had no technology to
offer and was wholly incapable of developing any. A prototype of the app was
missing key features and third party testers rated it as “mediocre” – hardly
the “revolutionary” technology promised. HouseCanary demanded more time, but
Amrock instead cut bait and filed a lawsuit to recover the $5 million from the
original agreement. At this point the case was a tidy tale of straightforward
breach, but an army of lawyers had other ideas.
Despite
having a client that failed to deliver on its contractual obligation,
HouseCanary attorneys went full Tony Soprano and countersued, making the
entirely absurd claim that Amrock had stolen and misappropriated their
trade secrets by creating an app to replace the one that was never developed.
This was a bold tactic for a defendant who failed to
establish in court any evidence they had given Amrock any trade secrets to
misappropriate. It’s even more ludicrous given the post-trial sworn testimony
of a HouseCanary executive that the company sold “vapor ware” and stated under
oath, “From my knowledge… there wasn’t anything to steal.” Yet despite this the
jury found in favor of HouseCanary, and then proceeded to award them $706
million in damages (since increased to include interest and attorney fees), an
eyeball-popping figure more in line with the misappropriation of a Picasso than
a non-existent app.
Though the verdict is a fraud, HouseCanary attorneys were masterful in
manipulating the jury by pressing emotional hot-buttons and through sleight of
hand deceit that entirely misled them on the technical aspects central to the
trial. What makes this case especially dangerous is how easy it will be for
other frivolous patent lawsuits to copy this deceptive blueprint and shake down
tech leaders for a big payday. If a $5 million claim can be escalated into a
phony jury award 150 times in size, the consequences for investment into new
technology will be devastating, and will throttle potential agreements for cooperation
in innovation.
When testimony failed to produce any evidence in support of
HouseCanary’s misappropriation claim, their attorneys doubled-down with a fish
tale of their own. They convinced the jury that instead of stealing trade
secrets, Amrock had fed HouseCanary data (which was not, in fact, their data)
into a “magic machine” to reverse engineer a replacement app. Yes, they
actually used the words “magic” and “machine” as the entire basis of their
case. To make it stick, HouseCanary lawyers framed the dispute in terms of a
big, rich, out of town company shoving around a small local operation, and
inflamed the jury by telling them to “send a message” to “corporate America”
that would make the “Wall Street Journal.” In essence Amrock was convicted of being
a successful company from out of town that used magic to deceive a small local
startup.
The
entire case is a cautionary tale that confounds every sensibility. All evidence
points to HouseCanary failing to deliver as promised and breaching the
contract, yet justice was tortured to throttle the party with a viable claim.
This represents a significant danger well beyond the courtroom walls.
When parties can file bogus intellectual property claims, it
scares off both investment and cooperation into developing new technologies and
economic innovations. The bigger the return on investment, the bigger target
one is for a frivolous lawsuit. This has a direct and negative impact on
consumers and economic productivity, cannibalizing progress in the dining hall
of the nearest courtroom.
If this case is not reversed it will give a green light to
every legal jester to pursue a jury award rivaling the GDP of a small country
through outrageous claims of fraud and trade secret misappropriation. It will
certainly corrode patent protections that are the lifeblood of investment in
technology so critical to our economy. Massive damage awards must be paid by
somebody, and in the end, it will be all of us. Let us hope this massive wrong
is set right.
Gerard Scimeca is an attorney and
Vice President of CASE, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, a free-market
oriented consumer advocacy organization.
BLOG EDITOR'S DEFINITION OF A LAWYER:
ONE WHO HAS BEEN INSTITUTIONALLY TRAINED IN LAW SCHOOL TO LIE, CHEAT, STEAL, ORCHESTRATE PERJURY, COMMIT PERJURY AND GAME THE LEGAL SYSTEM FOR BUCKS.
ONLY CRIMINALS HAVE MORE CONTEMPT FOR THE LAWS THAN THE TYPICAL PARASITIC LAWYER!
Attorney Licensee Profile
Lisa Bloom #158458
License Status: Active
Address: 20700 Ventura Blvd Ste 301, Woodland Hills, CA 91364-6272
County: Los Angeles County
Phone Number: (818) 914-7397
Fax Number: Not Available
Email: contact@thebloomfirm.com
Law School: Yale Law School; New Haven CT
So famous lefty feminist lawyer Lisa Bloom offered to plant stories to trash Harvey Weinstein's victims?
To get a whiff of just how corrupted and hypocritical the blue establishment is, a new book from New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor delivers the goods.
Their upcoming She Said details what they went through to report the Harvey Weinstein story and focuses on the huge network of Weinstein enablers (all of whom were, incidentally, on the Left). Probably the worst character among them was Weinstein's famous feminist attorney, Lisa Bloom, who up until that point, had been a much celebrated defender of sex harassment victims, same as her mother, attorney Gloria Allred.
The Times review, by lefty feminist icon Susan Faludi, is positive, as you might expect, and some of its analysis is off, but nevertheless, it is well worth reading for its awful details about Bloom:
Kantor and Twohey broke the Weinstein story. Their 3,300-word Times article on Oct. 5, 2017, aired allegations against him that had been piling up as whispers and rumors for 30 years. That report, and the ones to follow, were grounded in scores of interviews with actresses and current and former employees, supplemented by legal filings, corporate records and internal company communications that documented a thick web of cover-ups, bullying tactics and confidential settlements. It was bravura journalism.
"We watched with astonishment as a dam wall broke," Kantor and Twohey write of the response to that first article. A day after it was published, so many women phoned The Times to report allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Weinstein that the paper had to assign additional reporters to handle the calls.
But of course. When establishment lefties go after other establishment lefties, you have a classic Man Bites Dog story, and it's naturally going to draw attention.
Here's the lowdown on Bloom:
Maybe the most appalling figure in this constellation of collaborators and enablers is Lisa Bloom, Allred's daughter. A lawyer likewise known for winning sexual-harassment settlements with nondisclosure agreements, Bloom was retained by Weinstein (who had also bought the movie rights to her book). In a jaw-dropping memo to Weinstein, Bloom itemized her game plan: Initiate "counterops online campaigns," place articles in the press painting one of his accusers as a "pathological liar," start a Weinstein Foundation "on gender equality" and hire a "reputation management company" to suppress negative articles on Google. Oh, and this gem: "You and I come out publicly in a pre-emptive interview where you talk about evolving on women's issues, prompted by death of your mother, Trump pussy grab tape and, maybe, nasty unfounded hurtful rumors about you. … You should be the hero of the story, not the villain. This is very doable."
So Lisa Bloom (as well as Lanny Davis, Anita Dunn, and other left wing lawyers affiliated with the Clinton and Obama years), who rushed to defend Weinstein, had a Fusion GPS–style operation to trash Weinstein's accusers by painting them as pathological liars and planting sick stories in the press to do it. And there was a willing media corps that might have done it, but Twohey's and Kantor's story (as well as Ronan Farrow's) was airtight.
Bloom sounded so confident and practiced in her email — it inevitably raises questions about where she learned that sort of thing. Could it be that what's been going on in politics has now started to corrupt the legal profession? And "we'll just have to win," as Bill Clinton famously said, is now the standard for even the supposed idealists who defend sex harassment victims? And easily convert that kind of legal practice into a defense of their predators? Just astonishing what the Left is willing to do, if the reporting is correct.
After that, she went on to get her name in the news on other dear-to-lefties matters, such as advocating on Twitter, at least, for now-exposed-as-politically-motivated Christine Blasey Ford. The lefties clapped.
Here's another problem: Bloom sat on the board of Weinstein's film company and might have (according to more than one source) wanted Weinstein to make it "rain" for her by converting her book on the Trayvon Martin case into a miniseries, meaning big bucks for her, according to the book. If so, all about the money? One wonders how many so-called public interest lawyers on the left might be as susceptible to such a venal thing. Bloom in the end said she made a "mistake" in representing Weinstein for $895-an-hour legal work, according to the book, but it sounds more as though she got caught.
Faludi goes off the rails in her analysis when she claims the #MeToo movement started not with Weinstein, but with Donald Trump.
[Kantor and Twohey's] series of articles in many ways ignited the #MeToo movement, already smoldering in the atmosphere of frustration after reports of Donald Trump's alleged sexual predations (a story that Twohey broke with another reporter) and the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape failed to slow the reality star's march to the White House.
It's always about pinning the pervert on Trump, isn't it? Happened with Jeffrey Epstein, now happening with Harvey Weinstein, a longtime Democrat donor.
Actually, Trump has been accused of bad behavior all right, but Faludi's original argument, that a vast network of leftist establishmentarians protecting the likes of Weinstein is how the whole thing was very different. Trump never had a network of anyone protecting him the way Weinstein (and for that matter, Clinton's other good buddy, Jeffrey Epstein) did. Lanny Davis, a Clinton-affiliated lawyer, was busy defending Weinstein, and he also defended Clinton from news reports of his associations with Epstein. Anita Dunn, the Obama advisor who had a Mao poster on her wall, served as an unpaid "advisor" to Weinstein to protect him, too.
Were Weinstein's and Epstein's donations to Democrat causes what was going on? We know about the mini-series potential deal. But why otherwise prominent Democrats and leftists would leap forward to protect Weinstein -- including even to the point of using Fusion-GPS style smear and plant tactics with a willing press, points to a potential campaign donation nexus, too.
The bottom line here is that Bloom's case and all the others likely cited is an unintentional indictment of the leftist establishment and its astonishing unscrupulousness. It underlines what Lindsey Graham said during the left's Bret Kavanaugh attack: 'Y'all want power and I sure hope you never get it."
Hat tip: Roger Luchs, via Conservative Daily News.
Image credit: RavenQuoth via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Rose McGowan Calls for Harvey Weinstein’s Former Lawyer Lisa Bloom to be Disbarred
2:48
Actress and #MeToo activist Rose McGowan has called for Harvey Weinstein’s former attorney Lisa Bloom to be disbarred, following revelations that Bloom — a self-described defender of women and the daughter of lawyer Gloria Allred — sought to discredit McGowan and other actresses who have accused the movie mogul of sexual harassment and assault.
She Said, a new book from the New York Times reporters who broke the Weinstein scandal, reportedly reveals that Bloom tried to discredit McGowan by offering to place articles in media outlets that would portray the Grindhouse actress as unstable.
“I feel equipped to help you handle the Roses of the world because I have represented so many of them,” Bloom wrote in a memo to Weinstein that is excerpted in the book.
“We can place an article re her becoming increasingly unglued, so that when someone Googles her this is what pops up and she’s discredited.”
McGown responded Sunday with a call for Bloom to be disbarred.
“The evil that was perpetrated on me and others was mind bending and illegal. Lisa Bloom should be disbarred,” McGowan wrote on Twitter.
The evil that was perpetrated on me and others was mind bending and illegal. Lisa Bloom should be disbarred @yashar twitter.com/yashar/status/ …
2,141 people are talking about this
According to the new book, Bloom and Weinstein visited the New York Times the day before the initial article was published in 2017. In that meeting, they sought to discredit actress Ashley Judd and several other accusers as mentally unstable.
Judd has accused Weinstein of sexual harassment and is currently suing him for defamation, alleging that he tried to ruin her career when she rejected his advances.
In another memo excerpted in the book, Bloom told Weinstein: “You should be the hero of the story, not the villain. This is very doable.”
Bloom issued an apology on Sunday but didn’t mention McGowan by name.
“While painful, I learn so much more from my mistakes than my successes. To those who missed my 2017 apology, and especially to the women: I am sorry. Here are the changes I’ve made to ensure that I will not make that mistake again,” she wrote on Twitter.
While painful, I learn so much more from my mistakes than my successes.
To those who missed my 2017 apology, and especially to the women: I am sorry.
Here are the changes I've made to ensure that I will not make that mistake again.
1,183 people are talking about this
Bloom resigned from Weinstein’s team in October 2017.
Like her more famous mother, Bloom has promoted herself as a defender of women, representing victims of harassment and assault.
But her public image as a feminist crusader has collapsed as she has become engulfed in high-profile scandals.
The Daily Beast reported in 2017 that Bloom was prepared to leak files about McGowan’s sexual history to journalist Ronan Farrow.
The Hill reported that Bloom, who represented two of the women who made sexual harassment allegations against President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, sought payoffs as high as six figures for her clients.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com