Alright, I apologize for the tone. It was probably uncalled for. So, let's do this... in a more civil way, shall we? No insults, no snark.
And your keen ability to completely miss the context of this particular slapfight has been noted. Okay, nevermind. I said "no snark".
We're talking past each other here. You're very likely correct that Qutens is
fucked if this goes to court. 12K is not nearly enough to carry her through, although chances are she would ebeg for more along the way. But that's not the point I'm addressing.
I'm not talking about whether or not they can, will or would win. I'm not talking about the legal merits of this case. I'll readily admit I'm not qualified to talk about the legal merits (although I could consult with people I know who are), beyond the
practical, agreed fact I stated about C&Ds being used as a tool of intimidation. Because they are, that's unquestionable. What I
am talking about are the circumstances of this whole shebang making it
far more likely this C&D was simply tossed at Qutens for the purposes of intimidation and saving face, and it failed that doing either.
That's why I'm saying I don't think this is going to court.
They're a "company" with five "main" employees (I'll assume they maybe have a cleaner and an accountant on the payroll, hopefully different people),
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Operating out of a fairly small commercial building:
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Which, by the way, doesn't seem to have any kind of listing or indication that DHC is
actually operating out of there. So I would question they even have their own workshop as opposed to working out of their garages. And if they had, I would question whether they would have
fire insurance if it wasn't required by lease contract for the room. Business insurance? I don't think it's likely.
DHC has all the hallmarks of a "hobby" business with a larger digital footprint than a physical (or financial) one. Back of the napkin, they published photos of 30 different fursuits on their
Flickr since August last year. That's about 4.5 month, being a bit generous. Their website states that their prices
start at $3,900, so let's say they get 5K out of each suit on average. That's an average income of 22.5K a month for the entire company. That's gross, not accounting for taxes (thankfully last I checked LCCs in Arizona don't pay taxes directly), employee wages (or most likely artist/seamstress commissions or profit shares), rent, business expenses, utilities, yadda-yadda. My point is, it may be a business but it's a real small business, and it's very likely to be run similarly to other businesses of that kind: on a fairly narrow profit margin that requires the owners to dig into their own pockets when they want to expand operations, or when they have unexpected expenses.
By the way, the only official mention I can find of them is the
trademark for "Don't Hug Cacti", although I don't know whether Arizona's state government makes their limited liability company registry public or not. Their website refused to load for me, probably didn't like my VPN.
That's assuming they
have a few months of business income to spare in a frivolous lawsuit that is not going to resolve their problem in any way, shape or form. Which, given their commissions are currently closed, their merchandising is being sold without their watermark, and their business
is going to be down for the foreseeable future, is a
big assumption. A single client not commissioning them, or canceling and demanding a refund (they keep 10%, by the way), is a big hit to their monthly earnings. And again, those businesses tend to be run on a narrow profit margin.
Assuming this does go to court, I'll reiterate that I agree with you: Qutens would
very likely lose the case and be forced to delete the tweet and pay for damages. That's pretty much a given.
But in rational terms DHC doesn't
have a great incentive to actually take this to court. They would be much better served going through Twitter's moderation and appeals system to have the tweet buried or deleted, or go to Google and try to get the file itself taken down or rendered private. As it is, they stand to lose
far more because all that allegedly dirty laundry is already getting aired out, and if Qutens does end up being dragged to court either in Arizona or wherever she may live, DHC might as well kiss their income as a company goodbye. Their business relies
entirely on word-of-mouth to maintain itself, and furries don't like businesses suing people, even more so when they perceive said business as being headed by "bad" people. The more shit they do about this, the more they'll draw attention to themselves and the more
negative word-of-mouth they're going to get. They may actually survive or reform later, but it's money down the drain for no good reason.
I think you're giving a pair of furry assholes (and a few employees who are likely very glad they are still anonymous) far too much credit. This has the whiff of garden variety
furry drama, because this shit has happened before.
No, no. I didn't assume that. I just stated that even if they win a million dollars off Qutens, she won't be able to pay it back at anywhere near the rate required to keep their business afloaf after legal costs and losing a chunk of their clientele. Again, I don't think they have business insurance, not to cover that sort of shit. Particularly since the document Qutens linked never mentions the company. Only Lucky Coyote/BlondeFoxy gets implicated. The document (and by extension Qutens, as her tweet only mentioned Lucky/Blonde) doesn't mention DHC at all. It shouldn't be a lawsuit from the company, it should be from Lucky.
That's actually one of the reasons why I don't think DHC is run all that tightly. Making that announcement on the
company's social media (which they seem to have deleted) was a really dumb move, and if Qutens is to be believed with her claims that,
The letter accuses me of making defamatory statements against them and their company, which I have not done on any public platform to date. It also accuses me of running an instagram account that relays the information in the document, which I do not have any affiliation with the creation or operation of. The letter asks me to take down the document of testimonies, accusing me of publishing it, which I did not, and I do not have the power to take it down.
This may be a little more complicated claim for DHC to prove than just "she lost us business".
That's true, and if this does end up going to court I'll readily eat crow and admit I was wrong in my assessment. As it is, as far as I know no one has gone to court
yet so I retain my opinion that it's not going to go that far.
Still, it's early days. We'll see where this goes. I'm sure twitter will furnish us with plenty of updates as it goes along.
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