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- 11 de Mar, 2016
Dr. Kathy Rumer is a sex change surgeon operating out of suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She earned her own thread here due to her poor reputation even among transsexuals and insistence on picking Internet arguments with disgruntled ex-patients. If you trust Reddit threads, simply saying "I was a Rumer patient" will be instantly understood to mean "I'm not exaggerating, the results really were that bad and it ruined my life" in many trans support groups.
But that's not why we're here today, we're here because she has sued one of those disgruntled ex-patients for defamation.
The Plaintiffs
On the plaintiff's side we have Delaware Valley Aesthetics, PLLC and Kathy "Butcher of Ardmore" Rumer. The PLLC is legally distinct from Rumer herself but from a practical standpoint the fact that they are both suing makes little difference especially since there appear to be no other doctors in her practice.
Rumer is represented by Lance Rogers, Joseph Heffern, and Brian Newman of the firm Rogers Counsel (formerly Rogers Castor). Of note, this is not the firm that defended her in the malpractice suits she got hit with in 2018.
The Original Complaint
(Link to original complaint)
Roe is not formally represented by counsel; the attorney-drafted response was written collaboratively by a legal aid firm but none of the attorneys involved provided a name.
Update 08-21-21: The "Rumers Anonymous" blog at the heart of this lawsuit has been taken down and blogspot has blocked it from being registered by future users. The fact that Blogspot disabled future use of the domain name makes me think whoever asked them to delete it made it very clear this was tied to the ongoing lolsuit.
Update 10-10-21: Rumer has been in communication with Miller and they have agreed to a schedule for discovery. Rumer intends to argue that Miller was the author of the posts rather than just the webhost and Miller plans to argue the claims are not defamatory because they are true. Barring a last-minute settlement this means the case will be heading to trial in June of 2022. Independent of this Rumer has been given until 15 November (2 months from the judge's order) to either identify the other Doe defendant and include him in an amended complaint or drop him as a defendant altogether. John Doe being part of the trial would be a huge help to Jamie Miller because it gives him a plausible scapegoat for the posts.
Update 01-10-22: Rumer amended her complaint to name the other Doe defendant (John Doe) and served him via email in a series of sealed documents. Independent of this Miller has been refusing to comply with Rumer's attorneys and asking the judge for legal advice to the point that the judge issued an order telling all parties not to contact him except as specifically authorized in his courtroom procedures. A few days later, and I cannot tell if this is related to Miller's noncompliance, she filed for default (a punishment ahead of the jury trial like limiting the defendants' discovery or just ruling them guilty) in a sealed document.
Update 01-14-22: The default requested by Rumer was entered against John Doe. Unless he can show he was never properly served this eliminates his rights to argue anything other than the amount he owes, such as liability or defenses.
Update 04-04-22: The judge has agreed to move the start of the jury trial from 13 June 2022 to 15 August 2022.
Update 04-11-22: The judge has ordered the entire case to be limited to the parties + the Court. This thread is dead, at least for now, and probably for good unless there is some requirement to make trial transcripts or jury reports public even if the rest of the trial was sealed. I commend the presiding judge for his commitment to protecting quack butchers and their right to mutilate the mentally ill for profit.
Update 07-08-22: This thread is back on life support! The documents are sealed so we'll need to speculate a little, but from what I can tell Rumer has offered/tried to reach a settlement while Miller isn't cooperating with anything - he is disputing facts from the initial settlement conference and might be refusing to work with Rumer/her attorneys on a final pretrial document that would ordinarily be filed jointly.
Update 08-12-22: Sometimes the little guy does win. After making a downright ghoulish attempt to block Miller from putting his own medical records on the docket Rumer's attorneys backed down and agreed to dismissal with prejudice without requiring Miller to pay a dime. The case is still alive because the dismissal does not cover claims against the other defendant (John Doe) but since s/he no-showed to the point that Rumer won a default judgment, the remaining legal issues will be very boring unless Doe decides to show up.
Update 11-22-22: And sometimes the little guy gets hit hard in the face by the legal system. The judge awarded a default judgment against John Doe for $169,000 and change in compensatory damages plus an additional $5,000 in punitive damages. This represents a much lower award than Rumer was demanding; she proposed compensatory damages of just over $1 million to cover all future reputation management costs plus an additional $1 million in punitive damages but the judge ruled that the future costs were too speculative and Doe was so destitute that even $5,000 in punitive damages would be enough to, in the judge's words, "serve the goals of punishment and deterrence".
EDIT 1: Attorneys' names and profiles added.
EDIT 2: More dox and removed a few lines that don't apply now that this is out of Prospering Grounds.
EDIT 3: Attached new documents filed in the case (24 June 2021).
EDIT 4: Added new documents allowing Jamie Miller to proceed anonymously and retroactively changing all references to him in the docket to Jane Doe (10 July 2021), this does not protect him from Kiwi autism and the documents on here are all unredacted. All credit for noticing these goes to @Useful_Mistake .
EDIT 5: Added an update on the Rumers Anonymous blog.
EDIT 6: Added an update on John Doe #2 and the motion for default.
EDIT 7: Added an update on the default against John Doe.
EDIT 8: Added new date for the planned start of the trial.
EDIT 9: Added update on the seal against the entire case.
EDIT 10: Added update on the settlement conferences.
EDIT 11: Added dismissal with prejudice for all the claims against Jamie Miller.
EDIT 12: Added default judgment against John Doe.
But that's not why we're here today, we're here because she has sued one of those disgruntled ex-patients for defamation.
The Plaintiffs
On the plaintiff's side we have Delaware Valley Aesthetics, PLLC and Kathy "Butcher of Ardmore" Rumer. The PLLC is legally distinct from Rumer herself but from a practical standpoint the fact that they are both suing makes little difference especially since there appear to be no other doctors in her practice.
Link to resume, being a doctor is her second career. Back in the 1990s she did research for Lockheed Martin and NASA - Lockheed is a defense contractor and NASA puts things into space; combine that with the fact that she was cleared Top Secret and my guess is she worked on spy satellites. I am pro privacy but will still say that espionage is a more honorable profession than butchery.
Doxing is not a crime Kathy you stupid twat:
Kathy also got hit with four malpractice suits in 2018 alone; this is verbatim from the OP of her main lolcow thread:
Valentino v. Rumer (a): Resolved via "binding high-low" arbitration, meaning that Rumer + the plaintiff agreed on high and low limits for damages and then let a third-party arbitrator make a decision based on mutually agreed-upon facts (so the practical outcome was a settlement). I don't know if there is a difference in terms of Rumer's malpractice rates but the added privacy of arbitration minimized her risk of embarrassing events during discovery.
Minto v Rumer (a): Another binding arbitration referral. She even used the same attorneys she hired in the Valentino case, if there's a group you don't want to have a stable business relationship with it's a malpractice-defense firm. The defense statement is unhelpfully vague (PDF, also attached below) and she is vindictive enough to demand attorney's fees against plaintiffs who sue her for malpractice. This reinforces the belief that there is some kind of shady NDA policy in her practice. A brief piece about the case was written in the Pennsylvania Record (a).
Coley v Rumer (a): Also referred to binding arbitration, also represented by the same attorneys, but the judge did not appear to formally "close out" the trial the way the other ones were - the others were "dismissed with prejudice" after the arbitration referral. This does not mean they were meritless, only that the plaintiff cannot refile because he agreed to get legal relief through arbitration instead.
Thompson v Rumer (a): You can guess how this one ended by now, binding arbitration with an unhelpfully vague defense from the same. exact. attorneys. The interesting part is that the plaintiff was originally prepared to have Jess Ting (of Jazz Jennings infamy) appear as an expert witness to testify in support of the malpractice claim (PDF, also attached below). I'm willing to bet her settlement here was much larger than usual.
Doxing is not a crime Kathy you stupid twat:
Kathy also got hit with four malpractice suits in 2018 alone; this is verbatim from the OP of her main lolcow thread:
Valentino v. Rumer (a): Resolved via "binding high-low" arbitration, meaning that Rumer + the plaintiff agreed on high and low limits for damages and then let a third-party arbitrator make a decision based on mutually agreed-upon facts (so the practical outcome was a settlement). I don't know if there is a difference in terms of Rumer's malpractice rates but the added privacy of arbitration minimized her risk of embarrassing events during discovery.
Minto v Rumer (a): Another binding arbitration referral. She even used the same attorneys she hired in the Valentino case, if there's a group you don't want to have a stable business relationship with it's a malpractice-defense firm. The defense statement is unhelpfully vague (PDF, also attached below) and she is vindictive enough to demand attorney's fees against plaintiffs who sue her for malpractice. This reinforces the belief that there is some kind of shady NDA policy in her practice. A brief piece about the case was written in the Pennsylvania Record (a).
Coley v Rumer (a): Also referred to binding arbitration, also represented by the same attorneys, but the judge did not appear to formally "close out" the trial the way the other ones were - the others were "dismissed with prejudice" after the arbitration referral. This does not mean they were meritless, only that the plaintiff cannot refile because he agreed to get legal relief through arbitration instead.
Thompson v Rumer (a): You can guess how this one ended by now, binding arbitration with an unhelpfully vague defense from the same. exact. attorneys. The interesting part is that the plaintiff was originally prepared to have Jess Ting (of Jazz Jennings infamy) appear as an expert witness to testify in support of the malpractice claim (PDF, also attached below). I'm willing to bet her settlement here was much larger than usual.
@kiwi-identified cow did all the work for me on Lance, I'm just copying over this post.
Lance Rogers is the "Rogers" of Rogers Counsel.
Some biography and dox because why not:
Voter registration:
Mother of fuck that's a nice mansion:
Proof dad is an attorney too, I can't imagine how Lance got to where he is in life
Lance Rogers is the "Rogers" of Rogers Counsel.
Some biography and dox because why not:
Voter registration:
Mother of fuck that's a nice mansion:
Proof dad is an attorney too, I can't imagine how Lance got to where he is in life
Here's his profile from Rogers Counsel:
Legal background: One cannot practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) unless one has a science degree. This requirement makes patent lawyers very in demand when the rest of the profession is oversaturated because many attorneys major in things like economics or psychology in undergrad. Between this and his consultation for pharma companies I imagine he will be pulling double duty as an attorney and an expert in trans standards of care. This seems like an odd pick to me because he's not listed as an MD and pharma consultation does not make him an expert on transsexual standards of care.
Doxing him will take some time, his Whitepages turned up 1370 N Bailey Rd Coatesville PA 19320 which is in the right part of Pennsylvania but Zillow says there is no such address. I'll keep plugging away at this.
Legal background: One cannot practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) unless one has a science degree. This requirement makes patent lawyers very in demand when the rest of the profession is oversaturated because many attorneys major in things like economics or psychology in undergrad. Between this and his consultation for pharma companies I imagine he will be pulling double duty as an attorney and an expert in trans standards of care. This seems like an odd pick to me because he's not listed as an MD and pharma consultation does not make him an expert on transsexual standards of care.
Doxing him will take some time, his Whitepages turned up 1370 N Bailey Rd Coatesville PA 19320 which is in the right part of Pennsylvania but Zillow says there is no such address. I'll keep plugging away at this.
Let's have a face to go with this name, he's the youngest of the three by a wide margin:
Dox: 3310 Ellington Lane, Phoenixville, PA, 19460
Dox: 3310 Ellington Lane, Phoenixville, PA, 19460
(Link to original complaint)
The original complaint only named anonymous (John and Jane Doe) defendants. To be clear this is because Rumer did not know who the defendants were at the time, not out of concern for their privacy. This is controversial in practically all circumstances because a judgment against an unidentified person is unenforceable and even filing a suit with Doe defendants amounts to a plaintiff asking for permission to fill in the names later. The site in question is rumersanonymous.blogspot.com. To use its own colorful language, it is dedicated to chasing the #ButcherOfArdmore i.e. Rumer herself. Rumer's attorney goes through the site and tries to become a lolsuit all-star:
* A post demanding that Rumer specify which patient gave a quote Rumer mentioned in an ad is spun as accusing Rumer of fabricating a quote
* Doxing Rumer is labeled "invasion of privacy"
* They included an entire email verbatim:
* A post demanding that Rumer specify which patient gave a quote Rumer mentioned in an ad is spun as accusing Rumer of fabricating a quote
* Doxing Rumer is labeled "invasion of privacy"
* They included an entire email verbatim:
And claim that this troll has sent many more Rolling Stones-inspired emails to intimidate her 
Apart from being funny, Rumer's attorneys claim this email is defamatory even though it was never sent to a third party, just Rumer herself - I'd love to hear them explain how it damaged her reputation when nobody else even knew it existed until she filed this suit.
* Claims that simply linking others' Reddit posts is libel. For non-lawspergs linking is a form of republication, which is generally subject to more protection than original publications in defamation law: With republication, the original post must be libelous and the people responsible for the republication must have acted with reckless disregard for the truth. This means the defendants have two possible claims, they can either show the original post was not libelous or they had some plausible reason to believe the claim was true.
Notable by its absence is anything to suggest patient satisfaction or outcomes; in fact Rumer claims to perform more than 350 transsexual surgeries annually. That's almost 1 and a half a day assuming 250 working days a year which is just absurd.
The Amended Complaint
The presiding judge got mad at Rumer for not even trying to unmask the Doe defendants after multiple extensions (link) and she eventually filed an amended complaint naming Jane Doe 1 as Jamie Miller but leaving John Doe 1 unidentified (link). The judge has not objected and appears to be willing to proceed with one identified defendant and one Doe defendant.
One minor but hilarious detail in the amended complaint: Rumer's attorney got the name of the website wrong this time and now names rumorsanonymous.blogspot.com. Of all the details to fuck up, he picked the one that could invalidate the entire case!
Our Unlikely Hero
For once a troon may be the hero the Farms gets: Jamie Miller (signing documents as Jamie Roe, apparently in an attempt to proceed anonymously) has responded to Rumer's complaint with fire and autism. His pro se response is linked here and his attorney-drafted one is here but the only funny detail in the whole bit is that in his telling Rumer named the wrong ex-patient as a defendant. I can't even imagine how terrible she must if her response to learning about an ex-patient calling her a butcher was to go, "you'll have to be way more specific". Naming Jamie in particular might have been a particularly scummy way to move this to federal court because this is a state-law claim; federal courts only get involved if the plaintiff and defendant are from different states (the formal term is "diverse").
Apart from being funny, Rumer's attorneys claim this email is defamatory even though it was never sent to a third party, just Rumer herself - I'd love to hear them explain how it damaged her reputation when nobody else even knew it existed until she filed this suit.
* Claims that simply linking others' Reddit posts is libel. For non-lawspergs linking is a form of republication, which is generally subject to more protection than original publications in defamation law: With republication, the original post must be libelous and the people responsible for the republication must have acted with reckless disregard for the truth. This means the defendants have two possible claims, they can either show the original post was not libelous or they had some plausible reason to believe the claim was true.
Notable by its absence is anything to suggest patient satisfaction or outcomes; in fact Rumer claims to perform more than 350 transsexual surgeries annually. That's almost 1 and a half a day assuming 250 working days a year which is just absurd.
The Amended Complaint
The presiding judge got mad at Rumer for not even trying to unmask the Doe defendants after multiple extensions (link) and she eventually filed an amended complaint naming Jane Doe 1 as Jamie Miller but leaving John Doe 1 unidentified (link). The judge has not objected and appears to be willing to proceed with one identified defendant and one Doe defendant.
One minor but hilarious detail in the amended complaint: Rumer's attorney got the name of the website wrong this time and now names rumorsanonymous.blogspot.com. Of all the details to fuck up, he picked the one that could invalidate the entire case!
Our Unlikely Hero
For once a troon may be the hero the Farms gets: Jamie Miller (signing documents as Jamie Roe, apparently in an attempt to proceed anonymously) has responded to Rumer's complaint with fire and autism. His pro se response is linked here and his attorney-drafted one is here but the only funny detail in the whole bit is that in his telling Rumer named the wrong ex-patient as a defendant. I can't even imagine how terrible she must if her response to learning about an ex-patient calling her a butcher was to go, "you'll have to be way more specific". Naming Jamie in particular might have been a particularly scummy way to move this to federal court because this is a state-law claim; federal courts only get involved if the plaintiff and defendant are from different states (the formal term is "diverse").
Roe is not formally represented by counsel; the attorney-drafted response was written collaboratively by a legal aid firm but none of the attorneys involved provided a name.
Update 08-21-21: The "Rumers Anonymous" blog at the heart of this lawsuit has been taken down and blogspot has blocked it from being registered by future users. The fact that Blogspot disabled future use of the domain name makes me think whoever asked them to delete it made it very clear this was tied to the ongoing lolsuit.
Update 10-10-21: Rumer has been in communication with Miller and they have agreed to a schedule for discovery. Rumer intends to argue that Miller was the author of the posts rather than just the webhost and Miller plans to argue the claims are not defamatory because they are true. Barring a last-minute settlement this means the case will be heading to trial in June of 2022. Independent of this Rumer has been given until 15 November (2 months from the judge's order) to either identify the other Doe defendant and include him in an amended complaint or drop him as a defendant altogether. John Doe being part of the trial would be a huge help to Jamie Miller because it gives him a plausible scapegoat for the posts.
Update 01-10-22: Rumer amended her complaint to name the other Doe defendant (John Doe) and served him via email in a series of sealed documents. Independent of this Miller has been refusing to comply with Rumer's attorneys and asking the judge for legal advice to the point that the judge issued an order telling all parties not to contact him except as specifically authorized in his courtroom procedures. A few days later, and I cannot tell if this is related to Miller's noncompliance, she filed for default (a punishment ahead of the jury trial like limiting the defendants' discovery or just ruling them guilty) in a sealed document.
Update 01-14-22: The default requested by Rumer was entered against John Doe. Unless he can show he was never properly served this eliminates his rights to argue anything other than the amount he owes, such as liability or defenses.
Update 04-04-22: The judge has agreed to move the start of the jury trial from 13 June 2022 to 15 August 2022.
Update 04-11-22: The judge has ordered the entire case to be limited to the parties + the Court. This thread is dead, at least for now, and probably for good unless there is some requirement to make trial transcripts or jury reports public even if the rest of the trial was sealed. I commend the presiding judge for his commitment to protecting quack butchers and their right to mutilate the mentally ill for profit.
Update 07-08-22: This thread is back on life support! The documents are sealed so we'll need to speculate a little, but from what I can tell Rumer has offered/tried to reach a settlement while Miller isn't cooperating with anything - he is disputing facts from the initial settlement conference and might be refusing to work with Rumer/her attorneys on a final pretrial document that would ordinarily be filed jointly.
Update 08-12-22: Sometimes the little guy does win. After making a downright ghoulish attempt to block Miller from putting his own medical records on the docket Rumer's attorneys backed down and agreed to dismissal with prejudice without requiring Miller to pay a dime. The case is still alive because the dismissal does not cover claims against the other defendant (John Doe) but since s/he no-showed to the point that Rumer won a default judgment, the remaining legal issues will be very boring unless Doe decides to show up.
Update 11-22-22: And sometimes the little guy gets hit hard in the face by the legal system. The judge awarded a default judgment against John Doe for $169,000 and change in compensatory damages plus an additional $5,000 in punitive damages. This represents a much lower award than Rumer was demanding; she proposed compensatory damages of just over $1 million to cover all future reputation management costs plus an additional $1 million in punitive damages but the judge ruled that the future costs were too speculative and Doe was so destitute that even $5,000 in punitive damages would be enough to, in the judge's words, "serve the goals of punishment and deterrence".
EDIT 1: Attorneys' names and profiles added.
EDIT 2: More dox and removed a few lines that don't apply now that this is out of Prospering Grounds.
EDIT 3: Attached new documents filed in the case (24 June 2021).
EDIT 4: Added new documents allowing Jamie Miller to proceed anonymously and retroactively changing all references to him in the docket to Jane Doe (10 July 2021), this does not protect him from Kiwi autism and the documents on here are all unredacted. All credit for noticing these goes to @Useful_Mistake .
EDIT 5: Added an update on the Rumers Anonymous blog.
EDIT 6: Added an update on John Doe #2 and the motion for default.
EDIT 7: Added an update on the default against John Doe.
EDIT 8: Added new date for the planned start of the trial.
EDIT 9: Added update on the seal against the entire case.
EDIT 10: Added update on the settlement conferences.
EDIT 11: Added dismissal with prejudice for all the claims against Jamie Miller.
EDIT 12: Added default judgment against John Doe.
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