Victor Mignogna v. Funimation Productions, LLC, et al. (2019) - Vic's lawsuit against Funimation, VAs, and others, for over a million dollars.

[Svetlana]

Corrected Funimation brief

 

[Stoneheart]

Bringing it back around to the case at hand, that last bit has been really important to the lawsuit and especially the related PR campaigns: the defendants and potential witnesses have a hell of an internet footprint, and many of the parties have some past cases to be dug up for PR purposes.

they dont even have to pay anybody to do the dirty work... kickvic is just to funny to not be a topic here-

 

[5t3n0g0ph3r]

Thanks @Svetlana!

 

[6MillionCoofs]

How are the briefs this sloppy? I would have been laughed out of my work if I handed anything like this in. Why are lawyers allowed such freedom to write bad?

 

[AnOminous]

Corrected Funimation brief

It still has: "This evidence does rise to the level necessary to establish Vic as a general purpose public figure." And no italics in the table of authorities. But the certificates are there. I doubt they noticed the non-fatal defects before re-filing it at the last minute.

 

[LawTwitter is Dumb]

It still has: "This evidence does rise to the level necessary to establish Vic as a general purpose public figure." And no italics in the table of authorities. But the certificates are there. I doubt they noticed the non-fatal defects before re-filing it at the last minute.

Its still what you said earlier right the "scrivener's error", maybe they did that on purpose to save word count? Since errors like that will be ignored and most courts will just go "we know what you meant things happen". Then again it's probably them just being sloppy, wish they wouldn't be.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

For a bunch of people who make a huge chunk of their livelihood writing large documents you would think they would know about things like themes for documents, version control, spelling and grammar checking and proofreading.

You'd think they would but let me tell you they never do.Most PAs don't either.

Honestly anyone that wants an office job should be taught this first week on the job.

 

[feral cat #6385]

Pessimism about the the riots, CHAZ and the Last of Us 2 tranny sex scene has me feeling we're balls deep into clown world and three appeals court judges will just "honk, honk" and affirm Chupps ruling.

Yeah, sounds like the documents are disappointing. Not really a reason for it. Even if they were perfect it would be a tall mountain to climb.

That's the feeling I get with how things are going. Hopefully Vic won't end up on the hook for all the legal fees.

You get what you pay for certainly doesn't apply to law.

I just hope Ron sues Nick so we can have another LOLsuit to laugh at.

 

[Allanon]

You all always get so salty over little things in the documents. The arguments were made competently, and that's really what's important assuming no fatal defects like what happened (and was immediately corrected) in the Funi document. You keep saying they could go autisticly comb over their documents before release for every little error, but every minute of that would be billed to Vic, and he's raised less than 300k for a year's worth of lawyering. It's entirely possible that Vic himself has said 'no, it's fine, just make sure it's competently worded, because I'm not made of infinite money'. None of the things you fuss over have meant anything so far other than the 2AP thing, which has been discussed to death about whether Chupp was wrong to disregard it and whether Chupp would just have ignored everything in it and thrown the whole case out anyway because he didn't want to deal with it.

Frankly, I just look forward to some oral arguments and responses by the appeal courts, because we've had like six months now of Vic and the defendants essentially just having a loud social media fight in legalese with nobody whose opinion actually matters saying anything about it. Honestly, even the TCPA hearing barely qualifies, because Chupp didn't even go through the evidence and arguments to decide who was right, he just yeeted the whole thing off his desk as quickly as possible, didn't really listen to either side's arguments, and wrote up a quick 'whatever it was the defendants said is what I agree with I guess, get this off my docket' judgment.

 

[AnOminous]

You all always get so salty over little things in the documents. The arguments were made competently, and that's really what's important assuming no fatal defects like what happened (and was immediately corrected) in the Funi document. You keep saying they could go autisticly comb over their documents before release

Professionalism isn't autism. It's the opposite. They could do their fucking job with a modicum of respect for the people they are expecting to go through thousands of pages of documents with a fine tooth comb.

 

[Dixieland Buckaroo]

Honestly the best thing for Vic right now is Chupp's ruling gets overturned and thrown back to Chupp, without oral. Saves on some prep and appearance costs and speeds things along. Second best is probably fees only overturned or reduced.

Edit: if the appeals go south for Vic (and I have no idea which way 2 of the 3 judges will decide), I believe Ty said on a Rackets stream that he'd be interested in challenging the TCPA at the state Supreme Court. Maybe even pro bono? Now we aren't to that point, and I don't know the exact wording nor how serious/drunk Ty was, but I'd put money on this lasting a while longer, one way or another.

 

[AnOminous]

Honestly the best thing for Vic right now is Chupp's ruling gets overturned and thrown back to Chupp, without oral. Saves on some prep and appearance costs and speeds things along. Second best is probably fees only overturned or reduced.

I think they'll probably want oral argument because there's probably at least one thing they want to ask about. The only thing that's well briefed enough by the parties that it could imo be decided without oral argument is the fees issue, if it stood on its own. It's dependent on whether they reverse any of the other stuff.

As to parties, if they uphold the trial court entirely as to any party, the fees award will at best be upheld, because Vic didn't appeal that. Neither did Funimation or Marchi, so if it's upheld as to them, the fees will be upheld. I think it was a mistake not to challenge the contingent fees Chupp awarded and they chose not to raise that issue, but there were already a lot of issues and few words to use on them. Also there's a fee process after an appeals court decision so whatever Chupp said, he can't bind a higher court to award fees anyway.

If it's reversed as to anything related to MoRon, since Chupp didn't allocate the fees by cause of action, he'd have to recalculate as to what fees related to what cause of action. The appeals court might decide it doesn't have the information to decide that and send it back with a mandate including directions to recalculate. Obviously if it's entirely reversed as to both of them, the fee award dispute is entirely moot as they're entitled to nothing at that point.

 

[LawTwitter is Dumb]

Honestly the best thing for Vic right now is Chupp's ruling gets overturned and thrown back to Chupp, without oral. Saves on some prep and appearance costs and speeds things along. Second best is probably fees only overturned or reduced.

I think if anything they'll be reduced, since it was Chupps discretion on what would happen to the fees. From what I've seen and read here from other kiwis is that appeal courts are highly unlikely to rule against a judges discretion. Obviously they still could.

 

[AnOminous]

I think if anything they'll be reduced, since it was Chupps discretion on what would happen to the fees. From what I've seen and read here from other kiwis is that appeal courts are highly unlikely to rule against a judges discretion. Obviously they still could.

They can't be reduced without "just cause." For a party to achieve a more favorable outcome than the trial court decided, they have to appeal that issue. Vic didn't appeal that issue. MoRon did. If one party appeals an issue and the other didn't, all the non-appealing party can do is argue that the trial court's decision should be upheld.

"(c) Who must file notice. A party who seeks to alter the trial court's judgment or other appealable order must file a notice of appeal. Parties whose interests are aligned may file a joint notice of appeal. The appellate court may not grant a party who does not file a notice of appeal more favorable relief than did the trial court except for just cause." Tex. R. App. 25.1(c).

So, not having filed a notice of appeal on this issue, they can't seek more favorable relief, and in fact haven't, instead arguing that Chupp's original fee judgment be upheld as a sound exercise of discretion, although it would necessarily be overturned if the underlying judgment were overturned.

(I think it would have been better to challenge it directly so even if they do end up 0-17 *squaaaawk* they could still take another haircut on the fees but whatever. That was a strategy choice and I guess we'll see how it turns out. I try to limit my criticisms of the filings to objective truths. I'm not going to go out of my way to criticize arguable strategic choices but I am not going to ignore objective, factual fuckups just to suck some guy's dick who I will probably never meet anyway.)

 

[Dixieland Buckaroo]

They can't be reduced without "just cause." For a party to achieve a more favorable outcome than the trial court decided, they have to appeal that issue. Vic didn't appeal that issue. MoRon did. If one party appeals an issue and the other didn't, all the non-appealing party can do is argue that the trial court's decision should be upheld.

"(c) Who must file notice. A party who seeks to alter the trial court's judgment or other appealable order must file a notice of appeal. Parties whose interests are aligned may file a joint notice of appeal. The appellate court may not grant a party who does not file a notice of appeal more favorable relief than did the trial court except for just cause." Tex. R. App. 25.1(c).

So, not having filed a notice of appeal on this issue, they can't seek more favorable relief, and in fact haven't, instead arguing that Chupp's original fee judgment be upheld as a sound exercise of discretion, although it would necessarily be overturned if the underlying judgment were overturned.

(I think it would have been better to challenge it directly so even if they do end up 0-17 *squaaaawk* they could still take another haircut on the fees but whatever. That was a strategy choice and I guess we'll see how it turns out. I try to limit my criticisms of the filings to objective truths. I'm not going to go out of my way to criticize arguable strategic choices but I am not going to ignore objective, factual fuckups just to suck some guy's dick who I will probably never meet anyway.)

Thanks for the correction. I had thought there was speculation about appealing fees, but obviously it was just speculation. Choose your battles and all.

 

[AnOminous]

Thanks for the correction. I had thought there was speculation about appealing fees, but obviously it was just speculation. Choose your battles and all.

Appealing the TCPA decision itself would have the collateral effect of negating the fee awards. I think I can see the strategy of not doing it, though. They're currently arguing that the award was a sound abuse of discretion and it should be left the same. If they argued it should be reduced, then both sides would be agreeing that Chupp's decision was an abuse of discretion and the only question, if the appeals court bought that argument, would then be what direction to move the size of the award.

It's a lot safer to argue it wasn't an abuse of discretion and should be left undisturbed.

 

[Allanon]

Professionalism isn't autism. It's the opposite. They could do their fucking job with a modicum of respect for the people they are expecting to go through thousands of pages of documents with a fine tooth comb.

I mean, people were literally saying that they should have gone through the filings 'autistically' before I commented on it. I don't think it was you, but there were people saying so. i still feel like people are blowing it out of proportion here, because regardless of mistakes from either side in this case, the courts haven't had any issues with the defects so far. It comes off as people reading the arguments, deciding if they're good or not, and then once they've run out of material to talk about that's relevant they dive back in and start complaining about filing errors. I know there's at least one time recently where a judge got super nitpicky about that kind of thing, but the impression I've gotten following this case is that even if they probably should, the court just doesn't seem to care that much.

Of course, I don't really follow any other cases, because I'm a reasonably normal person and have better things to do, like watching gnats mate in the evening air. So...I guess that may be totally unusual and appeals will hammer on both of them as soon as they start actually reading the documents.

 

[AnOminous]

I know there's at least one time recently where a judge got super nitpicky about it, but the impression I've gotten following this case is that even if they probably should, the court just doesn't seem to care that much.

There's no rule for a lawyer not to show up wearing sneakers and track dog shit into the courtroom either and nobody would say they were ruling against you because of it, but a first impression is important and if the first impression is you're sloppy with your presentation, they're less likely to give your arguments the credence they should, and suppose it's a close case. They're never going to say outright "we're ruling against you because you're a slob."

 

[Sheryl Nome]

As fun as it is to be fatalist and mock the obvious fuckups in the docs, I think they hammer where they needed to hammer to get what they could, fact question fact question fact question. I still think Marchi will get off, but I think just based on the record alone the court would be crazy to say this suit is entirely foreclosed by the TCPA.

I mean I've been wrong before, but if thats what the court thinks the TCPA does then it is just a trash law.

 

[Stoneheart]

You keep saying they could go autisticly comb over their documents before release for every little error, but every minute of that would be billed to Vic, and he's raised less than 300k for a year's worth of lawyering.

a fuckn intern would have found those errors...

I mean, people were literally saying that they should have gone through the filings 'autistically' before I commented on it.

A professional office of any kind has a lady reading and formating everything.