More legal drama is taking place between the Hurt Locker production company’s legal team and Graham Syfert, the defense attorney who has provided help for those accused of illegally sharing the film online.
As we reported earlier, the US Copyright Group (USCG) began to throw a bit of a tantrum after a form created by Syfert, which allowed defendants to cheaply and easily file motions to quash the cases against them, resulted in a flood of paperwork that is costing the USCG thousands of dollars to deal with. They went so far as to call Syfert’s forms a “money-making scheme”.
Now, Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver, the law firm behind the USCG and Voltage Pictures, has actually filed a motion asking the court to leverage sanctions against Syfert and the defendants who have used his forms.
Weaver emailed Syfert a copy of the motion he had just submitted to the court on behalf of Voltage Pictures, requesting sanctions against him under federal law. “He says that the 19 cases of forms that have been currently filed cost them $5000 and he’s seeking those sanctions against me personally,” Syfert told TorrentFreak.
The plaintiff’s motion refers to the forms as “frivolous” and states that Syfert “attempts to skirt responsibility” by not personally representing the defendants who purchase them. “Such sanctions are warranted for the inappropriate use of such forms to unnecessarily multiply the proceedings and for the callous disregard for this Court’s and Plaintiff’s time,” the motion says.
But Syfert refuses to let Weaver bully him around.
“I requested sanctions against them because this is completely insane,” Syfert said. “If 19 cases costs them $5000 in attorney time, I wonder how many cases it’d take before their business model crumbles. That is unless they are going to actually work for a living. My dream would be to have 10,000-20,000 people file all three documents to the lawyers and severely cripple the entire process and show them that you shouldn’t be allowed to join so many defendants.”
Frankly, this story is getting more ridiculous by the day. I can’t wait to see what the judge has to say about this one.
