Daily Archives: September 18, 2014

Fraudulently Fooled

Not So Fancy . . . It’s a Forgery?

Oh no, Iggy is suing an ex-boyfriend for copyright infringement and other intellectual property claims! The lawsuit alleges that in 2008 the ex (he was 33 and she was 17 at the time) downloaded some songs Iggy had stored on her laptop. Iggy had recorded the raps long before becoming so well known and overplayed (don’t get me wrong, she’s awesome). The ex says he has a signed contract giving him the rights to use (and profit from) the early material.

But the Complaint alleges the contract is bogus:

The Forged Agreement contains tell-tale signs that it is not genuine.
For example, it includes mismatched fonts on the signature page; the signature page
contains no substantive text; the paragraph numbers are out of sequence; the signature line is for “Wine Enterprises, inc.” [sic] rather than, as is customary, for an authorized agent; and it provides, as an address for legal notices, the contact information of an attorney who had no knowledge of the Forged Agreement until Azalea’s representatives recently brought it to his attention.

I love the part where they list an attorney’s name on the document, someone contacts the attorney and he doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Can he charge a fee to the ex for listing him as the attorney on the agreement? I hope so.

Anyway, the story gets more interesting but you have to read between the lines and make things up, I guess. Here’s the Complaint and a much more complete and compelling version of the story.

BTW: No pictures because I don’t want Izzy to sue me too!

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Civilized Proceedings, Discovered on Demand

The Neverending Battle . . .

record-and-archiveNew amendments have been proposed again to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Once again, the proposals have the goal of limiting discovery and the burden and expense that goes along with it. As the Judicial Conference described the recommendations from the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that were sent to the US Supreme Court this week:

The proposed changes seek to reduce litigation costs and delays by encouraging early case management by judges, increased cooperation among the parties, and the proportional use of discovery based on the needs of the case.

pending-rulesYou can find the proposed civil rule amendments here: Pending Rules Amendment page. And if you really want to learn more, you can review a memo describing the changes here: Proposed Amendments.

The most interesting aspect for me is the increased involvement of Judges early in the discovery process to try and keep it under control. I have not found a Judge yet that wants to be more involved with the discproposed-amendmentsovery process in civil cases.

I think it may be what is needed (or at least should be tried) to reign in the out of control and overly broad discovery process that results in a a lot of time and money being consumed while providing information that is not even colorably relevant to a case.

But I have my doubts that after 4 decades of trying to alter discovery under the procedural rules that this will have much of an impact even if it is adopted by the SCOTUS and Congress allows the amendments to the rules. I hope so, but we’ll have to wait and see . . . Even if all goes as planned, the amendments won’t go into effect until December of 2015.

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