BREAKING: ACORN Files Suit Against Filmmakers
Via Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government; details at the Politico:
ACORN files suit against filmmakers
ACORN filed suit today in Maryland against conservative filmmakers James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles and conservative Web site Breitbart.com for secretly taping the organization’s employees at its Baltimore office.
In the complaint, ACORN alleges that the filmmakers entered into the organization’s offices in July with a “hidden camera and microphone” and taped employees Tonja Thompson and Shera Williams. Both employees are listed as plaintiffs on the complaint, filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.
ACORN is seeking $500,000 for each employee and $1 million for the organization in damages.
Related: House Republican Leader John Boehner “Praises IRS Decision to End Partnership with ACORN.”
Update: The Associated Press adds:
Community activist group ACORN is suing the makers of a hidden-camera video that showed employees of its Baltimore office giving tax advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman posing as a prostitute.The liberal group contends that the audio portion of the video was obtained illegally because Maryland requires two-party consent to create sound recordings.
The two employees seen in the video were fired after it was posted online. The lawsuit says the employees, Tonja Thompson and Shera Williams, suffered “extreme emotional distress.”
The multimillion-dollar lawsuit seeks damages from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who played the pimp and prostitute in the videos, and from conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart, who posted the videos on his Web site.
During his interview with Glenn Reynolds last week on PJTV recorded at the Quincy, Illinois Tea party, Breitbart quipped:
BREITBART: It is the elephant in the middle of the room, that everybody knows it’s a corrupt organization. And that every aspect of it is rank and awful.
I want them to sue me, so I’ll try and come up with a worse thing. I think I will be sued.
REYNOLDS: You’re looking forward to discovery? Is that what you’re saying?
BREITBART: I’m looking forward to discovery. Bring it on! Wouldn’t that be fun to move to DC for a season, and doing some discovery?”
“Developing”, as Matt Drudge would say.
Flashback: “According to the following documents, ACORN, Inc. — the parent organization of all things ACORN –- forfeited its corporate charter in Maryland in 2006. ACORN Housing forfeited its corporate charter in 2008. Any ACORN office in the state of Maryland is potentially operating illegally.”
Update: Hot Air’s Allahpundit writes:
Amazing. In one fell swoop, the lawsuit (a) gives Fox a reason to keep covering the story, (b) presents a thorny legal issue that’ll attract media to the scandal who might not otherwise have touched it, and (c) makes ACORN look like they’re trying to punish people who exposed taxpayer-funded corruption. Which, of course, they are.
Remember, Bertha Lewis told CNN she was grateful to O’Keefe et al. for rooting out those “few bad apples,” but as the boss reminds us, shooting the messenger is the ACORN way.
As Allah adds, “Here’s her gratitude.” Read the whole thing for his prediction of how this might all play out.
Update: At the Corner, Jonah Goldberg posts an email from a lawyer who also has some predictions:
Third, with a little bit of careful thought, the defendants could plead some interesting counterclaims. The federal False Claims Act and RICO come to mind, and would be very interesting.
Fourth, even if the defendants don’t plead any counterclaims, the scope of discovery against ACORN will be incredibly broad, as it almost always is in civil litigation. ACORN has far, far more to lose from what could come out during discovery than what they are asking for in this suit.
Fifth, it’s sorta bizarre that the fired employees are joining in the suit with ACORN, the entity that fired them. That complicates just about every legal theory, and even has possible ethical complications for their attorneys. I’d have to think about the issue some more, but at first blush I think the defendants’ attorneys might want to move to disqualify the ACORN attorneys from representing all three plaintiffs on the grounds that the fired employees have, essentially, wrongful discharge claims against ACORN. Even if the motion is unsuccessful, each of the plaintiffs will have to take a stand, very early on in the litigation, as to whether or not the firings were appropriate. None of them have any good answers to that question.
In short, Learned Hand once said that he feared a lawsuit more than death or taxes. With good lawyering from the defendants (which I’m sure their going to get), ACORN is about to find out what Hand meant. ACORN has very little to gain and a lot to lose.
Read the whole thing.
Update: Paging Admiral Ackbar…Admiral Ackbar to the red comlink please: Glenn Reynolds adds, “I’m Pretty Sure They’re Falling Into A Trap.”
Kamikaze.
Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery
Thank you, Silhouette.
What’s the basis for the suit?
ACORN is embarrased thats all,,didn’t reporters do exactly what 6ominutes and 20/20 do every week,,lol
The basis for the suit is that MD is a dual permission state when it comes to taping…that means one must have the consent of all parties involved before recording (video or audio). It’s also total bulls**t, let’s get some info about a defense fund…ANDREW??? ANYONE????
“Discovery Discovery Discovery Discovery”
The Obama administration is probably getting on its knees to beg ACORN to immediately drop the lawsuit. This is pure madness and a gift to conservatives.
I thought ACORN had fired Thompson and Williams. Have they been rehired?
The strategy is:
1. get a gag order first thing
2. use the old “on advice of our lawyers we cannot comment due to an ongoing legal case”
3. contest each discovery request
4. motion, motion, motion
5. appeal, appeal, appeal (all adverse decisions)
6. attempt to insert racism using Noble winner Carter
7. leak like a sieve to the MSM as folks “close” to the case
With any luck at all, they’ve (a) served notice on anyone else that they WILL sue and (b) the case may stretch out until Obama is out of office in nine years.
Anyway, I’d bet the farm that they’ll hide behind every legal trick in the book. Never, ever forget these folks do not surrender any point on anything.
Regarding discovery……
I am not a lawyer, and I have not seen the filings, but I am going to guess that the filings are very carefully worded to mention only the fact of the allegedly illegal voice recordings, with no mention of why the recordings were made, just that they were.
I think that will limit discovery to pretty much safe territory.
As usual, public safeguards will work against us.
Lordy, has nobody on the American left heard of’ when you’re in a hole stop digging?’
Did I just think I posted this?
Regarding discovery……
I am not a lawyer, and I have not seen the filings, but I am going to guess that the filings are very carefully worded to mention only the fact of the allegedly illegal voice recordings, with no mention of why the recordings were made, just that they were.
I think that will limit discovery to pretty much safe territory.
As usual, public safeguards will work against us.
I’m not a lawyer, but you would have to questions ACORN’s standing to file suit, since the MD corporations were technically defunct, and they fired the employees.
Then you have the issue of damages, with an unregistered business and illegal advice…..
Would be good to see it in front of a jury, especially if they get a change of venue to Montgomery county or even western MD, where the jury will be majority white.
You can sue someone if you don’t exist. That’s a metaphysical and legal truth.
So if it’s ACORN-Maryland doing the suing (and not some parent ACORN entity), then the defendants seem to have a complete defense: Having forfeited its charter, ACORN-Maryland does not exist; there is no plaintiff-entity, thus no suit can lie. (Limited liability entities offer the advantage of not only absorbing suits that might otherwise target the human principals, but of allowing human beings to use the corporate form to sue others.)
But I guess the suit could then be reorganized with the Baltimore workers or maybe the parent ACORN corporation as plaintiffs.
Synchronicity. For the record, I’m the 2nd “Brian.” We’re not the same person. But our thoughts were similar on this issue.
And I am a lawyer – non-practicing – but I know enough to know that denial of a plaintiff’s corporate existence is a defense sometimes successfully used against plaintiffs.
Irrespective of any other consequences of this, the one thing it guarantees is that the story will remain on the front burner for months if not years.
That’s to Breitbart’s benefit and ACORN’s detriment. It’s going to be free advertising for Breitbart’s new site worth well in excess of a million dollars. And it totally nullifies ACORN’s “3 month investigation” strategy in which they hoped to wait until the furor died down, implement some token changes, and then get back to the same old stuff.
If ACORN doesn’t drop this real soon now, and really does pursue it, this virtually guarantees the end of the organization nation wide even if Breitbart doesn’t find anything else scandalous during discovery.
I suspect I know what they’re thinking.
If they don’t fight back, they risk a short term collapse in confidence by their stalwart contributers leading to financial disaster. So they’re facing the choice of virtually certain immediate death or possible long term death. Which would you choose?
By suing, even on this kind of flimsy basis, they show defiance and implicitly seem to be saying that the accusations were unjust — or at least they hope they are doing so, in the eyes of their contributors, and thus the contributors will continue to provide cash, or so they hope.
I expect these two will have lawyers begging to help in their defense, just for the chance at helping bring down this corrupt organization.
I half-expect them to counter-sue, if it will allow discovery to move to into areas that will uncover more dirt.
Good luck to them! And good riddance to Acorn!!!!
I will pray that acorn LOSES the suit. This has NOTHING do with “recording” laws being broken. This has to do with the simple fact that acorn was CAUGHT and EXPOSED for the liars that they are and what do liars do as usual? They RAIL. Liar spelled backwards is Rail.
That’s all fine for the NWO freaks installing cameras on street poles everywhere and them wanting to vaccinate people with RFID chips and never mind the people screaming violation and privacy. But when the same recording tactics are used on the freaks, they make a big circus out of it and cry wolf.
See the hypocrisy. You can’t have it both ways. The TRUTH ALWAYS comes out in the end. Tit for tat, butter for fat.
#& David Thomson brings up another interesting point–how many discovery documents will have Barack Obama’s name on them?
#20 Steven: I do not dispute your analysis of ACORN’s motivations.
I think ACORN is going to learn that its source of income from foundations and trusts is going to dry up because those entities also have lawyers and accountants, and they are going to advise cutting all ties. The IRS and the state of Louisiana are after ACORN for unpaid taxes, and that is going to influence the advice that any attorney or accountant will give to a foundation or trust: pop smoke and break contact.
I also think ACORN is going to learn a lesson about picking fights with people who buy pixels by the bulk-freighter load.
Ed, in addition to discovery, RICO countersuits, ACORN ignored MD’s SLAPP reulations regarding 1st amendment related suits. MD is a 2 party state, but if MD used ACORN/Barney Franks interpretation, about half the award winning jounalists in MD would be in jail for past transgressions, and I am sure MD prosecutor views are all over past rejected complaints. ACORN’s arrogance is exceeded only by their ignorance.