The RIAA's habit of roping numerous unrelated defendants into a single "John Doe" lawsuit has drawn the attention of a federal magistrate—and not in a good way. In the case of Arista v. Does 1-27, a lawsuit targeting students at the University of Maine, Magistrate Judge Margaret J. Kravchuk suggests that the court look into imposing Rule 11 sanctions on the RIAA's legal team.
In the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 11 covers, among other things, representations to the court. Section 11(b) requires that "factual contentions" or denials thereof contained in motions, pleadings, or other submissions have or will have "evidentiary support."
Where this may get the RIAA's legal team in trouble is its joining 27 defendants together in the same John Doe lawsuit. In its complaint, the record labels asserted that the Does violated the same law in the same manner using the same tools via the same ISP. The labels argue, therefore, that their "right to relief arises out of the same series of transactions or occurrences, and there are questions of law or fact common to all Defendants such that joinder is warranted and appropriate here."
Not so fast, according to Judge Kravchuk. In her order denying the Does' motion to dismiss the lawsuit (thanks to Ray Beckerman for finding this), she is critical of the RIAA's logic. Just because two or more defendants have the same ISP doesn't mean that their conduct "amounts to the same transaction or occurrence." Indeed, she is concerned that the RIAA is "intentionally flouting" Rule 11 for the sake of convenience. After all, it's much easier (not to mention cheaper) to lump a whole bunch of defendants who are completely unrelated except by virtue of sharing a common ISP.
Judge Kravchuk asks the rhetorical question of whether all Time Warner subscribers in Maine could be joined in a single complaint. She then cites a case, Atlantic v. Does 1-22 where the RIAA did exactly that; after it was dismissed, the RIAA filed three separate cases. "It is curious that no attempt was made to join these cases as arising from the same transaction or occurrence if my plausible inference is accurate," wrote the judge in her order. "I think no such attempt was made because it is apparent that the cases would not be properly joined.
"These plaintiffs have devised a clever scheme to obtain court-authorized discovery prior to the service of complaints, but it troubles me that they do so with impunity and at the expense of the requirements of Rule 11(b)(3) because they have no good faith evidentiary basis to believe the cases should be joined," she concludes.
With the RIAA typically lumping as many as 30 defendants into a single John Doe lawsuit, requiring it to file individual Doe lawsuits would make litigation more costly for labels. It's a matter of convenience, after all, and the record labels' arguments that defendants should be lumped together by virtue of having the same ISP and allegedly committing similar acts of copyright infringement are belied by the fact that the defendants are always sued individually once they are identified.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...a-lawyers.html
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