"Last year, an attorney representing a woman sued by the Recording Industry Association of America claimed his client is innocent and asked a federal judge to levy sanctions against the association's lawyers."
However, U.S. District Judge Terry Means--whose court is located in the northern district of Texas--had other plans. On May 16th, in an "unexpected legal twist", Judge Means ruled against the woman and ordered that her lawyer be the one sanctioned.
Means writes that the "Frivolous motions for sanctions that harass the opposing party's attorney, chill that attorney's zealous representation of his client, and needlessly increase the cost of litigation cannot go unpunished."
The woman was accused of violating copyright laws when using Kazaa--the imfamous filesharing program--where Safenet's MediaSentry 'flagged' a person of interest who was believed to have been sharing copyrighted material. They obtained her Internet Protocol (IP) address and accessed her share directory where they reported approximately 850 sound files and a playlist named "Diane.kpl" according to Declan McCullagh's News blog.
A subpoena was handed to AOL for the identity of the account holder which brought up Diane Heslep from Arlington, Tex. She took Thomas Kimble as an attorney--who has been sanctioned before--where they tried to settle, claimed it was "predatory", then moved to say that "the AOL account was used by unidentified secondary users" with a sworn statement that Heslep was not using Kazaa at the recorded time.
Source: C|Net Declan McCullagh's News Blog
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