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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
In April of 2018, the Twin Galaxies video game scoreboard announced its finding that well-known classic game score-chaser Billy Mitchell did not achieve his Donkey Kong high scores on unmodified arcade hardware, stripping him of all his accumulated records in the process. Since then, Mitchell has oft claimed that he would fight the decision every way he could. And in September 2019, Mitchell and his lawyers said in a statement they would be forced to "resort to legal recourse" if Twin Galaxies didn't rescind its decision and reinstate Mitchell's scores.
But court filings obtained by Ars Technica show that Mitchell had already filed suit against Twin Galaxies in a Los Angeles County court as early as April 2019.
Mitchell's defamation lawsuit—misfiled as "William James Mitchell vs. Twin Galexies, LLC [sic]" and not reported in previous press accounts—has been slowly building to a planned July anti-SLAPP hearing, where Twin Galaxies will make use of a statute that lets defendants quickly strike down lawsuits that threaten "public participation." Twin Galaxies says in court filings that its statements regarding Mitchell's scores were not defamatory and that finding in Mitchell's favor "would have chilling effects on the freedom of speech."
"My law firm and I are fully confident that we will establish a prima face [sic] case for all parts of the lawsuit," Mitchell told Ars Technica in a Twitter Direct Message.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2020, @03:52PM (1 child)
That's why we make it so expensive - to keep justice free of poor people stuff and concentrate on things that matter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2020, @04:19PM
We make it expensive, because it is expensive to have the related officers of the court and attorneys investigating what happened in an effort to get a result that approximates a just outcome. Any system is going to have mistakes made and miscarriages of justice, but minimizing that requires resources. We could save a ton of money by just throwing out the safeguards, but I don't really think that people would really like to live in a country like that.
Requiring that expenditures be appropriate to the case before being awarded legal fees is part of how that's handled. Another is to require the losing party to pay. I'd like to see limits placed on things related to guessing or manipulating the jurors. Hiring consultants to help interpret the evidence is legitimate, hiring consultants to try and manipulate the jurors should be illegal.