And the various judge's legal authority to sua sponte freeze all Hansmeier/Steele/Prenda accounts derives from where?
Actually, this gnashing of teeth over where Prenda is hiding its money is really an overstated concern. Most of the sanction dollars doled out have either been paid or are bonded such that payment is guaranteed once the appeals are exhausted.
I would guess Prenda will end up paying a larger percentage than do most judgment debtors.
I wouldn't expect much from the various Bars or 'Ethics committees' they run, their first and primary drive is going to be to protect lawyers, any lawyers, and by that protect the profession, so the odds of them doing anything about Steele and co, like, say, revoking their licences, is probably pretty low, given how useless the Bar Associations are at protecting anyone but their own.
Not true. About 750-1000 attorneys get disbarred every year. An additional 2-3 times that amount are suspended from practicing law.
What the techdirt author fails to note for readers is that in the context of a motion to dismiss in federal court, the court accepts all of the facts of the complaint as true and then decides whether, given all those facts, the plaintiff would have a case. A defendant can't successfully argue that a given fact alleged in the complaint is not true (with rare exception). A motion to dismiss is sort of a threshold test: Given everything that Plaintiff alleges, do we even have a controversy that needs to proceed to discovery and trial?
So Steele's arguments sound funny because it would be counterproductive for him to argue that he didn't do x or y when the complaint alleges x or y. Instead, as with most motions to dismiss, he is left to argue that what the complaint alleges is not even a cause of action.
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Re:
And the various judge's legal authority to sua sponte freeze all Hansmeier/Steele/Prenda accounts derives from where?
Actually, this gnashing of teeth over where Prenda is hiding its money is really an overstated concern. Most of the sanction dollars doled out have either been paid or are bonded such that payment is guaranteed once the appeals are exhausted.
I would guess Prenda will end up paying a larger percentage than do most judgment debtors.
Re: Re:
Not true. About 750-1000 attorneys get disbarred every year. An additional 2-3 times that amount are suspended from practicing law.
Motion to dismiss
What the techdirt author fails to note for readers is that in the context of a motion to dismiss in federal court, the court accepts all of the facts of the complaint as true and then decides whether, given all those facts, the plaintiff would have a case. A defendant can't successfully argue that a given fact alleged in the complaint is not true (with rare exception). A motion to dismiss is sort of a threshold test: Given everything that Plaintiff alleges, do we even have a controversy that needs to proceed to discovery and trial?
So Steele's arguments sound funny because it would be counterproductive for him to argue that he didn't do x or y when the complaint alleges x or y. Instead, as with most motions to dismiss, he is left to argue that what the complaint alleges is not even a cause of action.