In January, a federal judge in Dallas imposed $10,000 in sanctions on the Texas-based lawyer Evan Stone and required him to pay $22,040 in attorneys' fees. Mr. Stone, in his zeal to get the names of those who illegally downloaded a German porn flick Der Gute Onkel, had knowingly sent out subpoenas without the court's permission.
From The Wall Street Journal:
U.S. District Judge David Godbey used words like "wanton" and "grave" to describe Mr. Stone's conduct. The judge accused Mr. Stone of transforming the use of subpoenas "from a bona fide state-sanctioned inspection into private snooping."
Mr. Stone appealed the sanction to the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit swept Mr. Stone's arguments aside, saying he never raised them in the lower court so they weren't preserved for appeal. The court was unsparing in its criticism of Mr. Stone:
No miscarriage of justice will result from the sanctions imposed as a result of Stone's flagrant violation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the district court's orders. Stone committed those violations as an attempt to repeat his strategy of suing anonymous internet users for allegedly downloading pornography illegally, using the powers of the court to find their identity, then shaming or intimidating them into settling for thousands of dollars, a tactic that he has employed all across the state and that has been replicated by others across the country.
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