Thread by @AkivaMCohen

The decision in the Laura Loomer fee application is out. She got tagged for 123K. Let's take a look

Reminder of how we got here. Twitter banned Loomer (because she's incredibly awful and an Islamophobe). Loomer, as one does, sued CAIR, alleging that they conspired with Twitter to have her banned.

Florida law lets parties make an "offer of judgment" - basically, "I'll stipulate to a judgment in the amount of [insert dollars] if you will" - and says "if the other party denies it, and you do better than that as an end result, they have to pay your fees"

CAIR took advantage of that law and made Loomer what I assume was an extreme lowball offer ($1? $.01?) that she rejected. Then she went and lost a motion to dismiss, meaning she didn't beat the offer. So they asked for their attorneys fees

Loomer opposed, arguing that the statute didn't apply, because she was also seeking equitable relief and the offer of judgment would have required her to dismiss those claims. (i.e. it wasn't just money). And that brings us to this decision

This is also the case in which Ron Coleman (representing Loomer) somehow wasn't receiving notice of the filings, and got his heads up that Loomer had blown the original opposition date from LawTwitter pointing it out to him.

The court then runs through the basics of the Florida offer of judgment statute and its requirements, and notes that the CAIR offer met them (which Loomer didn't challenge).

The court decides to walk through the details of how it met those elements anyway, but, um ...

So now the analysis. The highlighted part looks bad for CAIR (spoiler, it wasn't) and like bad policy. If so, every plaintiff in FL should be including meritless claims for injunctive relief just to avoid an offer of judgment. That can't be right! (or, really, complete)

And it isn't. Basically, Florida seems to have a doctrine that prevents such pretextual claims for equitable relief; if what you're really after is money, just adding an equitable claim doesn't get you out of the offer of judgment statute.

This seems like a recipe for confusion (he says, without bothering to do even basic research into what this means in practice, because we're about to get a tutorial). Let's see how it plays out!

So ... yeah. Every claim against CAIR alleged pecuniary harm and sought damages. The prayer for relief sought damages, reformation of Twitter's TOS <gigglesnortguffaw>, and an injunction against doing it again. I can see where this is going already.

CAIR can't reform Twitter's TOS (so that equitable claim isn't against them), and there's no future conduct to enjoin (she's already banned, they can't get her banned again). So what's the equitable claim against them?

I'll be honest, the "you never asked for a TRO" thing doesn't bug me, because CAIR wasn't doing anything while the case was ongoing.

Except, I guess, she never moved for a TRO against Twitter requiring that they let her back on? How could they not have?

Yeah, that'll do it; you can't seriously be seeking injunctive relief without Twitter

And that's that. The rest of this is just pulling out the calculators and figuring out Loomer's tab

Which is ... not cheap.

Frivolous litigation should always include checkbooks at the ready, kids.

/fin

Coda: I've been informed that the offer was $0.25 per plaintiff (i.e. $.50 total) from each of the two CAIR defendants.

They offered her $1. She should have taken it and RUN.