Jess Miers 🦝 Profile picture
Law Professor @AkronLaw 🦘 | Teaching torts, writing about tech and speech 🤖 | meme docent

Mar 9, 2023, 12 tweets

Hello -- I interrupt the past two weeks of ranting about SCOTUS and #Section230 to bring you this *really freaking important* piece of legal scholarship by @ericgoldman.

This article pissed me off and I hope it pisses you off too. Welcome to Jess after dark🧵

What if told you that there's an emerging popular litigation scheme that involves throwing as many defendants into a complaint as a Plaintiff can think of regardless of cause, jurisdiction, or the basic rules of civil procedure?

(we're talking like hundreds of defendants)

What if I told you that those same plaintiffs don't typically incur additional costs for this throw-defendants-at-the-wall scheme?

In fact what if I told you that plaintiffs are usually rewarded for their chaotic evil behavior?

AND what if I told you that plaintiffs actually have a ton of incentives to engage in the scheme because most of the time, judges never bother to assess improper joinder, service of process, or jurisdiction of every single 'Schedule A' defendant?

often resulting in an ex parte TRO or a straight up default judgment...

Worse, what if I told you that you yourself might be a Schedule A defendant and you just don't know it yet because Judges typically allow plaintiffs to SEPARATELY SEAL THE SCHEDULE A LIST OF DEFENDANTS..............

This is literally litigation via DDOS.

Anyway, you might say, Jess that's ridiculous. We have rules for a reason. Surely, you're exaggerating.

SURELY I AM NOT 👇

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

This is not only happening, it's TRENDING.

So, the next time you hear someone assert that the U.S. should embrace and adopt EU / UK Internet regulations, bring up this paper as the ultimate display of FUCKERY that is the U.S. litigation system.

EU litigation is child's play by comparison.

I have waited so long to bring this article to y'alls attention. Pls read and not enjoy.

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