Thread by @KathrynTewson

So, about that. . .

For the old #Threadnought crew, NEW FILINGS!

What's this that just showed up on the old Mignogna v. Funimation, et al. docket down in the 141st District Court in Tarrant County, TX?

Why, it's a Motion to Compel Vic's Post-Judgment Discovery Responses!

Let's take a look.

drive.google.com/file/d/1JeXiEQ…

But first, a little background. As we know, Vic filed the SLAPPiest of SLAPP suits against Funimation, Inc., Monica Rial, Ron Toye, and Jamie Marchi way back in April 2019.
drive.google.com/file/d/1J8bhhk…

It, uh, didn't go well for him, and after six months of the loudest and most inept litigation you've ever seen, all his claims were dismissed with prejudice. drive.google.com/file/d/1qiH0lg…

In addition, he was assessed close to a quarter million dollars in fees and fines, of which just about fifty grand was due to @marchimark. drive.google.com/file/d/1H80GDZ…

So, naturally, rather than just pay what he owed and put the whole thing behind him, that motherfucker appealed. drive.google.com/file/d/1skLbHR…

That didn't go any better for him. The original judgment was affirmed, with the exception of the amount of Rial and Toye's fee award, which was remanded back to the trial court for redetermination. drive.google.com/file/d/1Uil3Tx…

The whole opinion is a banger, but it's long as hell, so here's the judgment itself.

But! That's just Monica and Ron's fees. Other parties don't have to wait for that redetermination to happen before they start looking to collect, and indeed they are not doing so.

Now, when you have to pay a court-ordered debt, you can do it the easy way or the hard way.

The easy way is to just suck it up and write the other party a check. Rip the bandaid off, you know it's gotta happen so you might as well get to it.

Orrrrr. . . you could, you know, NOT do that.

Guess which option Vic apparently chose?

Blowing off your obligations, though, that comes with consequences. And one of them is that the judgment creditor -- that's Jamie, in this case, for those of you following along at home -- gets to take post-judgment discovery to find out what your assets are.

And if the judgment debtor -- that's Vic Mignogna, anime voice actor, sex pest, and now deadbeat -- ALSO blows off his obligation to respond to those discovery requests? Well then the creditor gets to file a motion to compel his responses. And she has!

As an aside, remember when all of Vic's fans were like "Of course it makes sense to appeal! Why wouldn't you appeal?!" This is why. Vic now owes Jamie more than double what he would have owed if he had just paid her in 2019.

The appellate ruling was handed down last August, but Vic tried some Hail Mary moves including petitioning SCOTX (that's what added the extra 22.5K on his bill), so the judgment took a while to be ripe. But still, Jamie filed her PJD requests in May, almost three months ago.

Just before his responses were due, Vic asked for a little extra time to complete the requests, and Jamie agreed. This is very, very normal.

Side note: this would appear to stand as confirmation that the Beard has been shaved. Michael Martinez is signing for Vic, and the good old Beard and Harris Google-translated letterhead is nowhere to be seen.

What is not normal, however, is to then simply blow the deadline off entirely.

If you will indulge me, I'm going to take another little stroll down memory lane, back when Vic first filed discovery requests on the parties in this case. Rather than respond in full, Monica and Ron made partial responses and then objected to the rest. drive.google.com/file/d/1tE3Pkf…

This absolutely baffled @RekietaLaw at the time. He characterized the entire thing as "discovery abuse." That's what @SyronJag is referring to in the tweet I QT'ed at the top of this thread.

Well, Nick, here's your answer as to "why, why, why" someone would do that: because if you don't file your objections and seek relief from the court, you fucking WAIVE them.

Which means that now Jamie can walk right up to the Hon. John P. Chupp and ask him to *order* Vic to respond to the requests, in full, without any objections or limitations.

This is not a position I would personally like to be in anywhere. It is especially not a position I would like to be in in Texas, where creditors have access to especially deep and broad post-judgment discovery.

See, the normal process of discovery is that the party seeking the discovery goes big, and then the parties negotiate the requests inwards to arrive at a more limited scope. But Vic doesn't seem to have done any of that negotiation, and now he can't object.

That's kind of a bummer for him, because Jamie's requests are very thorough. Like, I've had obstetrical exams that weren't this thorough.
And this process, inevitably, is going to affect more people than just Vic.

Can anyone off the top of their head think of anyone who might have held anything of value on Vic's behalf, or who would have or have had custody any records of any money paid to Vic over the last five years?

I don't, unfortunately, have the resources to go through all the Requests for Production of Documents. That's partly because there's a lot of boilerplate and definitions (which are, again, *very* expansive), and partly because there are a hundred of them.

You can read them yourself; they're all attached to the motion to compel, which I will link here again for reference. drive.google.com/file/d/1JeXiEQ…

But I will make an exception for number 100, the very last one.

Get your popcorn ready, folks. This could be a fun one.