Holy shit this Apothio litigation funding scam @KyleWRoche is running - and yes, Kyle, it IS a scam, that's what you call it when you take advantage of unsophisticated people who don't know any better - just keeps getting worse and worse the more I look at it.
See this?
There is no legitimate litigation funder in the world who will fund on these terms.
None.
Funders get paid first. That's how litigation funding works. Their initial investment is first money out. Then their litigation return. THEN the lawyers get paid.
In Kyle's version, the rubes who invest are not first money out.
Not even their initial capital outlay.
They come out AFTER the lawyers and AFTER unfunded litigation expenses.
This is being pitched to people who don't know how litigation funding works; nobody who does would ever invest on these terms.
There's nobody gatekeeping these fees. And the law firm has zero incentive to minimize them
I can't even begin to tell you how gross this is; you're telling me that if you get a 300M award and walk away with a 99.3M contingency fee, you're going to nickel-and-dime your investors by paying expenses *before* calculating their return? What the fuck?
Oh my God you absolute piece of shit
Do you see what they're doing?
1) If this case gets dismissed and the litigation funding doesn't need to be deployed to cover expenses ... they keep 20% of it anyway. Why? Just because.
2) If the claim pays off & funders don't step up to collect within a year ... they lose it
Ha ... unless there's another term in the agreement that expressly gives the company unfettered discretion, this provision arguably bars them from settling on any terms that would provide less than 100% investment return.
Gonna skip ahead to schedule I; I want to see what that return looks like
This is all just horrifying. There's no contingent upside at all - just a multiple return.
Typically, a litigation funder gets "the greater of [x%] or [YMultiple]". Here, your max recovery is 3.5x, and only if your money is locked up for more than 3 years.
Oh, also, in a sign of a well drafted agreement, there IS NO "CLOSING DATE". So looks like your max recovery is 2X
The definitions section says the closing date will be defined in section 4(a)(6). One problem: There's no such section
On the plus side, section 4(a) says they have 60 days from the Closing Date to get you your token. Since the Closing Date doesn't exist, that deadline is also meaningless
Oh holy shit, these fuckweasels don't even have a meaningful notification procedure for their funders; they're going to make announcements on crypto news sites. Hope you find them before the time to make a claim runs out
Definitely want to include a non-reliance representation from a buyer whose only ability to conduct due diligence on the litigation is to review and rely on your representations about the underlying facts
If it seems like I'm furious over this it's only because I'm fucking fuming. These lawyers are going to be taking advantage of people who don't know any better. "Invest in a potential billion dollar lawsuit" sounds great to a certain class of idiot. This is a grift.
Seriously. @KyleWRoche, @VelvelFreedman, and everyone else associated with this nonsense should be hanging their heads in absolute shame. You're fucking lawyers. You have ethical duties. Don't take advantage of people who lack the background to catch it, guys. This is wrong.
And yeah, I imagine the pile of money you'll end up sleeping on will soothe any ethical qualms you have, if you have them.
It shouldn't.
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Weird, because the anti-Jewish riots and massacres in the early 20th century and the insistence on preventing Jewish immigration, including during the holocaust, seems to say otherwise.
But maybe this is a new development. If so, a shame it came too late
Hey, #LitigationDisasterTourists, let's talk about this defamation suit for a minute. Moss and Freeman were the GA election workers on Rudy's CCTV video with the "suitcases" that were "under the table". They're now suing OAN, its owners, and Rudy for defamation
This is a lawsuit that will need to clear the "actual malice" bar. They were election workers performing a government function (counting ballots); commentary on that type of thing needs freedom to be vigorous. So defamation liability can only exist if they can prove1 of 2 things:
1) OAN & Rudy actually knew that the things they were broadcasting about Freeman and Moss were false.
2) OAN & Rudy didn't know for certain they were false but subjectively had serious doubts about whether it was false.
OK, let's talk about this Alex Berenson complaint. It's a chonky boy, clocking in at 228 paragraphs and 70 pages, and I'm actually in quite a bit of pain at the moment (did something to my back) so this will definitely break across a few days. But we'll do our best
So this is a pretty straight up suit, Berenson v. Twitter. California requiring numbered pleading paper (those numbers down the side) is an abomination, but it's always nice to see the causes of action laid out up front. What are they?
Like all good litigators, Berenson's team leads with his strongest argument, which is ... that a private company violated the First Amendment
OK, litigation disaster tourists, time to look at John Eastman's lawsuit to stop Verizon from turning his communications metadata over to the January 6 Committee
We'll roll through his arguments, but here's the tl;dr:
This complaint is the legal equivalent of flop sweat - dude is *terrified*, and I look forward to the country finding out exactly why.
Eastman is suing both the January 6 Committee (which issued the subpoena) for a declaration that the subpoena is invalid, and Verizon (to whom the subpoena was issued) for an injunction to stop it from complying
"this is not a hidden connection. All of you in this room and hopefully everyone within six degrees of separation from you knows that islamophobia is a well-funded conspiracy- a well-funded project, a well-funded project to marginalize us to imprison us to deport us to silence us
"they're afraid of our advocacy. They know that muslims fight for black lives matter ... and most importantly they know what my parents taught us that muslims fight for palestine that muslims will fight for a free palestine and so they must come after us"