Legal Commentary

Two more interesting procedural points on the "Bush Lied, They Died" t-shirts lawsuit.

First, there is a nice personal jurisdiction question here. Frazier lives in Arizona and runs his company from there, selling his products via the web. The lawsuit was brought in Tennessee (the plaintiffs' home state) and most of the complaint is devoted to jurisdictional allegations showing the defendant's contacts with Tennessee.

Second, on a closer look at the amended complaint, I noticed the following: In the paragraph immediately after the reference to the "mentally-challenged monkey," the plaintiffs state that they are amending the damages request by bringing this as a class action, "[a]s a result of defendants, jointly and severally, stating that they are ?not worried? about this litigation." Then, after laying out the ridiculous amount the class is seeking, the complaint states "[e]ven the aforesaid 'mentally-challenged monkey' should be worried about potential exposure in this amount."

In other words, after likening the defendant to a "mentally-challenged monkey," the amended complaint is asking for a ridiculous amount of damages solely in retaliation "as a result of" the defendant's media statements of confidence in the strength of his First Amendment defense and solely as a way to make the defendant worried. Hmmm. Doesn't Rule 11 prohibit pleading for "improper purposes"? And doesn't it require factual allegations (including damages requests) to have some evidentiary basis?

Obviously, these rules are not and should not be so rigidly enforced. And nothing is as clean as we like to present it in first-year Civ Pro. But how often do we see a complaint that so blatantly flaunts most of the basic rules in setting out a complaint?