Tips for dealing with scumbag lawyers
After my brush with a frivolous lawsuit, here are the best ways to deal with scumbag lawyers
I have good news to report. My brush with a near frivolous lawsuit is over. Last Friday, while I was at dinner, I made a new friend: Holly Gilani from the law firm of Hess & Verdon.
I’m still hoping for Christmas dinner, but for now, there won’t be a lawsuit.
On Friday, she sent me this wonderful email.
Mr. Volpe,
It has come to our attention that you have been disseminating false and derogatory statements relating to our clients, Mr. and Mrs. Faramarz Rahimi. A copy of the false statements are attached hereto and can be located at the following link: https://michaelvolpe.substack.com/p/michael-volpe-investigates-podcast-155
Demand is hereby made that you immediately cease and desist from making any such statements in the future and to immediately retract any such statements including the statements set forth in the attachment hereto. Your failure to comply with this demand will result in legal action taken against you and for any and all damages allowed to the full extent of the law.
Holly attached a screenshot of a text message which she insisted was defamatory.
The problem, as I noted in a subsequent article, is that I did not write the text message. I didn’t receive it, and frankly, I don’t know who the sender or recipient are. All I could discern was that there was 914 number on the text message.
Because I am so charming, I finally got Holly to see things my way. On Wednesday, we continued our flirtatious conversation when Holly informed me.
Mr. Volpe,
As a follow up to my email copied below, I just read the blog on your website indicating that you did not send the text message that I forwarded to you previously.
If you did not disseminate the text message or any other false statements regarding our client, Mr. Faramarz Rahimi, please confirm same and we will be happy retract our cease and desist communication addressed to you.
Best Regards,
I think Holly may have a crush on me because I had to tell her three times that I didn’t write the text message before she finally left me alone.
Holly, how many times do I need to answer the same question? I didn't write the text message. Nor did I receive it.
Stick to probate law. Hopefully, you are more apt with it. Tell your client I said hi.
Holly, I might date you.
{Check out the original article which started this brouhaha here}
In dealing with Holly- and other lawyers like her- I have learned a few things.
If you have a paid membership, you can get the benefit of my wisdom.
The law is written in English, and it means what it says.
The problem many lawmen have is that they assume that lawyers are smarter about the law, and they give up before anything happens.
Lawyers make threats; you can’t afford a lawyer, and it feels like a David V Goliath fight.
That may be so, but before you give up, I suggest you take a deep breath, relax, and remember that the law is written in English.
It means what is on the page.
One example of this lesson came in 2021, with another scumbag lawyer, Joel Hirschhorn. He sent me this lovely email.
Please see the attached Order. Kindly comply with paragraph 5. You are on notice.
Joel was kind enough to attach the order in question. All I had to do was count to five for each paragraph and see how I should comply. Before that, Joel continued with the threats.
Mr. Volpe,
I have no power over you, but you obviously read the Injunction and for better or worse you are on Notice.
I suggest you contact an attorney who will enlighten you as to the narrow exception to the First Amendment when it comes to protecting minors and their identity.
I am merely the messenger.
If I freaked out, I may have agreed to something I did not need to agree to. So, let’s look at paragraph five.
This dispute had to do with an article and interview I did with Eric Satin, a victim of the Miami-Dade family court system. Check out the interview below. Eric comes on about forty-two minutes in.
One other thing I should mention. The law can often be mind numbingly technical, using words like pursuant, hereto, and wherefore, so you may need to read it slowly and more than once. You may even need to look up definitions of words.
If you look above at paragraph five, you can see the order does not require me to do anything. It only requires Eric to ask me to do something. There is a question whether an order from a divorce to which I am not a party can require me to do anything, but that is legal analysis, and I will leave that for lawyers.
The plain language demands that Eric ask me to remove any information regarding his case. I am not required to do anything.
I ignored Mr. Hirschhorn and then Megan Fox and I had some fun at his expense. We start talking about him five minutes in.
{Pick up a Miami Family Court Mafia t-shirt.}
In another case, I received a subpoena by email.
The first thing you’ll notice is that my address is merely Chicago, Illinois, like I own the whole city. That’s probably because the attorney didn’t know my address beside the city and state.
Can a subpoena issued in Ohio be legally served on someone in Illinois? Here is that portion of the law.
(F) Subpoena for a hearing or trial. At the request of any party, subpoenas for attendance at a hearing or trial shall be issued by the clerk of the court in which the hearing or trial is held. A subpoena requiring the attendance of a witness at a hearing or trial may be served at any place within this state. {emphasis mine}
The plain language of the statute says that a subpoena can only be issued within the State of Ohio.
I ignored the subpoena and heard nothing more.
Many lawyers are bullies
This is advice you have to be careful with because not all lawyers are bullies.
That said, there is only one way to deal with a bully: stand up to them. Let’s take the lovely and talented Ms. Gilani.
As I noted, the dispute centered around a text message. I didn’t write it so there is no case, but would she really sue over a text message?
Technically, she is right that a text message is, “disseminating false information to third parties,” as she noted in another email.
So what? Are you really going to sue over a text message? I guess we won’t know, unless she sues the person who sent it, but I’d really like to attend the portion of the trial where she talks about damages from a text message.
Last year, I received an equally frivolous legal threat from another scummy attorney, Raj Matani.
He continued.
In this case, the dispute centered on this article, where I quoted verbatim his client, Bryan Mineo, in a deposition.
Raj was actually threatening to sue me for taking a screenshot of a deposition.
That was ridiculous, but Raj also acted like a bully. In the span of an hour, not only did he send me a cease-and-desist letter, but he also left me a cease-and-desist voicemail.
That might be overkill. I dealt with him like one is supposed to deal with a bully; I stood up to him.
Mr. Matani,
As you know, your client and his swimming prowess have been featured in several publications. As such, he is considered a limited purpose public figure for the purposes of any potential lawsuit which means he would need to prove defamation by actual malice, a near impossible standard. Furthermore, California passed anti-SLAPP legislation for exactly these kinds of situations, and California's anti-SLAPP statute is among the toughest in the nation. It provides a quick path to dismissal and I can then collect legal fees from you and your client. It even provides a SLAPP Back provision which may also be an option.
I have however added your dispute of the salary to the end of the article. That is all I will change unless you'd like me to reprint the entire letter.
Remarkably, his client, later that same evening, left me a voicemail, now asking for a phone conference.
Mineo and Raj quickly backed down: like bullies do when you stand up to them.
All proper cease and desist letters have several elements
This is no secret. There are plenty of websites which explain all the proper elements of a cease-and-desist letter.
In the case of defamation, it includes the allegedly defamatory parts and any consequences for non-action.
That’s where Jeff Silence went astray.
The original article which Mr. Silence complains about is here. Mr. Silence never provided any consequences for non-action. As such, I ignored it.
A proper cease and desist letter will also have evidence that parts of what you have written or said is defamatory.
In 2019, I made, arguably, the worst mistake of my career in an article about an Illinois judge named John Dalton.
I made several factual statements about an Illinois lawyer named Kathleen Doyen which weren’t accurate.
Her brother, Michael Doyen served me with a comprehensive letter the next day.
All the evidence he referred to was indeed attached, and so this, unlike the other letters, was one I needed to deal with. We issued a clarification on top of the article later that day.
There, I was lucky not to be sued.
Anti-SLAPP can be your best friend
SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. As the reader may have noticed, I have cited it twice- to Ms. Milani and to Raj.
Anti-SLAPP protects people from frivolous lawsuits, when the first amendment is involved.
Robbie Harvey is currently planning on using anti-SLAPP in his defense against Allan Kassenoff.
The federal lawsuit brought by New York attorneys Allan Kassenoff and Constantine Gus Dimopoulos against Robert “Robbie” Harvey, a social media influencer with 3.1 million TikTok followers, may turn on whether it is an illegal SLAPP suit.
Filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Kassenoff and Dimopoulus’s lawsuit claims Harvey’s TikTok videos are grounds for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, tortious interference with a business relationship, cyberstalking, and harassment.
They seek $150 million in damages.
Harvey’s attorney, Jonathan Davidoff, plans to mount an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) defense, arguing the lawsuit is a meritless or frivolous legal action to suppress freedom of speech.
There are currently thirty-three states which have anti-SLAPP laws.
The Reporters Committee for Free Press has a lot of good material on anti-SLAPP. While it definitely protects reporters, anti-SLAPP can protect anyone, depending on how broad it is.
If you write an AVVO review, a Yelp review, or another review of this sort, you can be the subject of a defamation lawsuit.
If the anti-SLAPP statute is broad enough, it will protect you, even in the case of an AVVO review.
That’s the case in California, where the statute is broad and protects most forms of free speech.
In California, if you believe you are the victim of a SLAPP suit, you can file an anti-SLAPP motion. The lawsuit stops until that motion is heard by a judge.
Not all states have broad anti-SLAPP laws. Anti-slapp.org rates each state’s anti-SLAPP laws. Nebraska is rated a D by this site. Here is more from the Reporters Committee on Free Speech.
The Nebraska anti-SLAPP law is narrow. It only protects defendants in lawsuits involving public petition and participation. Neb. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 25-21, 243(1) (2019). A lawsuit involving public petition and participation means a lawsuit brought by a “public applicant or permittee” that is “materially related to any efforts of the defendant to report on, comment on, rule on, challenge, or oppose the application or permission[.]”§ 25-21, 242(1). A “public applicant or permittee” is defined as “any person who has applied for or obtained a permit, zoning change, lease, license, certificate, or other entitlement for use or permission to act from any government body or any person with an interest, connection, or affiliation with such person that is materially related to such application or permission.” § 25-21, 242(4).
Although the law does not specifically provide for a special anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss, if a court considers a motion to dismiss an action involving public petition and participation, it must expedite and grant preference in hearing the motion. § 25-21, 245.
Nebraska’s law does not address whether an anti-SLAPP motion suspends discovery proceedings.
I would personally favor that all states model their anti-SLAPP on California.
