it's lawsuit time
Today is the 15th anniversary of the time that a particularly dim lawyer threatened to sue me over his use of 'reply all', just in time for Christmas.
Here's how things went. I was a member of a mailing list, and so was the lawyer in question. The legal pigeon had two very bad habits: offering extremely erroneous opinions as fact, and hitting 'reply all' to list messages. The offering extremely erroneous opinions part meant that I would, on occasion, correct him. The reply all part meant that he'd attempt to defend his idiocy, and would do so by sending replies both to the list and directly to me, so I'd get a double-dose of his mindlessness. I requested that he stop hitting reply all. He replied that this was his 'policy'. I started bouncing the post sent directly to me back to him, with a copy to his ISP and a note asking his ISP to please educate him about proper email etiquette.
The mindless one didn't like that. He really didn't like that. He sent off missives to the list-moms demanding my real name and address; the list-moms pointed out that they had no clue as to either. He sent off additional missives to my then ISP, also demanding my real name and address. They contacted me, asking what this was about, I told them, they did nothing further. He sent off a message to me demanding my real name and address, and stating that he was preparing a lawsuit which he would win, as he was, after all, a lawyer and I was not. I replied pointing out that he'd have a slight bit of a problem doing that, as I was not in the United States at the time, and that he should know this, given that my ISP's name quite clearly indicated the country were I was. He'd have to come to said country and convince the courts that he had a right to hit reply all and none could stop him. I also pointed out that he should have known that my ISP was not in the US, as he'd sent email to them, or didn't he even bother to read the address of those he was mailbombing? I cced that note to his ISP and to the California State Bar Association Ethics Committee, with a note asking the Ethics Committee if the canons of law in California allowed members of the bar to threaten lawsuits to get their way even in the most trivial of matters. And what the mindless one didn't know was that while I wasn't a lawyer, I did handle the IT work for a local law firm, and I also cced to one of the partners, who sent the mindless one a note, snail-mailed using registered mail (the mindless one put his mailing address in the sig of all his posts to the mailing list), indicating the firm's readiness to defend me should the mindless one file in the proper jurisdiction and requesting that all future correspondence on this matter be sent, in writing, and not by email, to my legal representation. And no, I didn't have to pay so much as a penny. The partner in question thought that the mindless one was a 'useless excrescence upon the body of the legal profession' and that the likes of him should be stomped on, hard, for free, for the good of the profession. The snail-mailed note made the partner's opinion quite clear.
I was a member of the mailing list for two more years. The mindless one did not reply to any of my posts for those two years, despite my correcting several of his more idiotic statements during that time. I am given to understand that he stopped hitting reply all when replying to list mail. And he also cut back, considerably, on the number of posts he made. See, it is possible to educate even the dimmest of persons, if only you hit them hard enough, often enough, and with a big enough hammer.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
