p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- “One of my young readers, ‘Michael’, who is a law student, posted a comment yesterday suggesting that the order Judge Davis issued was actually a standard form,” says Ray Beckerman on Recording Industry vs The People.

He’s referring to his statement,  yesterday, that judge Michael Davis, presiding over the latest Jammie Thomas  trial,  “really does get it!”

He continued »»»

If there were any doubt left in anybody`s mind as to whether District Judge Michael J. Davis, the extraordinary judge who presided over the ill fated October, 2007, first trial in Capitol Records v. Thomas, finally gets it about whom he is dealing with, and the toxic effect the RIAA, Matthew Oppenheim, and their legal team have had, and that doubt has not yet been removed by:

-his sua sponte calling a penalty on himself, and noting that the RIAA lawyers had failed to call to his attention controlling contrary 8th Circuit authority;

-his setting aside of the verdict due to that RIAA-created error;

-his noting in his decision setting aside the verdict that the outlandish size of the verdict was absurd, and calling upon Congress to prevent any similar recurrences; and

-his scheduling a two-day settlement conference for March 30th and 31st .

all doubt should now be removed, by an order which he signed on February 25th, and which was filed by the Clerk today, laying out the parameters of the March 30th-March 31st settlement conference:

But, “I reacted vituperatively to Michael, saying that based on my 35 years of litigation experience, it was not a standard form,”Beckerman now says, continuing »»»

As it turns out Michael was right, and I was wrong; it is a standard form commonly used in Minnesota’s federal court for settlement conferences.

None of my 35 years of litigation experience have been in Minnesota.

I apologize to Michael and all of my other readers, and I thank Michael and those other readers, here and on Slashdot, who corrected me.

Moral of that story: don’t hesitate to question ‘authority even when the ‘authority’ has 35 years of experience on you.

Meanwhile, Beckerman adds, “as to the substance of the order, standard form or not, the record companies will have to produce ‘officers’ or ‘managing agents’ with decision making ‘power’.

“That still means Mr. [Matthew] Oppenheim cannot call the shots on this one.”

Which is what it was all about in the first place.

Jon  Newton -  p2pnet

March, 2009

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 1:19 pm and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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