Man Who Tangled With The Oatmeal Ordered To Pay $46k 68
Last summer we followed the odd case of lawyer Charles Carreon, as he went after Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal webcomic, with legal threats. Carreon had been hired by FunnyJunk, a website Inman accused of stealing his comics. Carreon demanded $20,000 in compensation for Inman's "false accusations." Inman declined, and then used the publicity to solicit over $200,000 in donations, which he gave to charity after sending Carreon photographs. Carreon dropped the suit against Inman, but the saga continued. A satirical website was set up about Carreon, which caused him to invoke the legal system again. The article documents the absurdities, which included further legal action and a song. Now, however, Carreon is reaping what he has sown; a judge has ordered him to pay over $46,000 for his role in the legal circus.
Re:Now we can call it... (Score:5, Interesting)
It actually specifically disclaims any interest in dispensing justice. Ask any lawyer or judge: they'll make clear that their goal is to ensure compliance with the law, and that there is little to no room for being "just".
The Supreme Court "Justices", in particular, like to imagine themselves as "calling balls and strikes", regardless of whether the resulting judgment matches anybody's notion of justice.
There is one dimension of justice in everybody following the same law, but only one of many. And given that the law is frequently vague or contradictory, such that even the judges disagree on the "balls and strikes" they're supposedly calling, it seems to me that in many cases it's the least just of those dimensions.
I would propose that the next time a "Justice" declares himself to be "calling balls and strikes", that we rename his title to "Umpire", as "justice" is orthogonal to his self-defined description.
Charles Carreon (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a lawyer, so don't take legal advise from me, however, I have been following this story from the beginning and there are two things I get from all of this is: don't piss off the Internet and Charles Carreon is possibly a really bad lawyer.
He and his wife (To a lessor extent), have taken a blog posting by person with a serious and legitimate issue with someone stealing his hard work and managed to fold it into a substantially career damaging blunder. Every time Charles Carreon speaks, I just dislike him more and more and would advise him to hire him as a lawyer. How he continues to get any more cases is really beyond me. Two seconds with Google would demonstrate that this guy is possible off his rocker or a really bad lawyer.