Posted on 09/24/2009 3:03:57 PM PDT by holy joe
ACORN has announced its lawsuit against filmmakers James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, and columnist Andrew Breitbart for what it alleges was "illegal videotaping" of ACORN employees in Baltimore. So the head of the group has gone from blasting the filmmakers, then praising them for helping ACORN uncover corruption, to now, suing them.
The suit was filed in the Circuit Court in Baltimore where sympathetic juries are available. In addition, ACORN wants preliminary and permanent injunctions to stop any other pesky videotapes from coming out. It also is seeking damages that could be as high as $7 million.
The video shows now-fired ACORN employees giving tax advice to O'Keefe and Giles, who are posing, as their minimal costume budget will allow, as a pimp and a prostitute.
ACORN has a dream team of four major mouthpieces: Andy Freeman, A. Dwight Pettit, Arthur Schwartz, and C. Justin Brown.
The group and their attorneys are going to regret filing this lawsuit.
So far, ACORN employees have been featured on videos assisting criminal behavior in three other states and Washington, D.C. This suit, by necessity, is only for the Maryland recordings.
ACORN is going to try to nail the defendants on Courts and Judicial Proceedings Code sections 10-402(a) and 10-410, which require two-party consent to all electronic surveillance.
But the suit will open ACORN up to cross-complaints and a broad discovery process that will include the production of e-mails, correspondence, memos and internal documents, as well as depositions of employees. Haven’t these people ever heard of Whitewater and Ken Starr?
O’Keefe and company will have a powerful procedural move to make...
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Hopefully all videos are in the possession of well, news outlets! Haha show them before court date, leak them..whatever it takes.
Last night on Greta’s show she was most gleeful in explaining to Tucker Carlson what this would mean, DISCOVERY!
“Acorn show us all your e-mails, phone records, all you personnel records and all your contributors. All contacts you have had with all White House personnel since and including Clinton.”
Greta also said she wished it was her that ACORN was suing.
I am as happy with this as she is!
Yep, that was the money quote from the piece.
A former ACORN board member, Marcel Reid, who was kicked out of the organization last year for trying to look into the group’s accounting, summed the situation up well: “If we’d known all it took was a half-naked 20-year-old, we’d have done this a year and a half ago.”
good discussion of the law here: http://www.rightgrrl.com/tripp/woods.html
It looks to me that what the kids did was legal because the law talks about (third party) “intercepted” communication, not communication that you are having youself.
On a previous link ref: linda tripp, only intercepted audio/video’s are illegal. That’s why the case was thrown out I believe. This imho is a stall tactic.
>>I would expect the first thing Acorn does is request the judge put a seal on all discovery. So we may have to wait for our popcorn.<<
Unless it is personally identifiable info, there is no basis. The MSM will be screaming if such an order is issued and will probably file suit immediately. The MSM is in acorn’s corner, but there is no way they will let a juicy scandal just go by.
Yes Breitbart has said they have more to come.
BTW, ACORN will not regret this as they will drop their suit prior to discovery. This is just harrassment on ACORN’s part, but they are surely not so stupid to allow this to get to discovery.
And then they will paint themselves as magnanimous.
Micheal Moore does it as well. Do you see how shrill the left gets when he does it...
I saw that too! She said she was jealous because she didn’t have the case. Sour note: tucker noted that acorn used breitbart’s home address rather than business. They are dirty rotten.
>>It looks to me that what the kids did was legal because the law talks about (third party) “intercepted” communication, not communication that you are having youself.<<
Excellent post and link.
People should read the whole thing, but IMHO, this is the “money shot”:
>>Again we also have two elements to show:
1. The person “intercepting” or “acquiring” the communication as a party to the communication. Clearly, Tripp was a party to the communication with Lewinsky.
And,
2. All parties to the communication have given prior consent to “interception” or “acquisition.” This element is also satisfied because Lewinsky voluntarily was talking to Tripp, knew she was talking to Tripp, and directed her communications at Tripp over the telephone system and knew Tripp was “listening to” or “acquiring” her communication. Lewinsky never objected to Tripp listening to her communication. Of course, Tripp consented to the acquisition therefore all parties consented to the acquisition.<<
Substitute “O’Keefe and Giles” for “Tripp” and “acorn” for “Lewinsky” and it is pretty clear what way this has to go. The conversation does not have to be via an electronic medium to be “acquired.” The acorn people were engaged in a voluntary conversation.
Besides, acorn thinks it will get 2 million from a couple of twentysomethings?
Didn’t ACORN say that they knew that it was being recorded and they just played along?
Exactly, that is an angle I had not thought of yet. This suit will keep at least a few of their most gulible fans/supporters on board thinking ACORN was somehow wronged. And you are right they will claim to be being the good guy when they drop this suit to avoid discovery in a few months.
One of the billionaires who started PayPal and then invested in Facebook gave them some of the money to get ACORN filmed. I would think they are in good financial hands.
Thanks for posting the link.
Any word from the Landmark Legal Foundation?
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