Posted by panch in a gungle from ? (64.79.4.3) on Thursday, May 16, 2002 at 10:42AM :
...about bringing a lawsuit against a guy like Jeff Atto...knowing full well that there are no grounds for it. About as ugly as alerting the police to keep an eye on a woman's son...just because you can afford to file a complaint...one that doesn't stand. I didn't have to say a word...didn't have to even show up, to have the judge throw out the ridiculous notion that I was any kind of a threat to anyone's cars and children, in that order. And all this huffing and puffing about slander and defamation and how I can be stopped IMMEDIATELY..."just give us a couple of months"...is silly. If a permanent injunction will be issued in three months...why not get an immediate one today?
I could simply get a permit to demonstrate in public...this is still America...placing all and any of my gripes on a sign and march up and down in front of an office, a house or a Clubhouse. I could place placards on my car etc. The site was only shut down briefly because of a business decision made by the Hosting company, and I respect that...why should they get tangled up in this?
But if I can find other means...and I can always take to the streets...I can say almost all of what I have said, the rest could be turned to satire and innuendo and there isn't a damn thing to be done about it...and lawyers know that. This kind of speech is indeed protected...so long as I don't cause material damage, OR emotional harm arising from that material damage.
Say you are in a car accident...your rear end gets caved in pretty bad and you weep hysterically for the next three years whenever you see the back end of any car. You can't sue for the "emotional doodles" you suffer as a result of being so liable to coming unglued over a simple car accident.
If the same accident causes your car to burst into flames...and you get terribly burned...and you prove the driver who ran into you was drunk...and you win a judgement for actual loss and suffering...you can THEN sue also for emotional damamge because every sane person knows that having your face melted together would cause a "reasonable" person some emotional distress.
That same reasonable person is not going to award you a nickel if you weren't physically, or materially, damaged in some way...aside from having your car repairs paid for. You can't also sue because you were humiliated that day at the Country Club when you had to drive up in a bashed Rolls and your friends sniggered...and as a result of those sniggers you were not elected to the Ladies Tea Cozy Society...which resulted in your throwing yourself down on the lawn in front of the heads of the Shopping Committee...the Makeup Committee, and making a hysterical fool of yourself...which caused your daughter to be dropped from the Tennis Committee..and her cousin killed herself because she was so mortified when she lost the mixed doubles because HER cousin and partner was in the bushes so embarrassed by the endless chain of disasters that came from a fender bender...SHE was now insane and couldn't hold a tennis racquet...at which your husband...and on and on.
The whole purpose behind suing Jeff was not to STOP him from making these "attacks" possible. It takes nothing at all to set this place up and post fer chrissakes...any moron can do it. And if you're paid enough, any moron can READ all the posts as well. Jeff helped out with the pictures back when I wasn't up to snuff. Truth be told, my son Nara is rapidly becomming the kind of whiz kid at these things and helps far more than Jeff ever did. Luckily he is only fourteen and his allowance can't be seized.
So...what was the point? Same point to threatening John Pirali with "immediate doodles" if he didn't AT ONCE turn over any and all tapes he might have made of he and I in discusion. Now I ask you...who is trying to fool whom? Especially when you consider that John told everyone who called him that he'd be glad to send the tapes anywhere anyone wanted...where did they want them? And no one ever followed through on all their threats because the whole point was to legally intimidate and scare us with dire forecasts of wangdangdoodles...just as now.
The whole point is to PUNISH. To use money and what it buys...always that...to get the satisfaction they both know will not come from actually going before a jury. If Jeff can be made to distance himself from me...even if that makes no difference to anything...then it is a "victory"...proof that we are all really cowards and worthy of everyone's contempt. There is a rapidly dawning fear that I am not being shunned at all... quite the reverse, that people are willing to make their own minds up based on facts...on what was and is most likely to have been the truth...and this lawsuit against Jeff has further openned people's eyes.
That's why it has to be dropped like a hot potato now...if it was to have been of any benefit, it would have had to have had an immediate result...so the dirty tactic could be forgoten...and maybe I could be shown to now take off after Jeff..."see what he does to friends"! When I am not the one who turns on people for no cause. I think reasonable people, both in our community and outside of it, will appreciate the restraint I showed...the fact that I yelled at no one, fought with no one...once they hear the facts from all sides...and this is just what they are afraid of. This is why Jeff was sued and why people are being told not to buy from me and all else was done to me and my family...in hopes of getting me to behave in ways that could "prove" what a trouble maker and backstabber and how unstable I am etc.
It has already backfired. I imagine Jeff will have a lot of support among the Chaldeans of Detroit. I would bet they would rally around this young man and let anyone who tries to hurt him for sport, know that they do not appreciate these tactics applied to our own people. from the Turks it's one thing...from even a half Assyrian, it is another.
Let's see who will be welcome at the Federation convention in Detroit. I think I am...I know Jeff will be. Shawn...can we buy you?
The fact that Jeff is now involved will turn out to be seen as a grave tactical error. Instead of caving and turning his nuts over...he sent a polite defiance saying that he didn't really know what they were talking about...that if they are now holding out an olive branch to him...now that he is entangled and out money and sleep...claiming that said person really has no bad feeling towards him, just wanted to get his attention...Jeff still shows what a classy guy he is by asking why then someone didn't just pick up a phone and ask him if he was involved, to not be involved? Why sue him first, then assure him you are really a friend after all...and would he "cooperate" and apologize and the thing could be "fixed"?
Jeff asked me what I thought he should do...I said I couldn't advise on that...it had to be his call. I'm not in the bullying or loyalty business. Each of us is a free agent. I expect me, and Jeff and the rest of us, to be true to ourselves, not another person. I think he made the right decision...not that he has to join in any kind of awful battle and he and I go down in glory and up to heaven together on puffy clouds. But that he can see when he is being diddled and played with...when someone who professed undying devotion and respect, can turn on a dime to now GET him...and still have the nerve to coo in his ear through a hired hand...it bodes well for our Heritage that when we have done nothing wrong, we don't convict ourselves out of fear.
To have dragged Jeff into this was a huge mistake. There is hardly another young man we have...that I know of, who has greater promise and has achieved already as much as Jeff. His work with CARE will speak for itself...his work to clear ghettos of trash, to bring food to poor Chaldeans and Assyrians in Detroit...painting and fixing up homes with a Jewish group, head of the Religion and Culture Committee for CARE, in charge of the annual Art Exhibit...attempts to put together a curriculum to teach our language to our younger people. What sort of a person first befriends a man like this...then turns on him and slaps him with a bogus lawsuit any two year old can see through? What kind of a person indeed.
The same kind of a person I've been alleging all along has done the same thing to me...and others. This one act will prove more eloquently what I have been saying than anything else. Jeff will be here for the trial...he and I will take the stand. At least I can ask him to introduce himself...I can present character references others can only dream of. A jury of our peers will look at the two of us, sitting alone at the table...by ourselves, no lawyers, a pile of self-help law books spread out before us...and over at the other table, a lawyer, maybe three, sitting round a well dressed woman set and determined...to do what? get justice?
What do you suppose are the chances of there being people she would conisder her peers on that jury? And how much more likely is it that there will be a college student or two...or a parent who has a college student struggling to make it through school on that jury?
note: Hey Gassbag...get out them old posts of yours and send them in. You never know...you might be called to testify as a "character" witness. Who has less of that article than you do?
-- panch in a gungle
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