And the Lulz continues. Chip and Ron Tebo’s SciFake page have been going after each other for the last year or so. After some unspecified comments, Chip Coffey decided he’d had enough and called his lawyer to send (this) to Ron and the denizens of SciFake. As usual I woke the “Hounds of Hell,” being “the legal agency of Labrusky, Skinflint, Shyster, and his larger brother Leo. As usual the senor partners were busy with some vile thing, but I did sit down with Leo Shyster to go over the letter and this is what he said.
Please note that this is NOT legal advice and it’s for entertainment purposes only. I say this because there are a number of you funseekers out there who take this and yourselves way to seriously! You know who you are and I know who you are.
Basically the letter says this;
Your webpage (SciFAke.com) “hosts posts” which are damaging to Chip Coffey. (A public person and celebrity.)
We are preparing litigation against some of the people who comment on your site.
Please remove the relevant comments at once.
and , defamation is not a protected form of expression.
“…Well!” said Leo Shyster after sniffing around the letter for a while. This is a pretty stinky kettle of fish. They didn’t send this to you did they?
“OMG no” I said, ” not this time anyway. I got this off of Ron Tebo’s SciFake web page.”
“Sheeze of all the dumb things.” said Leo.” First off, this is really a Cease and Desist letter even though those words ain’t on it. C&Ds are legal time-line starts for the most part. and part scarifying devices. They server to mark the beginning of a legal action while at the same time pointing out whatever is offending the “client.”
This Chip Coffey probably takes umbrage over some of of the the SciFake comments and wants the publisher/editor to know it. He’s also probably interested is crushing any negative comments on that page and encouraging people to stop talking about him unless it’s of a complementary nature.”
“How do you know so much about Chip Coffey?” I asked.
“Simple,” He said. “A lot of lame junk like this gets passed around when some dufus gets their panties in a wad. People make all kinds of stupid comments on news items and forums. Some people take this stuff a little too personally and it’s best to ignore trolling pages like SciFake anyway unless you are into such things. But some people want to challenge whatever it is that pissed them off. The only legal way is to take them to court and convince a judge that the comments are damaging or defamatory in some way. The problem with this crap is the statement has to be factual or at least sound factual. If it’s an opinion than it’s not actionable.
“Why do you think SciFake is trolling Chip Coffey?” I asked.
“I don’t think they are trolling him per-say,” he said. “they are certainly muck-raking the paranormal business and creating controversy. Chip Coffey being a paranormal celebrity is a fair target. I’ts not illegal or anything unless it breaks into libel. Libel though is freaking hard to prove, especially over some stupid comments on a web page. Of course Chip could just sue to make trouble for Mr Tebo. There is lots of precedent for that kid of thing, but Ron Tebo could hire a lawyer fight it and spend a lot of money in the process. Sometimes people do that just to squash critics, but any real public figure wouldn’t bother because there is really no such ting as bad publicity. ”
“But this is not a criminal thing or a tort of defamation or really anything” he said.” It’s just saber rattling. They e correct about one thing, defamation is not protected by the Constitution, but defamation is very hard to prove.