Lawsuit obtuse
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was royally punked earlier this month, falling victim to an elaborate ruse by a group of political activists. The business group is peeved, calling the prank “commercial identity theft masquerading as social activism.” Now it has filed suit.
That’s an odd place for an aggressive proponent of tort reform — and ferocious opponent of “lawsuit abuse” — to find itself. Consider the facts:
A group called the “Yes Men” is the object of the Chamber’s ire. The Yes Men, which recently released a movie, is a self-described ensemble of actors “best known for posing as corporate executives in order to reveal how corporate greed negatively influences public policy.”
In l’affaire de Chamber, it developed a dummy Web page that mirrored the Chamber’s online presence.
It announced the startling news that the Chamber had made a dramatic “about face on climate policy” and now favored “a stiff carbon tax and correspondingly strong incentives for industries.”
The climax of the hoax was a staged news conference at the National Press Club. A member of the Yes Men troupe, posing as a U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokesman named “Hingo Sembra,” fielded reporters’ questions, achieving with perfect pitch the grim gentility that characterizes Chamber communications. Before long, an agitated Chamber employee came on the scene, confronted the Yes Men and informed the puzzled assembly that they had been had.
A video recording of the proceedings, in all their wince-inducing detail, has been posted on YouTube, where it’s been viewed more than 200,000 times and received a boatload of media attention.
The Chamber announced Monday that it had filed suit against the gonzo Yes Men gang. It tries to cast the suit as a garden-variety action to protect the organization’s intellectual property — specifically, two registered trademarks. The organization’s chief in-house lawyer called the suit “a customary response by any organization faced with this type of misconduct by the defendants.”
But that’s simply not the case. Far from a narrowly cast trademark protection lawsuit, this is blunderbuss, seven-count complaint filed by a major Washington, D.C., firm in U.S. District Court, with the Chamber asking for an injunction (including removal of YouTube videos), a jury trial, damages, attorneys’ fees and “such other relief as may be appropriate.”
The Chamber protests that it is “a strong proponent of free speech and encourages public debate on issues of the day.” But the Chamber is trying to stifle free speech and punish political parody with its superior resources and army of high-priced lawyers.
The Chamber counters that “the defendants are not merry pranksters tweaking the establishment. Instead, they deliberately broke the law in order to further commercial interest in their books, movies, and other merchandise.”
We’ll see. Ultimately, that’s what the federal court will decide.
Members of the public, meanwhile, can view the evidence online and render their own judgment.
There’s already ample proof to support this conclusion: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s complaints about our litigious society shouldn’t be taken seriously.
–Let’s explore this premise on a different, but parralel course.
–Let’s suppose Rush Limbaugh comes to St. Louis to hold a press conference. He stages the event with Post Dispatch banners and corporate seals, and states that he has bought the P.D. and is preparing to take the editorial board over.
–He announces his first move will be to dismantle every platform the P.D. stands for, and move it into the real world. That everything they stand for until then has been wrong-headed, a huge mistake, and the ship will soon be “righted.”
–I wonder if you would look at this example the same way? Would you laugh it off with dripping sarcasm? Would you excuse his freedom of “parody”, looking for ways to make arcane examples of your own hypocrisy? He is just an “entertainer”, right?
–I know you, Editorial Board, ike I know my own children, and you are just as easy to read. Do I need to send you for a time-out?
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All businesses should be outlawed. It is the will of the people to do what it good for the people. Money and greed are evil.
Dr. Debunk- Bravo! Well played, sir.
It wasn’t the Chamber that was punked, it was the suckers in the media and at the National Press Club.
…”The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s complaints about our litigious society shouldn’t be taken seriously.”
Can you explain that statement?
Most folks are on to that old all or none device. Any criticism of excessive litigation, regulation, illegal immigration, or government spending is twisted by the left to imply limits equate to total elimination.
Anyone wanting any limits to government powers should be accused of not wanting any government at all, including public roads, police, water, sewers, etc.
Anyone wanting to stop the invasion of illegal aliens should be accused of being racist and against legal immigration.
Anyone calling for tort reform and elimination of frivolous lawsuits should be accused of wanting to eliminate all recourse to the civil courts for any reason.
Anyone wanting to drill for oil and gas, build a refinery, harvest timber, or use nuclear energy safely as the (U.S. Navy, France, and many others have done for decades) should be portrayed as destroyers of the environment.
With your lack of journalistic integrity and disregard for your own highly touted platform, it is the PD editorial board that shouldn’t be taken seriously.
I remember when that ragtag group in Bridgeton was fighting airport expansion and printed up those “We’ve been sold out by St. Louis” bumper stickers. I think the RCGA, which had a very similar looking campaign called “We’re Sold on St. Louis” threatened to sue them, but I don’t think they ever did.
Dear Chamber of Commerce -
Do the names Borat, Ali G, and Bruno mean anything to you?
Go ahead and sue, but I strongly suspect the “satire” element is protected speech.
Great Editorial. The “litigation explosion” cries of the Chamber are an absolute myth based on the empirical data gathered by the Congressional Budget Office and a recent Harvard study. Look them up for yourselves and quit just accepting the Chamber’s self serving fabrications. Big Business does not want anybody getting in its way of its profits and activities, some of which recently almost ruined our financial system. They do not want the common man to have access to the Courts so they push legislation that limits average folks’ ability to file claims against them or caps damages. (Is it really ok in California for a doctor to kill a child with the child’s life being worth only $250,000 per a law passed in 1975?–tort reformers say yes it is until it happens to their family and then they are outraged that such a law could ever be passed.) In the meantime, the Chamber and its big business allies use the court system as their playground and file lawsuits, just like the Chamber did in this instance, for “frivilous” reasons because they have the resources to shut up anyone who dares to speak out in jest or parody about their ongoing, fabricated campaign that regular people file too many lawsuits. For further information please go to the above mentioned sources or even to snopes.com which gives a good objective view of the lies regarding the “litigation explosion” that really only exists in the mind of the Chamber of Commerce and its well paid and well funded allies.
The Post-Dispatch editors are really smart people and should be making laws instead of just comments. I get a tingle every time I read something they’ve written.
RHarnack.
Well, I’m not really RHarnack. But it’s just satire so it’s protected speech and Harnack says I can pretend to be anybody I want.
Is this a great country, or what?
The Chamber has filed a frivolous lawsuit!! These type of suits are termed SLAP suits. Corporate polluters lined up in the courts to file these suits to silence their environmental critics. In Indiana, the legislature responded to the corporate attempt to silence public speech by passing anti-SLAP legislation which empowered judges to throw them out on a finding of frivolity. That’s what needs to happen here. Just for the record, the Chamber has been lobbying in China against legislation that might provide consumer rights to sue the Chamber’s corporate high rollers. The Chamber does not really represent small businesses as it portrays itself. It represents the propaganda and lobbying interests of the multinational corporations who sit on its Board.