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Does v. Trumps: Misleading MLM endorsements (with bonus delusional pro se intervenor)

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KickahaOta
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Does v. Trumps: Misleading MLM endorsements (with bonus delusional pro se intervenor)

#1

Post by KickahaOta »

Some activity in the Second Circuit on a case that I don't see previously mentioned here: an attempted class action by participants in "ACN", a multi-level marketing organization. According to the complaint, ACN is a multilevel marketing organization that suffers from the usual faults of multilevel marketing organizations: the great majority of participants (IBOs, "Independent Business Operators") lose money.

One might expect that the plaintiffs would be suing ACN itself. The interesting wrinkle is that they aren't doing that. Instead they've sued the Trump Corporation and Donald/Donald Jr./Erik/Ivanka. The theory of the case against the Trumps is that they promoted ACN in a variety of ways -- including on two episodes of "The Celebrity Apprentice" -- while creating the impression that Trump himself thought that ACN was a great business opportunity and that Trump was promoting it for that reason, when in fact Trump had performed no due diligence and was being paid millions to promote ACN. The plaintiffs allege that they joined ACN because of Trump's endorsement, and that they wound up losing money. Where have we heard these sorts of allegations before?

So the plaintiffs sued the Trumps, and eventually sent subpoenas to ACN itself demanding information on ACN's connections to Trump, among other things. (And a side note: the plaintiffs are suing under pseudonyms because they're afraid that Trump fans would retaliate against them, which seems like a completely reasonable fear.)

And that brings us to the focus of the Second Circuit's opinion: the nuances of arbitration law.

(Unfortunately, the Second Circuit's website doesn't create durable links to opinions, so you'll have to go to https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions and search for Doe V. The Trump Corporation, 20-1228 (L).)
As you would almost automatically expect these days, ACN required new participants to sign arbitration agreements covering 'a dispute between (the participant) and ACN as to our respective rights, duties and obligations arising out of or relating to this Agreement'. So the Trumps demanded that the participants arbitrate, on the theory that the suit was really about a dispute between the plaintiffs and ACN, and that 'principles of agency and estoppel' allowed the Trumps to invoke the arbitration agreements even though the Trumps weren't signatories to the agreements or even explicitly mentioned in them. And ACN insisted that the court could not enforce the subpoenas against ACN, because the document requests arose out of a dispute between the plaintiffs and ACN.

The district court refused to dismiss the suit, and granted the plaintiffs' motion to enforce the subpoenas against ACN.

The Second Circuit, after spending around 25 pages wading into the depths of briefing standards and federal arbitration law, agreed on both counts.

So now the dispute continues in district court, and ACN has to produce the documents. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
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Re: Does v. Trumps: Misleading endorsements of MLM corporation

#2

Post by chancery »

KickahaOta wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 3:32 pm
One might expect that the plaintiffs would be suing ACN itself.
As you probably realize, but didn't explicitly say, not suing ACN was the only way to evade the arbitration agreement.
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Re: Does v. Trumps: Misleading endorsements of MLM corporation

#3

Post by KickahaOta »

Yeah, that fell into the category of "seemed likely but didn't feel confident enough to say as a fact since it wasn't explicitly stated in the opinon."
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Re: Does v. Trumps: Misleading endorsements of MLM corporation

#4

Post by KickahaOta »

The district court docket is on RECAP (link goes to the docket entry with the opinion).

The highlight for me is this paragraph explaining why the Trumps effectively waived arbitration. You really never want the judge to sum up your behavior using a footnote mentioning 'farce'.
Defendants aggressively litigated in this judicial forum for eight months before informing Plaintiffs of their intent to arbitrate the surviving claims. Defendants obtained the benefits of litigating in federal court -- dismissal of the racketeering claims, a stay of discovery while the motion was pending, and the issuance of numerous non-party subpoenas that would not have been available in arbitration. These wins and benefits on the defense side represent defeats and prejudice on the Plaintiffs’ side. Now that Defendants have extracted what they can from the judicial proceedings, they seek to move to a different forum. This conduct is both substantively prejudicial towards Plaintiffs and seeks to use the FAA as a vehicle to manipulate the rules of procedure to Defendants’ benefit and Plaintiffs’ harm. Such tactics undermine a fundamental purpose of the FAA to support the economical resolution of claims. See Gingras v. Think Fin., Inc., 922 F.3d 112, 127 (2d Cir. 2019) (“The just and efficient system of arbitration intended by Congress when it passed the FAA may not play host to . . . farce”).
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Re: Does v. Trumps: Misleading endorsements of MLM corporation (now with Raj K. Patel, dubious pro se intervenor)

#5

Post by KickahaOta »

And speaking of farce, and more along the lines of the Pro Se Follies we usually see here: Starting in May 2020, Raj K. Patel launches himself into the proceedings. At first, from looking at the document, I thought it was just one of the original plaintiffs choosing (or being forced) to drop the pseudonym. Nope. It's Patel attempting to piggyback on the case to advance his own... claims... against Donald Trump.

Patel's pro se motion to intervene claims that in 2018 Trump publicly "used [Patel's] exact word patterns". What's more, in 2017, unspecified folks at the University of Notre Dame Law School also stole and reused Patel's exact word patterns! Sheer coincidence? No!
President Trump engaged in an “enterprise” with Notre Dame Law School, which breached his privacy, defrauded and “deprive” Mr. Patel of honest services, through a “scheme or artifice, under Sections 1341–1351 of Title 18 of the United States Code (within a governmental system that is for and by the people), and took his intellectual property (his unique word patterns, including what he said in seclusion with no other person or hearing device in plain eye-sight).
Not only is there an elaborate spying conspiracy going on, but -- you guessed it -- it's RICO!

Unfortunately, this seems to be a long-running and tragically common case of all-consuming paranoia. Patel's motion to intervene helpfully supplies a massive string cite of his own legal backstory, with suits involving "the Vice President (who is from the same state as [Patel]), Emory University, Inc. officials, University of Notre Dame administration and professors, F.B.I., family members, family friends, and acquaintances."

His attempted takeover of the Does' case was presumably because his own most recent lawsuit died in nine days flat. He tried to file that case in forma pauperis, which meant that it went to a judge for initial screening, and the judge promptly bounced it as too frivolous to engage the court's jurisdiction, throwing in a barbed quote from another case: "Sometimes, however, a suit is dismissed because the facts alleged in the complaint are so nutty (‘delusional’ is the polite word) that they’re unbelievable, even though there has been no evidentiary hearing to determine their truth or falsity.” I mean, we can snark on Fogbow and Quatloos about pro se litigants on quixotic quests, and that's one thing; but when a judge calls your whole worldview 'nutty', that's gotta leave a mark.

But Patel continues to pepper the Does' docket with letters to the judge, which the actual parties to the case stoically ignore. He seemed very hopeful that the Supreme Court would grant his certiorari petition -- though he did have to refile it because he exceeded the page and word count limits. (Imagine that.) But sadly, the petition was denied, and now Patel is pinning his Supreme Court hopes on another case. And please don't forget that he was a student body president in two different schools.

Patel's intervention in the Trump case is also briefly covered by behindMLM.
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Re: Does v. Trumps: Misleading MLM endorsements (with bonus delusional pro se intervenor)

#6

Post by KickahaOta »

Update: This is now back in the district court. The parties are trying to reschedule things, and the judge is getting vaguely irritated with how they're going about it.
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Re: Does v. Trumps: Misleading MLM endorsements (with bonus delusional pro se intervenor)

#7

Post by KickahaOta »

Still going. The parties are still wading through discovery disputes on the way to a jury trial. Judge Schofield continues to be vaguely irritated at most of the people involved, as exemplified at docket entry 336, where she responds to a 22-page status letter from the parties with the legal equivalent of "What part of 'status letters should not exceed 2 pages' do I need to explain to you again?"

Sadly, the case appears to be over for the quixotic Mr. Patel. His attempt to intervene was denied. He appealed to the Second Circuit. That did not go well. He filed a petition for certiorari. Shockingly, it was denied. The day after the denial, he filed for Supreme Court rehearing -- always the sort of thing the Court loves -- along with a motion to recuse Justice Barrett -- because Barrett and Patel were both at the University of Notre Dame Law School at the same time, and Patel once sent her an e-mail, and therefore "Respondent Donald J. Trump and Associate Justice Barrett possibly have broken United States treaty on political succession against Petitioner, qualify for impeachment, and violated laws of recusal and Code of Ethics for United States Judges." Astonishingly, this did not work either. All of this inevitably led to Judge Schofield instructing the Clerk of Court to instruct Mr. Patel to go clutter someone else's docket.
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Re: Does v. Trumps: Misleading MLM endorsements (with bonus delusional pro se intervenor)

#8

Post by Foggy »

Darn.
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Does v. Trumps: Misleading MLM endorsements (with bonus delusional pro se intervenor)

#9

Post by KickahaOta »

I feel bad about ragging on Patel now. He's still rapidly filing other cases in other courts, and as you can see from results like this, he's just hopelessly lost in his own weird world.
Plaintiff’s 54-page Complaint contains a litany of allegations against many defendants but fails to state a cognizable legal claim. Plaintiff alleges, inter alia, that various government and school officials have used a “bio-tech weapon” to steal his “word patterns,” impede his college and law school performance, and cause him to become obese, costing him “millions of dollars” in professional opportunities as an actor in pornographic films. As relief, Plaintiff seeks, inter alia, admission to his desired law schools, a juris doctor degree, up to $3.76 billion in damages, and an order making English the official language of the United States.
He constantly sues about "Weapon S", a "bio-tech weapon". As Patel describes it, "[f]rom this point onward and sporadically since July 2017, every moment of my life, I live under Weapon S, as it is being used on me through playing a ringing sound, which causes the aforementioned stress and depression." As someone who has tinnitus, I can say that it's a hell of a thing.
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Does v. Trumps: Misleading MLM endorsements (with bonus delusional pro se intervenor)

#10

Post by northland10 »

KickahaOta wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 4:26 pm I feel bad about ragging on Patel now. He's still rapidly filing other cases in other courts, and as you can see from results like this, he's just hopelessly lost in his own weird world.
Plaintiff’s 54-page Complaint contains a litany of allegations against many defendants but fails to state a cognizable legal claim. Plaintiff alleges, inter alia, that various government and school officials have used a “bio-tech weapon” to steal his “word patterns,” impede his college and law school performance, and cause him to become obese, costing him “millions of dollars” in professional opportunities as an actor in pornographic films. As relief, Plaintiff seeks, inter alia, admission to his desired law schools, a juris doctor degree, up to $3.76 billion in damages, and an order making English the official language of the United States.
He constantly sues about "Weapon S", a "bio-tech weapon". As Patel describes it, "[f]rom this point onward and sporadically since July 2017, every moment of my life, I live under Weapon S, as it is being used on me through playing a ringing sound, which causes the aforementioned stress and depression." As someone who has tinnitus, I can say that it's a hell of a thing.
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I noticed this judgement on the DC Circuit judgements. Looks like it was on a recent case that was not on your extensive list because the district court case was filed after.
https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/ ... 998220.pdf
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Does v. Trumps: Misleading MLM endorsements (with bonus delusional pro se intervenor)

#11

Post by Luke »

Thank you for bringing this up and for the great research, Kick.
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