Do you remember that alleged case the Honey Badger Brigade was allegedly planning to bring against the Calgary Expo?
In case your memory needs refreshing: the Honey Badgers — a mostly female antifeminist “brigade” closely associated with A Voice for Men — were tossed out of the Expo earlier this year after they showed up flying the banner of GamerGate. The Badgers threatened to sue, and somehow managed to raise a little over $30,000 to pay for their possible legal expenses.
Then they went silent on the whole suit thing for a looong time.
Today they announced (archived here) that they’d hired a fellow named Harry Kopyto as their “legal council” [sic], paying him a retainer of $3500. As one of the Badgers — apparently head Badger Alison Tieman — explained on their web page:
Wait. He’s a what kind of lawyer, exactly?
Ohhh. A disbarred lawyer. A lawyer who is specifically prohibited from practicing law.
Huh. How exactly did Mr. Kopyto get disbarred? According to Wikipedia:
In 1989, Kopyto was charged with professional misconduct by the Law Society of Upper Canada for allegedly overbilling the province’s legal aid plan by $150,000 over a three-year period. …
Among the findings of the tribunal hearing the case were that it was physically impossible for Mr. Kopyto to have billed the sums he did as the times billed exceeded the hours in the day.
Kopyto’s defense? He hadn’t meant to overbill. It’s just that, you know, he didn’t really keep proper records, so when it came time for him to “guess” the amount of time he had worked for some of his accounts, he had just guessed wrong. Oops! Hey, in some cases he (probably) underbilled!
No, really. That was his argument.
Kopyto is also prohibited from working as a paralegal in Ontario. As Wikipedia explains:
In February 2015, the law society’s tribunal issued its decision denying Koptyo’s application for a paralegal license due to concerns that Kopyto is “ungovernable”[27] though conceding his generosity and devotion to his clients. Tribunal chair Margot Blight wrote in her decision that “Mr. Kopyto continues to be an enigma” in that “He insists that he supports the rule of law, while asserting that he, and his clients, are entitled to disregard legal rules willy nilly (sic) when conscience so dictates.”[28]
Though unlicensed, Kopyto continues to advise clients and seeks standing to represent them at tribunals and hearings
I can’t help but be reminded of the dynamic meth-making duo in Breaking Bad, who decided to hire a lawyer who was a criminal as their criminal lawyer.
Tieman has been kept busy trying to explain just why they hired a disbarred lawyer as their “legal council” [sic]. Her main argument? The case will take place in Alberta, where paralegal work is unregulated, so technically he can still research stuff for them, or something, even though he remains in Toronto. where he’s not legally allowed to do paralegal work. [UPDATE: Turns out her legal argument may not hold water; see end of this post for more.]
Tieman insists there really will be a case, honest!
It’s all so very ethical.
And pretty fucking hilarious. Though probably a bit less so to those who actually donated money to the Badgers.
Since we’re talking about the Badgers, I feel I should remind you all of The We Hunted the Mammoth “Legal” Fund to Spite the Honey Badger Brigade, which is still taking donations.
I pledge not to hire any disbarred lawyers. Instead, I will use the money for snacks and other important “legal” things, by which I mean things that as far as I know are legal for me to do (like buying snacks). I will also use some of the money to feed my “legal council,” one Sweetie P. Jonus, Esq.
If you donate, please specify that your donation is intended “to spite the Honey Badgers.”
The last I checked, I was only $39,529 short of my arbitrary $40,000 goal. THANKS TO ALL WHO DONATED. And to those who donated to charity instead of to me.
UPDATE: It looks like paralegaling in Alberta isn’t quite as unregulated as Tieman thinks it is. In the comments here, someone called J.C. has pointed me to a web page explaining How to Become a Paralegal in Alberta. Turns out that paralegals working in Alberta need to do so under the supervision of a lawyer. Here’s what the page says; I’ve bolded the especially relevant bits:
At this time, paralegals in Alberta are not regulated, meaning that they do not need to pass an examination or meet minimum training/educational standards to be able to work lawfully as paralegals. Thus aspiring paralegals may begin their careers through on-the-job training or by seeking post-secondary education.
However, paralegals are required to work under the supervision of a lawyer and avoid activities that might be regarded as unauthorized practice of law. For example, paralegals are not permitted to represent people in court. Paralegals may conduct legal research, submit registration documents to the appropriate agencies, and assist with certain types of legal matters, including trial cases, under the supervision of a lawyer.
Huh. Does Kopyto have a lawyer supervising his work for the Honey Badgers?
H/T — Sarah Nyberg (@srhbutts), whom you really should be following on Twitter
I was confused by this too.
Also, is 30k really “nothing”? I mean, we hear about million dollar lawsuits and lawyers making a bazillion dollars but surely those are the outliers, right? 30k is a lot of money. If a lawyer had one 30k case a month thats… a lot of money.
*Stands here as a Slytherin listening to Hufflepuffs complain about a few bad badgers*
How is it that Sweetie P. Jonus, Esq., looks more professional and trustworthy than one Harry Kopyto?
He seems to have become something of an MRA.
On the $250-$500 thing, maybe she means per hour? Of course, if they actually had a case I’m pretty sure they’d have no problem getting a lawyer to take it on contingency.
Nahhhh, that would be white-knighting.
Besides, we all know how hard Alison can damsel, all the while indignantly claiming not to be damselling in the least.
Speaking of Harry Potter, this guy looks like Peter Pettigrew.
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100319194033/harrypotter/images/2/2d/Petercasadelosgritso.jpg
Guys, they got a dude that can turn into a rat as a lawyer.
http://i.imgur.com/Q3CWspX.png
Or he was just a corrupt lawyer taking advantage of the poor and disenfranchised by pretending to care about them. Or maybe he was just a really really incompetent lawyer on the scale of lional Hutz from the Simpsons or the hyper intelligent chicken lawyer form futurerama .
Either way the Honey Badgers are showing some poor judgment by hiring him if this law suite is serious and not just some wild attempt to gain some attention and sympathy (and a whole lot of cash)
Hi, I have never posted before but I couldn’t not. I was a little confused about their claim that Kopyto could work as a paralegal purely because it is unregulated and I found that apparently in Alberta working as a paralegal is unregulated in that they “do not need to pass an examination or meet minimum training/educational standards to be able to work lawfully as paralegals” but they do need to “work under the supervision of a lawyer”. Given that I am pretty sure that Kopyto isn’t being supervised, I don’t think he can work as a paralegal. The reason I had to post it was because I typed in “Alberta paralegal” and got the information in the second paragraph of the first link I clicked (http://www.paralegaledu.org/alberta/)
@deniseeliza
You’re absolutely right–it won’t cover the Exxon-Valdez, but it’s respectable for a personal claim. I’ve handled entire cases (criminal, custody, torts) for a third of that amount. As David pointed out, if the HBs had a strong enough case they could get a lawyer–a real one–to work on a contingency basis. They could even get a lower contingency rate if they put some of the $30K toward an advance to cover the initial hours worked. Even at a $250-300 hourly rate the HBs have raised enough by their own admission for a hundred lawyer hours, and can control their expenses through caps, hybrid billing arrangements and so on. If they were acting like people who are serious about bringing a legal challenge, that is. Which they aren’t.
In other words, whether you go by real-world logic or HB logic (two different things), the HBs are scamming the gullible with this whole pretense at a legal fund. I’d feel sorry for their donors if they weren’t horrible people themselves.
So this group of scammers hired a lawyer who is also a scammer?
Birds of a feather.
Another chapter in the Fore$ight $aga.
J.C., interesting, and thanks! I’ll add that to the post.
Because once someone does advocacy for gay people, that puts them totally above reproach for all eternity.
The establishment found him committing fraud to the tune of $150,000. What the hell kind of skeletons are in your closet, that you think this was just a piddly little thing that shouldn’t get anyone disbarred?
@jerk
Remember how Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church infamy was a civil rights advocate? People can be right about some things and so, so wrong about others. We also don’t believe here that an ideological label trumps honesty and integrity–no one gets a free pass for fraud just because they’re leftist.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the idea of $30,000 being “nothing” when it comes to legal fees was put into the Honey Badgers’ heads by a certain unscrupulous or incompetent ex-lawyer. You know, possibly to convince them that no one else would ever take on their case for the amount they offered… huh. Sounds like a common MA line.
I also fail to understand why they balked at paying $250-500 for research, then turned around and retained an ex-lawyer for around 14 times times that.
Notice how they say they’re going after punitive damages?
Yeah, that’s almost not even a thing in Canada. To the extent that non-compensatory damages exist, the Honey Badgers don’t even allege a prima facie case that remotely resembles the extraordinary circumstances required to get non-compensatory damages in a Canadian court.
If they’re still talking “punitive damages” after talking to this disbarred guy, they’re totally being scammed.
Bwhahahaa! Oh my god, having been at ground zero of the Calgary Expo, and the panel that the HBB, specifically the members of Alison Tiem and Sage Gerad, tried to derail, and then hearing about them being kicked out of the Expo the next day, THIS is too frigging hilarious!
Like, this was the best damned thing I’ve read all day, and WOW, having see Alison and Sage talk in person, I just know that yes, it WILL be a show if they go to court. I only hope my friends in Calgary record it.
@Silky:
I suspect that they meant $250-500 PER HOUR for research. Which is indeed what a lawyer charges (though not what a lawyer earns, because you have to put in unpaid time for various things and your billings pay for the office and the staff, etc.).
A paralegal working from home with (almost) no overhead might be able to charge $35/hour? I’m not sure what the going rate is in Alberta. at $35/hour they might get 100 hours of research from this disbarred guy. At $500/hour they’d get 6 or 7 hours of research from a lawyer, who’d spend the first couple hours getting a handle on the basic facts the Honey Badgers allege (without confirming anything or deposing any witnesses), then an hour reviewing the law’s use in recent court cases to find any that are particularly similar, then at least 2 more skimming/reading those cases to find out how they went. With 1 or 2 hours left, will your lawyer even have time to write and file your complaint?
…of course, a legit lawyer who charges $500/hour would also just tell them up front that it’s not worth the time and money, but if the Honey Badgers insisted would bill just for the time necessary to pass it off to an associate who would then do the same things for $250 instead of $500. Hell, it might even be passed off to a paralegal for $60-90/hour.
But that’s assuming you contacted a fully staffed law office with competent, ethical people. Obviously it doesn’t apply in the case of the Honey Badgers.
@Crip
Maybe they already tried several legit lawyers who, after they hired them, researched what had actually happened and dropped them as a client, after getting paid, of course. That would lead to $30,000 being “nothing”, for sure.
AVFM talks a lot about the alleged “legal fees” they have had to pay. I wonder if Kopyto is their Canadian “lawyer” and/or if the HBB was sent to him by AVFM. Oh, sorry, I mean, went to him entirely independently of what AVFM might think because there’s “no connection” between the HBB and AVFM.
Do the Honey Badgers not realize that what they’ve got themselves is a legal consultant who can’t do much of anything for them unless he’s being supervised by an actual lawyer?:
Pandapool, Tieman posted screenshots suggesting that they’ve only spent $3500 of their total, whch apparently all went to Kopyto.
“He used to be a caveman. Now he’s a lawyer. Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer!”
Brought to you by National Escort Services. If we don’t get a prostitute to your door in 15 minutes, you don’t pay!
And now for tonight’s episode…
@David
I like my theory better. XP
Did these people watch the last couple of episodes of Silicon Valley and just think “hey, that’s a great idea!” or something?