Breaking new ground with Amicus Briefs

[Matthew Chan]

I am always impressed by the ideas that come out of the ELI Community.  Long time Friend of ELI, Lettered, has come out of hibernation :-) recently and sent me an idea that was just stunning.

His idea was that someone in the ELI Community could file an amicus brief on the HAN lawsuit cases (but potentially any other future relevant lawsuit / cases). At the moment, I know very little of the requirements to make this happen.  

According to Wikipedia:

"An amicus curiae ... is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it. The information provided may be a legal opinion in the form of a brief (which is called an amicus brief when offered by an amicus curiae), a testimony that has not been solicited by any of the parties, or a learned treatise on a matter that bears on the case. The decision on whether to admit the information lies at the discretion of the court. The phrase amicus curiae is legal Latin and literally means "friend of the court".

I took the liberty to find what a sample amicus brief looks like.  Lo and behold, I found one regarding Righthaven vs. Hoehn by the RIAA & AAP. Many of you know ELI has also been following the Righthaven lawsuits saga this past year. It is also helpful that EFF (who we consider a digital ally) reported on this recently.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/riaa-and-aap-file-amicus-brief-righthaven-appeal

That post has the RIAA & AAP amicus brief.  We have also uploaded it to our Scribd account:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/76432585/RIAA-AAP-Amicus-Brief-on-Righthaven-vs-Hoehn-appeal

There are obviously other amicus brief samples on the web. However, this one is close to home.

I will be contacting Oscar to see what his thoughts are on the possibility of our filing an amicus brief in the HAN lawsuits.  Many of us agree that poor handling of the defense in those cases could have negative consequences for all of us. (Although I suspect ultimately, HAN would prefer to settle them out of court.)

As always, I look forward to the feedback and comments to all the brilliant minds within the ELI community.

[Lettered]

Matthew,

To further the idea please see : http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/index.php/topic,2442.0.html

Also, I think that even if the case gets settled out of court, any accepted amicus brief(s) become a permanent part of the record of the proceedings.

[Oscar Michelen]

As I stated on other posts - I am in, lets wait and see how the cases progress and who the defendants retain as lawyers (if anyone)