PLEASE READ THESE FACTS FIRST:

  • Random House sued ME; not the other way around.
  • Random House filed suit to silence the facts I was posting on the web.
  • There has been NO trial on the facts, only the Random House effort to prevent a trial.
  • NO expert testimony was allowed despite three international plagiarism experts who were willing to testif that it existed.
  • The only sworn statements made under penalty of perjury are affidavits from me and my experts, nothing from RH.
  • The judge refused to consider any expert analysis.
  • Despite suing me first, Random House & Sony UNsuccessfully demanded that I pay the $310,000 in legal fees they spent to sue me.
  • Contrary to the Random House spin, I am not alleging plagiarism of general issues, but of several hundred very specific ones.
  • This is not about money. Anything I win goes to charity.

Legal filings and the expert witness reports are HERE

I have a second blog, Writopia
which focuses on Dan Brown's pattern of falsehoods
and embellishment of his personal achievements.


Thursday, October 05, 2006

Justice = A Matter of Federal Court Shopping

Just like the bad, old Jim Crow days, "justice" in America is, in large part, a matter of where you happen to live. Or -- like my battle with Random House -- where you happen to get sued.

It's clear in my Petition for Certiorari, asking the Supreme Court to hear my appeal, Random House didn't "win" on the facts so much as they won by court shopping -- suing me in in a federal court where expert testimony is not allowed in cases like mine.

My petition clearly shows that federal court circuits are divided about 50-50 in this expert testimony issue. Thus, in half the U.S., Random House could get a case thrown out on this expert-witness technicality while in the other half of the U.S., I would have been allowed a trial on the facts.

The discussion of which federal court circuits are on which side, begins on page 13 of my petition (which is page 21 of the .pdf document).