Taubman Sucks!

TaubmanSucks.com
WillowBendSucks.com
WillowBendMallSucks.com
ShopsAtWillowBendSucks.com
TheShopsAtWillowBendSucks.com
GiffordKrassGrohSprinkleSucks.com

Act 25: I'm Ordered To Show Cause

When I opened my mailbox on Friday, October 26, 2001, it contained only one envelope, and the return address said that the letter was from the Court.

Maybe you get used to receiving letters from the Court if you're a lawyer, but I'm not (a lawyer or used to it). Every time I open a letter from the Court, I assume that it's going to say something like this:

ORDER TO GET LOST

You fraud! You didn't really think that you could get away with representing yourself, did you? Give us a break! Every time we read one of your so-called "motions," we laugh so hard that we have to change our pants. So please, stop pretending that you have even the slightest idea of what you're doing. You're in this thing way over your head, buddy. Go away and leave us alone!

Have a nice day,
The Judge

But this particular note didn't say that. (Whew!) Here's what it did say.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION

THE TAUBMAN COMPANY LIMITED
PARTNERSHIP, Plaintiff,

v. WEBFEATS and HENRY MISHKOFF,
Defendants.

CASE NO. 01-72987
HON. LAWRENCE P. ZATKOFF

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE

Plaintiff filed an Expedited Motion to Amend Preliminary Injunction with the Court on October 16, 2001. On October 11, 2001, the Court enjoined Defendants from operating a website with the host name www.shopsatwillowbend.com and ordered Defendants to remove that website from the Internet because it potentially violates trademark law, and because Defendants would suffer less harm from a preliminary injunction than Plaintiff would potentially suffer. Currently, Defendants are operating five websites with the following host names:

www.taubmansucks.com
www.willowbendsucks.com
www.willowbendmallsucks.com
www.shopsatwillowbendsucks.com
www.theshopsatwillowbendsucks.com

At issue is whether the "safe distance rule" applies in this case and whether the Court may restrain Defendants' use of their "sucks.com" websites that incorporate Plaintiffs name and trademark. Compare, e.g., Bally Total Fitness v. Faber, 29 F. Supp. 2d 1161 (C.D. Cal. 1998), with Sunbeam Prods. Inc. v. West Bend Co., 123 F.3d 246 (5th Cir. 1997).

Therefore, the Court HEREBY ORDERS Defendants to SHOW CAUSE, in writing, no later than 5:00 p.m. on November 5, 2001, as to whether the "safe distance rule" is applicable in this case. Defendants response shall contain specific and accurate legal support, including pinpoint citations to authority relied upon, and shall be limited to ten pages and comply with E.D. Mich. L.R. 5.1.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

LAWRENCE P. ZATKOFF
CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Date: 22 OCT 2001

View the Original Order (in a separate window)

My initial reaction was that this was really the first indication I'd had that the judge might actually be taking me seriously. He had ruled against my first brief so perfunctorily that I didn't know if anything I had said had made any kind of impression on him one way or the other. But if he had taken the time to send me this kind of thoughtful, carefully worded order – well, even though I may have been behind on points, it looked like I was still in the fight.

Having said that, I still had a few problems. I had to figure out where to find the Sunbeam decision. (I had already located Bally on the Web – as the only "sucks.com" case ever decided under federal trademark law, Bally has been discussed extensively online.) I had to figure out what "pinpoint citations" meant. (I thought I knew, but I needed to be certain.) And I had to comply with "E.D. Mich. L.R. 5.1" – which meant that I first had to figure out what "E.D. Mich. L.R. 5.1" was.

This was all the more problematic because of time limitations. The order was dated on October 22nd, but I hadn't received it until the 26th. The judge had seemingly given me two weeks to respond – but since I wouldn't be able to find out anything about "E.D. Mich. L.R. 5.1" until I called the court clerk on Monday, October 29 (I had been unable to learn anything online), and since I would have to mail my response on Friday, November 2, at the latest, I basically had five days to figure out what the judge wanted me to do, and then do it.

And the timing was even more troublesome because of all of the documents I'd sent to the Court after the judge had actually written his order. In that time, I had submitted (among other things) an answer to the complaint, a motion to dismiss the complaint, a motion for a change of venue, and a response to the request to amend the injunction. So because it took so long for this order to reach me, I might have wasted all of that time creating all of those documents. Even worse, the judge might think that one of the documents that I had submitted might have been in response to his order – and that I had ignored his specific instructions about how he wanted me to submit it.

One major advantage that Ms. Greenberg had over me in this dispute (in addition to having some idea of what she was doing) was that every hour she devoted to this case was one more hour that her firm could bill to their client. On the other hand, every hour that I devoted to this case was one less hour that I could bill to my clients. So whereas I was getting poorer and poorer the longer this dragged on, the lawyers were getting richer and richer!

Maybe I was in the wrong business...