Review of Jeanette "Janet" Braun and Lauren The Mortician's Response To Motion To Dismiss

Hello and welcome to RLE of the Bailey. My name is Ian RLE; I'm a Canadian criminal defense and firearms lawyer. So I just recorded an update on the Janette Janet Braun lawsuit where she and Lauren, the mortician, are suing Caffeinated Kitty, Becca Day, and the host of the Do We Know Them podcast. So I recorded that today, and now they've dropped another document.

So as part of that update, the one I just did, uh, Benjamin Locker—Benji—was asking for permission to file a longer than usual brief addressing everything, and he said, "I want this to be 50 pages," and that was granted. But the judge said less pages would be better. So anyway, um, we have a 54-page document to go through now. He might be saying, "Wait, are they going to get in trouble for that?" No, because they're not going to count the sort of cover page and the table of contents and that sort of thing—at least I don't think they're going to get in trouble. So let's have a look. All right, here we go. I've got my evidence cup full of a tasty beverage, cuz we're going to need that for this.

Plaintiff's Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Defendants' Motion to Strike and Defendants' Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiffs Janette Janet Braun, Brun IP Law (collectively, Braun Law), or and Lauren Propson (collectively, the plaintiffs), by and through their attorney, Locker Law, present their memorandum of law in opposition to defendants Casey (the owner and operator of Caffeinated Kitty), Becca Day, Jessica Vasquez, and Lily Marston's motions to strike. Okay. Now, when I say they're, you know, the page count issues, they're not going to be covering things like this table of contents. Uh, by their count, they weigh in at 48 pages, so they're probably all right.

Introduction. Defendants' separate motions to strike and motions to dismiss should be denied because plaintiffs have pled sufficient facts to establish their cause of action, and defendants' anti-SLAPP arguments rely on disputed facts that require discovery and cannot be resolved at the pleading stage. Plaintiffs have established sufficient facts to support their claims in the first amended complaint. So basically, they're saying you can't throw it out now; it's got to be later. We've got to get all of the discovery, and of course, discovery is going to be expensive; it's going to be intrusive; everybody's going to have their emails dug through and all of that. So that's something that probably the defendants, at least, would rather avoid. It seems like the plaintiffs are keen to go ahead.

Specifically, defendants Caffeinated Kitty, Vasquez, and Marston's anti-SLAPP arguments all rely on: one, whether Janette Brun and Lauren Propson are public figures; two, whether the audience of defendants' statements would interpret such statements as opinions or speculation rather than factual claims; and three, whether defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statements about plaintiff Propson being transphobic were a matter of public concern. In addition, regarding the legal sufficiency of plaintiffs' claims, plaintiffs each state sufficient facts to establish their claims for defamation, defamation per se, false light, trade libel, tortious interference with contracts, tortious interference with existing and prospective business relationships, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Now, again, this is the plaintiff's position; this is Janet and Lauren's position. So let's uh, let's dive in. I have some commentary already, but I'll save it till when they're really getting into things, cuz I got some thoughts.

Because defendants' motions raise the same legal issues and are generally the same, plaintiffs address and oppose all arguments set forth in each of the defendants' pending motions in this memorandum of law. That's fine; no issue with sort of the omnibus memorandum. Due to the disputed factual issues in defendants' anti-SLAPP motions and because plaintiffs pled facts to establish their claims, this court should deny defendants' motions to strike and motions to dismiss.

Background. The present case arises from a series of defamatory statements made by defendants which significantly damaged the professional reputation and business interests of plaintiffs Janette Brun, Brun IP Law, and Lauren Propson. Now, they haven't actually said how it damaged it other than sort of vague and conclusory statements, so that is probably going to be an issue. But this is the this is the plaintiff's memo, so they're not going to tell us that, of course.

Plaintiff Braun, an attorney and owner of Brun IP Law, alleges that defendants made multiple false and defamatory statements across various social media platforms accusing her of unethical behavior, filing false copyright claims, and committing perjury. Plaintiff Propson, a social media content creator, alleges that defendant Caffeinated Kitty falsely labeled her as transphobic, leading to severe reputational harm and loss of business opportunities. Defendant Caffeinated Kitty made her false statements for commercial gain to eliminate her competitor, plaintiff Propson. Um, okay, this is sounding like some Hitman stuff here, like Caffeinated Kitty with a fiber wire. Um, okay. Um, was Lauren, the mortician, really a competitor of Caffeinated Kitty? This seems to miss how the internet works. Um, you don't necessarily really have competitors in that way, especially when you're doing like short-form content like TikTok and so forth, because people who are interested in a type of content will look for more of that content. So a big, you know, a big channel that draws in a lot of people to a particular type of content, let's sort of describe this as um, I guess the morbid and creepifying content, maybe we could call it, will sort of form an ecosystem where people recommend other people to each other. It's not really a competition. Uh, I do legal commentary, and I'm not really in direct competition in the usual way with other legal channels. Sure, sometimes it might be people are watching someone else instead of me, but often they'll watch my, you know, watch someone else when it's live and then come watch my channel later on replay. That's perfectly fine; like that's acceptable; that's all good. So doesn't really work that way, but okay. Um, you know, it's not something like, you know, McDonald's versus Burger King, where you eat the burger and then you're like, "I am so full of burgers I can't eat another burger." You can usually watch another TikTok video.

All right. Defendant Day has publicly stated that plaintiff Brun uses unethical tactics to scare creators off social media platforms, explicitly attacking Braun's professional integrity and ethics as an attorney. Furthermore, defendant Day's allegations that Brun committed perjury imply criminal behavior, which under Illinois law is considered defamation per se due to the serious nature of the accusation and its impact on professional reputation. And you know what, I'd agree if we're talking about sort of a specific instance. Um, and the distinction here is really this: um, if you go and say, "So and so is a thief," that's probably opinion and not actionable, whereas if you say, "So and so is a thief and they specifically stole whatever, like the Mona Lisa," well, now you're talking about something more specific that's more factual and probably is actionable. So there we have an issue.

In addition to defendant, or Day's statements, defendants Vasquez and Marston made similar defamatory remarks. They publicly claim that plaintiff Brun files false copyright strikes and is an unethical attorney, further compounding the harm to Braun's professional reputation. Now, I got to say, most of the harm to Braun's professional reputation, to me, seems to be Braun's own actions, in terms of like the biggest thing is the wellness check. The wellness check, to me, is huge, and that wasn't something that any of these people did; that was something Braun did, Janet; that was her, you know, her and Lauren, the mortician. So it's going to be really hard to sort of pick that apart. So these statements were disseminated through podcasts and various social media channels, reaching a wide audience and causing significant professional and personal harm to plaintiff Braun. Um, we haven't actually seen allegations as to what kind of personal harm other than vague statements. Um, there's no issues of like therapy bills or something like that, at least not at this stage, and you'd think you would plead those things if they exist. Um, just kind of a thought.

All right. Plaintiff Propson's claims focus on defendant Caffeinated Kitty, who accused her of being a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) and published statements suggesting that Propson endorses transphobic content. These allegations were made without basis and were intended to damage Propson's reputation among her followers and potential business partners. The resulting backlash included online harassment and loss of sponsorships, severely impacting her professional standing and financial interests. Now, the problem here is that, well, um, "transphobic" is really vague; it's hard to define. What's the cutoff for being transphobic? Are you transphobic if you refuse to use someone's pronouns, maybe? Um, are you transphobic if you, you know, what's—are you transphobic if you played that new Harry Potter game? Like, what's the line for transphobic? Does it have a line, or is it purely a matter of opinion? And if it's purely a matter of opinion, then you can't sue over it, there, you know, unless it's something that is a factual statement. And they're going to try to spin it into a factual statement; they're going to try to spin this straw, or this BS, into gold, and I'm going to criticize it when we get there.

Plaintiffs argue that these defamatory statements not only injured their reputations but also led to substantial economic losses, which they have not really been able to plead in any coherent way, but okay, they've just said that they've lost money. Plaintiff Brun experienced a loss of clients and potential clients. How—I've said this before; I'm going to say it again—how, I mean, how are you going to prove the loss of potential clients? But how are you going to establish any of this unless you've got waivers of solicitor-client privilege, because you can't talk about your clients or your client's business, and that includes like prospective clients. If I have somebody who comes into my office and says, "RLE, I've been charged with horrible crime X, and I'm thinking of hiring you," and we talk and they decide at the end of it they say, "RLE, I don't think you're the good—you're a good fit for me; I want somebody with, you know, hair that isn't white or whatever," well, they leave; I can't go and do a video saying, "Guess who came into my office," nor can I tell the court without a waiver that I had a conversation with this person at all. Um, and this is because sometimes a just the fact that somebody was a potential client could be a big issue. Um, one thing that happens occasionally is you'll get people who—there's a scam online where it flashes up and says, "You have bad stuff on your computer; you need to pay a fine in gift cards immediately or you're getting arrested." Well, sometimes people get hit by that scam, and they actually have bad stuff on their computer, and so they might come to a lawyer and say, "Hey, I've got all this bad stuff on my computer, and I got this scary warning," and I tell them, "Well, you don't need a lawyer right now because you haven't been arrested; you haven't been charged; you need to not do that." I can't report them to the police; I can't publish their name; I can't mention that they came to talk to me at all. So you just—that's how this goes. Um, all sorts of potential issues. Somebody might come into your office and say, "Hey, I'm looking at—I need a real estate lawyer because I'm planning on buying this property." Well, it could be incredibly damaging to reveal that that person is planning on buying that property, even if they never hire you. So you can't talk even about potential clients. Now, if they're potential in the sense of they never even came into your office, then we're not really talking about potential clients; we're talking about imaginary clients, and you can't sue to recover imaginary—"Wish I could have gotten it" money—unless there's some actual basis to believe that you lost it based on this. So you, yeah.

Um, and plaintiff Propson lost a significant contract with a well-known travel documentary channel due to defendants' false accusations. Of course, they haven't named the travel documentary; they haven't provided any details. So I mean, I guess that would come out in discovery, but that should also be revealed a bit in your pleadings, a little bit more than just an assertion of such a thing.

The claims of defamation per se and trade libel under Illinois and Wisconsin law and false light under Illinois law form the core of plaintiffs' legal actions against the defendant. This memorandum is submitted in opposition to defendants' motions to dismiss and to strike under anti-SLAPP statutes, asserting that plaintiffs have adequately stated claims for defamation, defamation per se, false light, trade libel, tortious interference with contracts, tortious interference with existing and prospective uh, business relationships, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Plaintiffs further contend that defendant's statements were made with actual malice and reckless disregard for the truth, warranting denial of defendants' motions and continuation of the litigation to address the substantial harm suffered. Now, the problem that they have with actual malice and reckless disregard for the truth is that they just say, "We believe this on information and belief," but they don't actually provide any factual basis for it other than just trying to information and belief it into existence, which you can't do. So all right, moving on.

Legal Standard. In evaluating a motion to dismiss under 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, district courts must accept as true all well-pleaded facts contained in the plaintiff's complaint and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff. The reason why I've mentioned this in previous videos, but I'm going to mention in this one too, so that it can be sort of standing alone, um, is that at this stage nobody's had the chance to prove anything, and so the plaintiff's claim is at risk of being thrown out whenever there's a motion to dismiss. And so we're not going to throw something out if it's maybe something they could prove. Um, if it's something that could be proven, then they have to get the chance to prove it. Motions to dismiss are basically—if, if at the end of the day, sometimes you can—you can reject facts; sometimes the court can reject facts. Like, for instance, if the facts alleged are that—um—oh, let's think of a good one here. Um, let's say I decide to sue Miley Cyrus uh, because she used mind control to cause me to whatever, right? The facts are—like the allegations are mind control—well, the court probably doesn't have to accept that as true because it's not plausible; it's not a thing. So they can toss that. There are some circumstances is where factual allegations can be tossed, but so long as they're, you know, plausible, so long as they're things that could happen, then they have to be accepted.

All right. So the Supreme Court has unequivocally stated that a complaint must be construed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff when facing a motion to dismiss. Everyone agrees with this; like that was also noted in the motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). The purpose of the motion is to test the sufficiency of the complaint, not to resolve disputed facts or adjudicate the merits of the case. Pretty much just saying what they just said. A complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of their claim which would entitle them to relief.

Okay. When a court sits in diversity uh, in a defamation action, the court applies the substantive law of the plaintiff's domiciled state. In reviewing a motion to strike under an anti-SLAPP statute, the court applies the law of the defendant's domicile. Okay. Now, I actually thought they'd argue this point, um, because the the defendants argued this extensively; they were saying, "Listen, the anti-SLAPP statute applies; here's why; and in the alternative, here's and here." Benji just says, "Yep, that's true." Um, I guess good on you, but um, I—I kind of expected to see a fight over this one. Um, the defendants expected to see a fight over this one. So um, I'm kind of wondering if Benji didn't just give away the farm here a little bit. Um, I wouldn't have expected to see quite so much argument from the defense side on this point if it was so simple, but I don't practice in this jurisdiction, so I could be wrong here. It's just—just kind of a what. Okay. All right. So um, just noting here, Georgia or California and Georgia's anti-SLAPP statutes both carry the same elements and procedures, and thus Georgia courts look to California case law for guidance. I think that's actually like almost directly a quote from the defendant's motion. However, to avoid a conflict in laws between California and Georgia anti-SLAPP laws and the federal rules of civil procedure, the court may review anti-SLAPP claims under a 12(b)(6) standard if the motion challenges only the legal sufficiency of a claim. Thus, when a motion to strike only challenges the legal sufficiency of the claim, a district court should consider whether plaintiff's claims are properly stated under 12(b)(6). I think that was actually also what the defense was arguing.

Okay. Defendant anti—I—I expected more fighting up until this point. We're going to get to—to more fighting soon. Uh, we're only page 11 out of 54, but yeah, defendants' anti-SLAPP motions—motion challenges the factual sufficiency of the plaintiff's complaint, and thus discovery must be allowed with opportunities to supplement evidence based on the factual challenges before any decision is made by the court. So what they're saying is, "We—you're—you're arguing over facts, and therefore we have to—we have to go through discovery; we have to do all of this." I don't know that they actually are arguing over facts; we'll see how—we'll see how Janet and them try to spin this as—as this, but yeah. So they quote here from case law: "A contrary reading of these anti-SLAPP provisions would lead to the stark collision of the state rules of procedure with the governing Federal Rules of Civil Procedure." While in a federal district court, in considering whether a statement is defamatory, the context of statements needs to be considered. Um, this is absolutely true, right? Because if you say a statement like, you know, "Bob really likes kids," and it's in the context of, you know, um, I don't know, like a a reality TV show about marriage, you would say, "Okay, that has a particular statement," right? Bob wants to have kids. But if you said that in the context of like discussing Jared Fogle, it comes to a very different meaning. So context does matter. Also, commercial speech, due to its commercial nature, is subjected to lesser First Amendment protection compared to non-commercial speech. Now, um, commercial speech is going to be interesting because commercial speech is often discussion of advertising, whereas on a platform like YouTube or TikTok or anything like that, a lot of the time we're not talking about advertising speech; we're talking about opinions; uh, we're talking about political messaging potentially; we're talking about speech that goes to the fundamental and core heart of the protection offered by—in the US—the First Amendment. In Canada, we have similar freedom of expression rules. Um, political speech goes to the core of that, and when they're talking about commercial speech, they're really referring more to like advertising and so forth. And you can see that with their next quote here where they say, uh, "The court has emphasized that the regulation of commercial speech is permissible to prevent consumer deception and promote fair competition, reflecting a broader acceptance of governmental intervention in such matters." Yeah. Um, we do restrict the speech of companies; like a burger company can't say, "This—this burger is 100% beef" if it's actually like 40% beef and and 30% pork and 20% drywall, right? That's—that's the regulation of speech that it's intended to address. This looks to me to be a little bit of—little bit of sort of legal three-card monte here where they're like, "Where's the card?" You know, they—this is—is a little bit of uh, a misdirection, I think. I'm not super impressed by that argument. Um, all right, moving on.

Uh, defendants Caffeinated Kitty, Vasquez, and Marston's anti-SLAPP should be reviewed under a 12(b)(6) standard. So they say the defendants' California and Georgia anti-SLAPP arguments should be reviewed under that standard because they challenge the legal sufficiency of plaintiffs' claims. So citing to a particular case, Endrio or Endo, um, one: "A California anti-SLAPP motion to strike challenges only the legal sufficiency of a claim; a district court should apply the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) standard and continue to consider whether a claim is properly stated." Um, here defendants all argue that plaintiffs have failed to identify verifiable falsehoods within defendant statements that are not protected by free speech. In addition, defendants each discuss plaintiff's pleadings to argue that plaintiffs have failed to allege sufficient facts to show the falsity of defendant statements. Okay. How do they get there? So defendant Caffeinated Kitty's anti-SLAPP defense challenges the legal sufficiency of the amended complaint. Defendant Caffeinated Kitty presents her argument as a motion to strike pursuant to Georgia anti-SLAPP laws and, in the alternative, as a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim and a 12(b)(3) motion to dismiss for improper venue. So Caffeinated Kitty is not presenting a 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings before this court. So and…

If we went over these pleadings, and it basically said, "Hey, listen, uh, we are pleading under anti-SLAPP, but we the anti-SLAPP standard is basically the same as the 12(b)(6) standard, so I'm not sure what all the—there seems to be a fuss here without a fuss, if that makes sense."

Um, in the background section of her motion, defendant Caffeinated Kitty argues that plaintiff Propson failed to allege sufficient contextual facts to establish that defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statement, "Lauren the mortician is a turf. I have the receipts. I have the deets," was intended to say that plaintiff Propson was transphobic and that defendant Caffeinated Kitty had proof.

Um, I don't actually think that's the quote now. I'm not looking it up; I'm going from memory, but I'm pretty sure the quote was, "I have receipts. I have deets, and you should go ahead and take a seat," because that quote is catchy. I mean, that's why I remember it. So, um, if you're quoting in a legal filing, you better make sure that quote is right. This is a situation like—I've criticized typos; I've criticized, um, whatever—but I really hope that they're right on this one, because if you are quoting the other side in order to dunk on them, that quote better be 100% perfectly, like, crystal-clear accurate, or the court may decide to dunk on you, because, um, that is not cool. So, uh, was intended to say that plaintiff Propson was transphobic and the defendant Caffeinated Kitty had proof. Okay.

And so they quote here: "Nowhere in the amended complaint does plaintiff Propson identify any statements from the TikTok post that Propson is transphobic or that Caffeinated Kitty has proof that Propson is transphobic. Nowhere in the amended complaint do plaintiffs allege that Propson has not liked these posts or followed these individuals on social media. Nowhere in the amended complaint do plaintiffs allege that Caffeinated Kitty has misstated what these posts say. Rather, the amended complaint alleges only that, upon information and belief, none of the videos Caffeinated Kitty, uh, linked contain transphobic and hateful rhetoric." They go on to say, to quote, "Moreover, nowhere in the amended complaint do plaintiffs allege any facts demonstrating that any statements made by Caffeinated Kitty in the TikTok post are false. Rather, the amended complaint alleges only that Caffeinated Kitty was aware that Propson followed and liked pro-LGBTQ and pro-trans rights content on social media and that Caffeinated Kitty chose to highlight only Propson's interactions with the conservative social media personality."

Now, I generally think it's a bad idea to quote extensively from the other side when you're—when you're writing like this. Um, you don't need to quote their arguments; the—the other side—like, the court has them, and it—at points—will become confusing, because at points I was reading this and I was going, "Wait a minute, did Benji switch sides? Is—was this like a—a false-flag thing or what?" And it's because his quotations sometimes kind of blend together with the rest of it, and, um, yeah, so that's a style thing; that's a—a legal writing thing, but I would have cut all of that.

Okay. In addition, defendant Caffeinated Kitty argues that plaintiff Braun failed to allege sufficient facts to establish that defendant Caffeinated Kitty knowingly made the verifiably false statement that plaintiff Braun files false copyright claims with social media platforms and a bad-faith copyright strike against defendant Caffeinated Kitty. In essence, defendant Caffeinated Kitty argues that plaintiff Braun's allegations regarding defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statements that plaintiff Braun filed a frivolous copyright strike against her do not state a sufficient claim for defamation. We are at page 13, and he's still sort of recounting the arguments against him. He should get around to the arguments for him. As the above arguments highlight, defendant CA Kitty's motion challenges the legal sufficiency of plaintiff's claims and argues that plaintiff's allegations fail to state a claim for defamation. Due to this, plaintiff's allegations should be decided under a 12(b)(6) standard. And so then they go on to—to defendant Vasquez and Marston's anti-SLAPP arguments.

Um, we're going to skip a little bit ahead here. Um, they quote here: "The amended complaint does not identify what false information defendants allegedly relied on, nor does it identify any alleged defamatory statements made by the defendants in the alleged December 2nd, 2023 episode. The amended complaint does not identify that any of these details discussed by defendants were false, instead identifying only a statement by Vasquez that social media content creators had informed her that they had received a false copyright strike from one of Braun's clients." Now you'll note here he's doing a block quote of the opposing side, and he's doing it in a different style than he did a page earlier. Um, is there more than one author of this particular document, or is he just incapable of maintaining a consistent style within his own documents? Because this is sloppy, and this is not good, because it's confusing when it gets sloppy. You should have a specific pattern, a specific style of—I mean, and I know it sounds like I'm quibbling, but you want the judge to read this stuff, and you want the judge to understand it, and you want the judge to not hate you when they do these things. So make it easy to—to do.

All right. In addition, defendant Vasquez and Marston both raise general arguments claiming that plaintiff Braun and Braun Law failed to allege sufficient facts, uh, to show that the statements are verifiably false. So again, they're saying 12(b)(6) analysis. Okay, now we're getting into something a little bit more interesting: "This court should deny defendants' anti-SLAPP arguments that are based on contested facts that are outside the complaint. So much of defendants' anti-SLAPP analysis involves factual disputes that require discovery. In cases where a defendant makes an anti-SLAPP motion to strike, uh, founded on purely legal arguments, then the analysis is made under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12 standards, and plaintiffs are not required to present prima facie evidence supporting plaintiff's claims." So, and they quote here from another case, saying, "The Ninth Circuit has identified that anti-SLAPP motions are evaluated under different standards depending on the basis for the motion. The primary thrust of defendants' anti-SLAPP arguments is that they're protected under the First Amendment because plaintiffs are public figures and the defendants' defamatory statements were made in response to an ongoing controversy. To support both arguments, the defendants raised disputed facts that are outside the amended complaint and are not appropriate for a motion to dismiss. As a result, defendants' motions should be reviewed under a 12(b)(6)." Wait, um, 12(b)(6)? Aren't you saying now that they—okay—they may have lost—I may have lost me, because I thought the 12(b)(6) argument was before this. Um, are we getting into a loop here?

Defendant Caffeinated Kitty's anti-SLAPP arguments against plaintiff Propson: To argue that her statement about plaintiff Propson was about a matter of public concern, Caffeinated Kitty argues—Propson allegedly maintains a famous social media persona with millions of followers on TikTok, as well as sponsorships and a brand partnership with a famous documentary channel. Thus, she is certainly—thus she—or certainly is in the public eye. Now they note the parties are in dispute over whether plaintiff Propson is a limited-purpose public figure and whether all aspects of her life are in the public eye. Um, you specifically argue that she is—that she has millions of followers—like this is part of the plaintiff's case, and your ability to recover money hinges on her having millions of followers on TikTok, as well as those sponsorships and brand partnerships and so forth. How is this in dispute? I mean, um, we can say she's no Caitlyn Doughty, and, um, but your own—like this is your own point—is that she is a public figure. So you're going to argue that she's like not a public figure and she's just a private figure who instead markets herself and gets millions of followers talking? Come on, come on! [Laughter] So yeah, Caffeinated Kitty's statements allegedly were made as a result of the confusion between these two social media personas—i.e., Caffeinated Kitty and Propson—by social media followers. Plaintiffs dispute defendant Caffeinated Kitty's unsupported claim that fans of either party were confused that plaintiff Propson's "Lauren the Mortician" persona was defendant Caffeinated Kitty's persona.

Um, now this is also a little rich, because they say, "Oh, we dispute unsupported claim." Hot kettle, because your dispute is also unsupported. You have no support for any other position. Um, you tried information and belief it, but it's purely unsupported. You have notions that it's something else, and in fact, some of those notions appear to be coming up for the first time in this—like you said that it was to eliminate a competitor. You didn't put that in anything else. That's shiny and new, but shiny and new is not good in this context. Um, this is an antique store; we don't want shiny and new. Thus, the public issue implicated by Caffeinated Kitty's alleged statements is the confusion by potentially hundreds of thousands to millions of individuals between two social media personas who are undoubtedly in the public eye, one of which has—has liked and followed posts containing transphobic and hateful rhetoric. So the above argument relies on disputed facts because plaintiffs have alleged, uh, that the posts referenced by defendant Caffeinated Kitty do not contain transphobic and hateful rhetoric. How are you going to prove that? Like, what is transphobic and hateful rhetoric? I could not tell you if I had to define it in the sense that I certainly could not provide a definition would be agreed upon by everybody, or even like—yeah—good luck, I guess, is what I'm going to say on that. They're going to come back to trying to, uh, really work on this transphobic issue, because the courts have previously said that like racist or bigoted or whatever else are statements of opinion that cannot ground a defamation claim, but they're going to try to, uh—going to try to wiggle that, and we'll see.

Defendant Caffeinated Kitty's arguments against plaintiff Propson rely on contested factual assertions that extend beyond the scope of the amended complaint. These disputed facts cannot be resolved at this stage and necessitate further discovery. What would the discovery tell us? Yeah, the central contention is whether plaintiff Propson is a limited-purpose public figure and if her social media activities place all aspects of her life in the public eye. Moreover, defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statements of social media follower confusion and alleged transphobic and hateful content of posts are vigorously contested by plaintiffs. Since these issues involve substantial factual disputes, they are not appropriate for resolution through an anti-SLAPP motion.

Okay, now what is a limited-purpose public figure? Well, sometimes you're a public figure in the sense of like, um, let's pick the—the biggest example—um, you are running to be president of the United States. Um, Trump, Biden, Obama, Lincoln, you know, whoever, right? Um, so at that point, you are a public figure, and your activities are relevant to the public, and that can include activities that are even pretty minor, like, hey, um, well, we've got a—um—we've got a candidate for US public office or some sort of role there, um, who people are talking about—she shot her dog, right? Um, all sorts of things that might not be relevant to other, you know—is this person a good tipper? Might be a relevant consideration, right? Some people might vote differently based on whether a political candidate is a good tipper or whether they're the kind of person who walks into the restaurant and like puts down a stack of 20s and then just like starts peeling them off and putting them in their pocket every time they have an annoyance. Don't be that person; that person—nobody likes that person. So, um, yeah, this is, I think, um, a bit of an issue, and you know, so what is a limited-purpose public figure? Well, sometimes people put themselves out into public—you know, into the public—in sort of a—a less dramatic way than running for president, uh, but it still might expose you to criticism and to commentary. People discuss celebrities; they discuss celebrity gossip; they talk about all of these things. And so if you go out and you make yourself a celebrity, especially if you do it intentionally—like you do this on purpose—it's one thing if, like, um, as an example, let's say like the Star Wars kid, the one who got all of the commentary for like spinning a—spinning a broomstick around—that kid never meant to be in the public eye, so he's got a different, you know, there may be different considerations as compared to me. Um, you know, I'm in the public eye because I—I make videos. Um, whether or not I'm a limited-purpose public figure here is something, you know, for a court to determine, but they would certainly consider the fact that I'm not doing this by accident; I'm not like—I didn't just stumble and fall onto a YouTube video or something like that. With regards to Lauren the Mortician, AKA plaintiff Propson, um, she certainly didn't generate millions of followers on TikTok by accident. I'm guessing there was a lot of work involved; I'm guessing there was skill involved; there was possibly like a management team and all of this marketing money—lots of this stuff involved. It's not just something that like, "Whoops, I suddenly have a million followers"—doesn't happen. So yeah, um, I think it's going to be really hard for the court to look at this and not make some serious eyebrow motions—like the "Are you kidding me?" eyebrow motions—when they look at this and they say, "Okay, you're arguing that you are not a limited-purpose public figure, but you also argue that you have millions of followers and that your reputation is sufficient that it's pulling in sponsorship money and so forth." I don't take a lot of sponsorships; I can tell you that like when I'm approached by sponsors, they certainly want to consider like, "Hey, is there potential brand, you know, issues? Is there reputational issues?" And it might actually be highly relevant as to which positions you take on highly controversial issues in society. So yeah.

Moreover, defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statements of social media follower confusion and alleged transphobic and hateful content of posts are vigorously contested by plaintiffs. On what—what basis do you—okay? Since these issues involve substantial factual disputes, they are not appropriate for resolution through an anti-SLAPP motion. Therefore, this court should deny defendants' anti-SLAPP motion as it is predicated on undisputed facts requiring further discovery and is outside the pleadings' four corners. Um, "Four corners" is—it's the kind of turn of phrase you pick up in law school. Um, it's also kind of useless outside of the legal sphere. Um, "Four corners"—I mean, like, you know, a page—like a piece of paper—um, has four corners, so that's really what that's referring to. You know, four corners. All right, so, uh, yeah, the resolution of such factual disputes must await a more developed evidentiary record. They want to go and dig through all of the business of all of these people. Of course, the other thing about discovery is that it means that their business gets dug through too, and if I was Braun, I'd be worried about that, because if I was counsel for the defendants on this one, I would certainly be arguing that solicitor-client privilege has been waived and that we want to see all your communications, and especially we want to see those discussions around the—the wellness check. We want to see that; we want to see your discussions around why these—why these copyright claims were sought to be brought, and that could be—those could be interesting. I would be interested to see those. Now that stuff may never become public; that would only become public typically at the trial or if it's filed in an affidavit or something else, but I am so wondering.

So, to argue that her statement about plaintiff Propson was about a matter of public concern, defendant Caffeinated Kitty argues—and now we're back to bullet points and nested bullet points. Um, this is going to get obnoxious to read, but we're going to forge ahead. So indent one: "The amended complaint demonstrates that Caffeinated Kitty claims—or claimed—that Braun's DMCA copyright strike/SLAPP complaint was false because Caffeinated Kitty believed her use of Propson's alleged copyrighted materials constituted fair use. Again, Propson allegedly has millions of social media followers; thus, whether she hired an attorney to file meritless copyright strikes against content creators simply is a matter of public interest and concern." So that is a quote from the motion to dismiss, and so now indented they have: "Plaintiff Braun's pleading shows that Meta agreed with the DMCA request and removed the infringing content, which creates a prima facie case that defendant Caffeinated Kitty committed copyright infringement and is not protected by fair use as alleged. The content of defendant Caffeinated Kitty's claims of a false copyright strike established the false assertion that plaintiff Braun filed a baseless copyright strike against her."

Okay, okay, let's talk about this, because I got some thoughts; I got some opinions. Uh, so first of all, I think we can all agree that Meta, the company behind Facebook, is not a source of United States law. They're not a court; they are not a tribunal; they are not a legislature; they're not a anything. Um, they don't get to write United States law; they're not a source of—so—Meta's opinion on something is no better or worse than the opinion of like a hobo on the street, and I'm not—like you can pick any hobo here; like you can pick the person who is, you know, "I need to wash my suit; I've got, you know, I'm trying to get a job interview," and or you can pick the person who is like, "I am elbow-deep into a whole lot of meth, and like, we're going to eat someone's face." It doesn't matter which one you pick; Meta is not on a better legal standing for creating law than either of those people. Um, so yeah, um, that's our first point here—is that Meta doesn't get to write laws, obviously. The second thing is that this seems to really miss—or perhaps misconstrue—how the DMCA works, which is that the DMCA request goes to Meta, and Meta is expected to follow it, and if they don't follow it, they're at legal risk, and normally the person would have to make a—a takedown or a sort of a counter-notice. Certainly Janet has—in the rare circumstances where, for instance, Google refuses to follow her DMCA requests—um, in those cases, she has followed up with some communications; in some of those cases—I don't know about all, but in some of them—she's followed up with communications to say, "Hey, we could sue you over this; you are now at legal risk." And so the fact that somebody complies with a DMCA request doesn't create a prima facie anything. This argument is—what's the legal term? Stupid. That's [Laughter] the—oh yeah. So plaintiff's allegations establish that resolution of this factual dispute should be resolved after the parties have had the opportunity to engage in discovery. Now the other thing is whether or not a copyright strike/complaint is false—can—again, it seems more like a matter of opinion than a matter of fact. Certainly when a lawyer generates a—if somebody comes to me as a lawyer and they say, "Hey, I want to know if my copyright is being infringed by this creator," you know, let's say they've done a video that uses 15% of the—the first person's video, um, you know, "Does that infringe their copyright?" Well, we would call that generating a legal opinion, not a legal fact, you know, and that's because legal assessments are almost always matters of opinion rather than fact. So that's a big problem here.

Okay, carrying on: "Likewise"—and this is now quoting again from the def—from the motion to dismiss—"likewise, if Braun were taking it upon herself to file baseless DMCA strikes against content creators without even being hired to do so, it would also constitute a matter of public concern." So the amended complaint allegations established that defendant Caffeinated Kitty was aware that plaintiff Braun was plaintiff Propson's lawyer and knowingly published the false accusation that plaintiff Braun was not Lauren the Mortician's lawyer. It's not really an accusation; it just says "if"—an "if" statement is rarely going to be a matter of fact, right? And it—it was a question asked of, you know, of Janet; it was like, "Hey, Janet, are you actually this person's lawyer, or are you doing a crazy thing?" In the context, it's clear that she's just re-communicating, "Hey, I asked this question; it—I don't—I don't see how this one makes it, but okay." Um, yeah, um, I'm playing with my hair because I saw this little loop in it that was just dry driving me nuts. Attention deficit—once you get this thing stuck in your head, it's just—yeah—and then finding it through the mirrored thing—I'm over-explaining now. Okay. Um, so the—to the extent that defendant Caffeinated Kitty is claiming that she did not know that plaintiff Braun was not Lauren the Mortician's attorney is a factual dispute that should be resolved on a motion for summary judgment. Um, I don't know that that was really the point, but okay. Um.

There's going to be a lot of "Was that really the point?"

The filing of a copyright strike under the DMCA constitutes an official proceeding, as it is expressly authorized by law. So, defendant Caffeinated Kitty's argument that a DMCA notice constitutes an official proceeding relies on underlying factual disputes that are not before this court.

Um, how would that be a factual dispute? That is purely a legal question. How? How could this be factual? It is a question of whether something meets a legal test. This is the definition of a legal dispute. Are you just going to say everything is a factual dispute? Like, you know, the law is a factual dispute? Is that where we are now?

Okay, um, no court, in federal or state court, has ever found that the DMCA process constitutes an official proceeding for the purposes of anti-SLAPP. Tell me what kind of ruling that would be. Oh, right, that would be a legal ruling, not so much a factual ruling. Um, this is purely something that is based on the law itself, rather than a factual issue. So yeah, both of defendants Caffeinated Kitty's protected activity arguments against plaintiff Bron rely on contested factual assertions. You're, you're making factual do a whole lot of heavy lifting, um, and I don't think it's got the workout to really perform this heavy lifting. I think maybe your factual thing needs to spend some more time in the gym.

These disputed facts cannot be resolved at this stage and necessitate further discovery. Defendant Caffeinated Kitty's claims regarding the alleged falsity of plaintiff Bron's DMCA copyright strike and the status of DMCA filings as official proceedings involve substantial factual disputes that require a more developed evidentiary record.

Um, how would the DMCA filings be like? What evidence would be called on that? Is it, is there literally any evidence that you would call on this, or is it just purely a matter of reading the actual statutes and making that determination? Um, what facts would you call to? Certainly, they don't bother to tell us any of those facts, because I suspect they can't, because you know, in the same way that I can't like show you Bigfoot on this stream, I would love to be able to. I bet that would get a million views if I could just be like, "Oh, also, here's Bigfoot," but I got a problem because I have zero Bigfoots, and I think that Benji has the same problem; he's got zero Bigfoots, and he could really use a Bigfoot right about now.

Okay. Plaintiff Bron's pleadings contradict defendant Caffeinated Kitty's claim that she received a bad faith or false copyright strike. Plaintiff Bron's pleadings, so Janet's pleadings assert that defendant Caffeinated Kitty used Lauren the Mortician's content, and Meta subsequently removed defendant Caffeinated Kitty's account. This directly contradicts defendant Caffeinated Kitty's claim of a bad faith or false copyright strike. Again, Meta is not a source of law, and um, bad faith activities can have all sorts of negative consequences. For example, let's say I, um, let's say I write a letter to a landlord and I say, "Your tenant has said defamatory things about me, and I demand you evict this tenant or else I will sue you as well." Now, in this hypothetical, I am acting in bad faith because I would have no claim to sue the landlord of a tenant when the tenant makes defamatory things, because it ain't the landlord's fault; there's no connection there or anything like that. But the landlord might still say, "You know what, tenant, you're evicted." Um, in this hy, in this example, Meta is the landlord. Just because they act on it doesn't mean that the underlying document isn't in bad faith or a false thing, especially given, as I mentioned, how the DMCA works. Um, the liability only applies to Meta if they leave the, if they leave the content up. It is always the safer move to take the content down, and Meta does no investigation as to whether the claim is, you know, in bad faith or good. Meta is not a court of law. Why does this have to be said, and why have I had to say it like 17 times in reading this? Um, part of that is me, like, just my personal habits, but part of it is the "Oh, stop it!"

Furthermore, defendant Caffeinated Kitty's knowledge of Janet's role as plaintiff Bron's attorney and the publication of allegedly false accusations about this relationship are factual matters that should be resolved through discovery and, if necessary, at summary judgment. I don't think that the factual issue even is a factual issue here, because the question is whether the statement itself, even if you accept the knowledge, can possibly count as defamation, and I think the, I think that's weak. So, therefore, this court should deny defendant's anti-SLAPP motion, as it is predicated on disputed facts that are outside the pleadings' four corners and require further evidentiary development. The resolution of these issues must await a more thorough examination of the facts. Um, I think you're really just kind of bullshitting a factual dispute where one doesn't really exist here, um, but okay.

Defendant Vasquez and defendant Marston's anti-SLAPP arguments against Janet and Janet Law, in their attempt to establish a matter of public concern, defendants Vasquez and Marston both rely on the following disputed facts and information outside the complaint. So, under both, and this is a quote here, "Under both Georgia and California law, statements that Janet is engaging in unethical or harassing conduct is unquestionably a matter of public concern affecting a large group of individuals, i.e., social media content creators who might be targeted by Janet or who might be considering using Janet as a lawyer." Defendant's argument rests on an assumed fact that the information they received was in fact true and factual. It really doesn't though, like, it, it doesn't, uh, because whether or not something is a matter of public concern doesn't hinge on it being true; it hinges on it being an issue that is of public concern, like whether the issue itself, um, based on their, based on Benji's reading here, um, nothing could be an issue of public concern, because you'd have to first establish that the statement was true, which you could only do at a trial, ever, right? So, uh, they're basically saying that Georgia and California anti-SLAPP law should just cease to exist because they don't like it, um, not quite in so many words, but that's where we get to on that one. So, um, no, I, I don't think that that one will hunt, but we'll see. I mean, the court's going to rule on all this, and the court may go a different direction than I do, but, um, okay, um, yeah.

Whether defendants Vasquez and Marston actually received messages and DMs from, uh, from other content creators is a fact not within the complaint and involves hearsay statements and additional documents that are not presently before the court. Um, do you have any basis to allege that that's not a true statement, anything like, or is it just, wouldn't it be convenient if it wasn't true? Also, it's not actually hearsay in this circumstance. Uh, Benji, go back to evidence because you don't understand hearsay. If defendant Vasquez receives a message saying, "I was the target of a, you know, a false takedown," or receives a message that says, "I don't know, um, Bob Dole kicked my dog," it's not hearsay to note that you receive the message. It would be hearsay if you tried to use that to prove that Bob Dole kicked your dog. I don't think Bob Dole is really a dog-kicking kind of guy, but you know, it's a hypothetical. The fact a statement was made is not hearsay because Vasquez and Marston are in a position to testify that they read that information, that they had that communication. So, hearsay statements, nah, bro. Now it might be, "Oh well, these statements were out of court," in which case, so is everything. None of these are in-court statements. U, I mean, I, I guess you could say that these are, you know, hearsay statements and that they're out of court, but so is literally every comment and statement in this, 'cause we're at the pleading stage. Liter, like, there are no affidavits, there are no, um, yeah, none of this is evidence yet. The amended, so quoting again here, and they do this kind of as a mix-and-match thing, "The amended complaint neglects to mention that later in episode 97, defendants show a screenshot of an email they received from an individual named Kristen, in which Kristen stated that she'd posted videos depicting screenshots of text message conversations she had with Janet's client, Demps, after which Janet reported two of her videos for copyright. Defendants also showed a screenshot of an appeal that Kristen filed which indicated that the copyright violation was claimed by Janet M. Bron." So, they then, they respond to this by saying, "The above statement references documents, additional videos, and information that are not before the court. Further, this statement rests on underlying claims and hearsay from a witness that has not been deposed." It really doesn't. It, it only relies on, it only, I mean, I guess nobody's been deposed at this point, but this is like, this is from the girlies, right? Um, the, this fact of the statement being made is within the knowledge of the girlies. This statement also assumes that the alleged victim is telling the truth. It doesn't. It does not need to assume that, because if you're talking about actual malice, then the state [Music] they, if like, on an actual malice statement or basis, you have to have had a basis for, uh, for believing it, like it, or rather, flip that around, you can't have had a basis for disbelieving it or like a belief that it was not true. So, if somebody communicates something to you and that information is wrong, then okay, that's, you're still fine on an actual malice standard.

This statement also assumes the alleged victim is telling the truth and that the court found in her favor. It it doesn't. Defendant's argument that this was proof to back up their opinion shows a reckless disregard for the truth and blind reliance on hearsay without any further investigation. Uh, y'all, relying on a statement that you got is not reckless disregard for the truth. Reckless disregard for the truth is when there are circumstances that ought to make you doubt it or whether you actually doubted it. It's not a requirement to do a whole lot of digging. So, further, defendant's alteration to say "videos above" shows that defendants did not provide any information regarding this alleged information about the alleged copyright suit and are now characterizing this as "videos" for the purpose of their motion to dismiss. Okay, uh, I'm not really sure, um, okay, I, they don't even explain what they mean by this, so, um, cool, cool story, bro. Um, you might want to explain how that alteration was altered, 'cause it ain't explained here, and, um, yeah, okay.

Defendants Vasquez and Marston's arguments rely on disputed facts and third-party witness testimony, which they don't, um, get yourself back to first evidence, um, evidentiary law is important, you should know it, um, or at least have met it in a dark alley, um, and thus should be resolved after the parties have had the chance to engage in discovery. Further, defendants' request to review defendants' entire 1.5-hour-long episode ignores the fact that the video references documents that have not been tendered to the plaintiffs. It doesn't, um, again, this is, um, and involves witness testimony that is not before this court, only if you assume that the underlying truth of this is necessary, which it isn't. Defendants Vasquez and Marston's arguments are a request for this court to accept their characterizations of hearsay statements as true without the opportunity to take discovery or hear plaintiff's facts and arguments. They don't need to be true; they just need to be believed, and it, for it not to be reckless for that. So, thus, defendants Vasquez and Marston's anti-SLAPP arguments should be addressed at summary judgment. Yeah, this, okay, um, in my head, I'm already drafting the reply to this, and I suspect that we're going to see a reply from, uh, from the lawyer representing everyone here, and I suspect it's going to be spicy, and you know me, I love spicy things. I love all the spicy things. I've, uh, I've got my own hot sauce because I love spice. All right.

Plaintiff stated a claim for defamation and defamation per se against defendant Caffeinated Kitty under Illinois and Wisconsin law. So they say, "Plaintiff's amended complaint alleges sufficient facts to establish, uh, defamation claims under Illinois and Wisconsin law, as alleged in the amended complaint. Defendant statements were made to a public forum, are verifiable in nature, false, and have caused the online internet community to engage in a harassment campaign on behalf of defendants." Okay, you're asserting this; this is kind of critical to your argument. Um, okay, hopefully they're going to, okay, they are going to go on; this is an intro paragraph. Cool, fine, fine.

Plaintiffs have also sufficiently alleged enough facts to show that the context of defendants' defamatory statements were made solely for the commercial purpose of engaging with their fans and making social media content for monetary gain. Um, okay, I don't remember that, but let's, let's, let's roll. So, plaintiff Bron has pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for defamation and defamation per se under Wisconsin law against defendant Caffeinated Kitty. So, defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statement that plaintiff Bron is a "turf" in a video was posted on social media was a verifiably false statement that constitutes defamation under Wisconsin law. Um, I still want to hear how it's verifiable. To state a claim under def, or for defamation under Wisconsin law, a plaintiff must show: one, was spoken to someone other than the pl, person defamed; okay, that one they've got fair ball; two, is false; okay, this one, how is, how can it be false? But three, is unprivileged; and four, tends to harm the defamed person's reputation so as to lower him in the estimation of the community or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him. Okay, so it is undisputed the defendant Caffeinated Kitty published her statement to the public and is not raising any claim of privilege aside from her anti-SLAPP arguments. Um, I don't think we can dispute that it was a public forum; it's online. Cool, moving on. The context of defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statements show that she was calling plaintiff Bron transphobic and claiming she had proof of this. So, how do you prove transphobic? Like, is this something you can prove? Like, can I prove that so-and-so is a bad person? Can I prove that so-and-so is ugly? Can I prove that so-and-so is attractive? Can I prove that, like, these are matters of opinion. Regarding the second element, defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statement that Lauren is a "turf," "I have the receipts; I've got the deets," that quote seems to have morphed, is a verifiably false statement that was intended to convey that defendant Caffeinated Kitty has proof that plaintiff Bron is transphobic, or like they've said that "receipts" is proof. However, receipts usually just means evidence. Evidence and proof are different things, right? Um, that said, this may be a factual argument over whether "receipts" means evidence versus proof. Are we really going to have a whole trial over internet lingo, internet slang? Okay, um, that just seems like a big old cash fire to me, but okay.

As alleged in the amended complaint, defendant Caffeinated Kitty tells her fans that she reviewed plaintiff Bron's social media activity on her Lauren the Mortician Instagram page and identified that she liked transphobic online content and compiled a list of allegedly transphobic links. Plaintiff Bron also alleged that defendant Caffeinated Kitty implied that she spent a significant amount of time generating a list of the allegedly transphobic content that plaintiff Bron liked. What is a significant amount of time? But obviously, you would have, um, yeah, so here's also where Benji makes a choice that I think is completely insane; in fact, it's completely insane for two reasons, and we'll talk about both of them, and if I was the lawyers for the various women that are being sued here, I would dunk on this all day long, all, all, all day long. Um, let's, uh, let's have a look. So, in their footnote here, they say, "As noted in the amended complaint, 'deets' is modern slang for 'receipts,' and 'receipts' is modern slang that is understood to mean 'proof'," and they cite this to Merriam-Webster for the meaning of the word "deets." Okay, Merriam-Webster, that's, that's okay, cool; they're, they're a dictionary, and Urban Dictionary for the meaning of the word "receipts." I would not cite to Urban Dictionary if I was on fire and somebody was throwing ants at me and the only way out of this situation was to cite to, like, why are you citing to Urban Dictionary? Are you, are you kidding me? Like, no, but okay. So, he made the decision to cite to Urban Dictionary, which, you know, okay, cool, point the judge to Urban Dictionary, that wretched hive of scum and villainy, with all sorts of, you know, there's places that have user-created content that are pretty good, you know, Wikipedia is pretty good these days. Urban Dictionary, I would not consider a reliable source of information, but they made that choice, and because they made that choice, we get to look at the actual definitions on Urban Dictionary. And so, if we're taking Urban Dictionary as a reliable source, because you know, it's got definitions, uh, posted by such notable figures as ET, um, and Foodo Voodoo VAV Voom, um, that's down here, um, you know, those are notable luminaries in the field, you know, in academic [Laughter] fields. Okay, but, um, aside from the whole like, who's posting this, he said that it says that it's proof, except when we look at the actual definitions, the top two definitions, which are the ones that seem to be relevant here, "proof or evidence when there is tea getting spilled," and you'd also need to, like, define "tea" possibly for the judge, but proof or evidence, and then we have the other definition here, "evidence or proof." H, you'll notice that he just said "EV," like that; he just said that this was proof; he leaves out that it could just be evidence, huh? Um, if I'm the court and you pull this crap on me, if I'm a judge and you pull this move on me, I'm going to write about it, and I'm probably going to put a dollar amount on it. Um, I'm probably going to snark the heck out of you. Um, I'm going to have some opinions as to whether or not you are being honest and candid with the court, because I don't think, in, in my view, this ain't honest, um, unless those definitions change sometime between, oh, right, that was 2018 and now. Um, no, no, dude, dude. Um, okay, so carrying on from my absolute horror of that particular moment, um, so quotation, "Not only was she following him, but she was actively liking incredibly transphobic and hateful rhetoric content. So, as you can see here, I decided to make fun, or make a fun and helpful little list of all the different videos I caught her liking. This list is obsessive, maybe, but I just like being thorough when dealing with accusations; seems responsible to me." Okay, so there doesn't seem to be an allegation that it's not an exhaustive list. Are you saying that there's more things that she should have flagged? Interesting choice of quote.

As alleged in the amended complaint, the posts compiled by defendant Caffeinated Kitty are not transphobic. That sounds like an opinion there, bro. To the extent that defendant Caffeinated Kitty is saying that her research found transphobic content that plaintiff Bron unliked, this is an issue of fact that cannot be resolved on a motion to dismiss, or it's an issue that isn't even a question of fact; it's just, um, an opinion, and then can be resolved on a motion to dismiss because there is no firm criteria for "transphobic," same way there's no firm criteria for "racist" or the like. We're going to get to that; he's going to try to wiggle around that, and it's, it's going to be a particularly wormy kind of wriggling. So, despite the clear context of her statements, defendant Caffeinated Kitty argues that she did not call plaintiff Bron transphobic and merely expressed her opinion that plaintiff Bron is a "turf," despite her claims that she did not say the exact statement of, "Lauren the Mortician is transphobic, and I have proof." The context of defendant Caffeinated Kitty's entire video is intended that she has proof that Lauren the Mortician is transphobic, or that she has evidence to support a belief, which is pretty much textbook non-actionable opinion. So, they cite to Endo, noting that courts should consider the context and give the words of the statement and any implications arising from them their natural and obvious meaning. So, okay, let's assume she says that, you know, "Lauren the Mortician is transphobic," again, that there's a ton of case law against you on this one. The full context of the statements below show that defendant Caffeinated Kitty is accusing plaintiff Bron of being transphobic, so, and she, and "Not only was she following him, but she was actively liking incredibly transphobic and hateful rhetoric and content." Okay, that on its own doesn't say "transphobic"; it says "liking transphobic and hateful rhetoric and content." You could maybe draw the inference; okay, I'll, I'll yield that.

One, a little bit, they continue on with: she is trying to divert the attention by saying she is PR, LGBTQ community, uh, LGBTQ and bisexual, as if that is some kind of hall pass that prevents her from being prejudiced to other subgenres of the rainbow, just like any other person can be. Bobic B people can be transphobic. Text caption: Unfriendly reminder, we see transphobic, so we're saying transphobic. That ain't bullying; it's an observation. Okay, I got two points on this one. Sure, you know what? I'll give you the transphobic allegation, but this also says it's an observation, which sounds like a statement of opinion, so okay.

As explained in the amended complaint, the only person defendant CAF Kitty is talking about in the video is plaintiff Propson, and thus the word "she" refers to Plaintiff Propson. The context of these statements shows that defendant CAF Kitty was calling Plaintiff Propson transphobic and claiming that she had proof or evidence from your own cited dictionary. Thus, the second element of Plaintiff Propson's defamation claim is properly alleged. Um, I, I don't think you're there, but okay. Claiming uh Plaintiff Propson is a "Turf" is defamatory and caused members of the public to believe she was transphobic and harass her online. So, defendant CAF Kitty's statement that Lauren the Mortician is a "Turf" is defamatory and meets the third element of plaintiff's defamation claim. A statement is defamatory if it tends to damage one's reputation in the community or to deter other persons from associating with the defamed individual. Here, the term "Turf" is defamatory because it is commonly accepted as a derogatory term and cause the public to turn against Plaintiff Propson.

The fact that something is a derogatory term is not sufficient; they in their own claim claimed it as a, a slur. Well, plenty of slurs are derogatory but are not defamatory. Um, I'm not going to start dropping a bunch of slurs in this video, cuz um that would not be a good idea. Um, but you know, if you call somebody, say, um an insult commonly understood to refer to a female dog, nobody assumes that to mean that the person is literally a female dog; they just take it as an insult. It's not a term that is going to be um defamatory even if people start repeating it and whatever else. Um, just because something is an insult or a slur and might in fact be highly offensive doesn't make it defamatory, and in fact makes it less likely to be defamatory. Def statements of defamation need to be statements of fact, not just insults. You've actually got a fair bit of latitude to just insult somebody, like you know, if you say somebody is stupid, then you don't have to like objectively prove that they're stupid typically. So yeah, these are just sort of vague, unprovable insults.

The term "Turf" is commonly accepted in feminist communities as a derogatory term to describe a woman as transphobic. There's plenty of other terms that feminist communities would accept as derogatory terms that are not defamatory. In her motion to dismiss, defendant Caffinated Kitty seemingly makes the argument that "Turf" does not mean anything but fails to provide any other plain meaning that contradicts the definition provided by trusted online sources such as Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster. Okay, um, but um, well, I guess it's a good thing that you're not citing to like Urban Dictionary anymore. Um, but yeah, according to both sources, the word "Turf" means trans-exclusionary radical feminist and is a disparaging term. Again, disparaging term is not defamatory. And what does it mean to be trans-exclusionary? What does it mean to be a radical feminist? I mean, I mean, where, what's the cutoff for radical? What's the cutoff for feminist? Um, what one person says is feminist isn't, you know, another person will disagree with.

So, as alleged in the amended complaint, the context of the entire video shows that defendant Caffinated Kitty used the term "Turf" to disparage and attack Plaintiff Propson's character and reputation in the online community. Um, okay. To further show the harm of being called a "Turf," Plaintiff Propson's allegations established that defendant Caffinated Kitty's statements incited an online mob and harassment campaign against her that caused her to lose her social media sponsorships. I think they're being a, a little um generous to themselves because the allegations don't really establish that; they make bold assert, like just bald assertions, but they don't actually seem to establish anything there. So the online harassment caused Plaintiff Propson to be viewed as a controversial figure and lose sponsorships that she relied upon for income. Okay, um, this is the first time that we're hearing about "relied upon," and we haven't actually heard of how much these sponsorships are and how many and so forth. As alleged by Plaintiff Propson, defendant Caffinated Kitty's statements and accusations that she was transphobic caused her reputational harm to her social media career and a loss of followers and sponsors. Good news: none of that matters if you're not a public [Laughter] figure. As such, the allegation that Plaintiff Propson is a "Turf" is defamatory and satisfies the third element of her defamation claim.

Now, um, I'm just going through the elements here, you know, like, so: public forum, verifiable in nature, false, and have caused the online community. Um, I'm missing a whole lot on "verifiable in nature" here. Um, and yeah, I'm, I'm just missing a whole lot of, they seem to be sort of dodging the critical issues here. Um, all right, where're we go here? I just lost my page; that's wonderful. All right, so uh, here we go. Defendant Caffinated Kitty's statement is not a mere expression of opinion and is not subject to privilege or protection from the First Amendment. Okay, so defendant Caffinated Kitty's statement is a mixed opinion that combines an expression of her opinion with a statement of fact. Okay, that's, that's a statement. Where's the statement of fact? It is well established that statements merely claimed to be opinions are not automatically granted protection under the First Amendment. Yeah, um, I've said this before in videos: you can't just say like, in my opinion, so like, you know, in my, my opinion, so and so stole the Mona Lisa. Um, you can't just, you know, it's not a magic wand. So, noting that Communications are not made non-de-defamatory as a matter of law merely because they are phrased as opinions, suspicions, or beliefs; however, if they actually are expressions of opinions, suspicions, or beliefs, then they are non-defamatory. So, as noted by courts and Wisconsin state law treatises, um, okay, they are going, they, they cite to this, but they get the citation, they don't cite it properly. Um, I don't think this is proper citation style. Um, it's a little weird, but okay. Um, nobody else cares about citation style. Generally, the defamatory communication must be a statement of fact; an expression of opinion generally cannot be the basis of a defamation action. However, where the defamer departs from expressing pure opinion and communicates with, have described as mixed opinion, then liability may result. Mixed opinion is a communication which blends an expression of opinion with a statement of fact. This type of communication is actionable if it implies the assertion of undisclosed defamatory facts as the basis of the opinion.

Okay, so they say, in other words, claims that someone is a racist can be verifiable if the conduct is given enough specificity, and they cite to a case. So they're, here's how they're saying that like racist can be defamatory, okay, cuz there's a bunch of case law that says that it can't. So here we go. I'm, I'm waiting to be impressed, waiting to be wowed, knock me off my feet here. Um, knock me off my feet here, Benji CU. Um, you know, I got all the questions, and I'm willing to give you all the leeway on this one, but I want you to, I want you to back it up. Let's, let's do it. So here's the quotation from Overhill Farms Incorporated versus Lopez. So they say, "However, defendants did not merely accuse Overhill of being racist in some abstract sense; the press release contains language which expressly accuses it of engaging in racist firings and de-claims upon the disparate impact the firings have had on immigrant women." So that's a statement of mixed opinion and fact because the fact is RACIST firings and that this is, you know, particularly affected immigrant women. So that's an allegation not just of being racist but of being racist and in probably violating the labor codes and so forth. Now, we don't have that in this case. Um, what we have is just like, let's take them at their best; let's say that Caffinated Kitty came out and said, "Lauren the Mortician is transphobic." There's no element of engaging in racist firings; nobody's alleged that that Lauren like fired somebody for being trans or something like that. So this has no application; this does not apply here at all. Um, cool. Um, the best you can pull out is this case that is so obviously different on like, um, if this was in law school, I would be getting out the red pen here and possibly getting out the backup red pen for when the first red pen runs out of ink and just gives up and dies from overwork.

So here, defendant Caffinated Kitty did not simply call Plaintiff Propson transphobic; she claimed that Plaintiff Propson is transphobic and that she has proof or, or that she has evidence, which she provides to the, the reader, which is normally taken as more opinion. So as the context of defendant Caffinated Kitty's statement shows: "Lauren the Mortician is a Turf. I have receipts. I have Deets. And you should just go ahead and take a seat." Um, you guys need to actually get this quote nailed down right because you keep quoting this differently, and that is um, how do I put this, stupid. Um, you are quoting, you need your quotes of the alleged defamatory statement to match each other. Like, this is not a make-it-up-as-you-go-along game; this is, these should be 100% checked every time. Don't F around on this; this is not, this is not cool, Benji; this is not okay. Um, cuz now the court has to be like, what is the actual statement because it keeps changing. You can't change the quote unless you are actually flagging your changes; like, you have to, you have to use the square brackets when you're removing or injecting language; you got to use the ellipses; you can't, and you can't just throw words in because you feel like it. So, um, they're saying that this is a mixed opinion that incorporates the alleged fact that Plaintiff Propson, like, transphobic materials. Okay, um, it shows that she liked certain posts, trans; whether those are transphobic is going to be a matter of, all right, opinion. Furthermore, the statement that Plaintiff Propson was actively liking incredibly transphobic and hateful rhetoric in Conta or content insinuates that Plaintiff Propson endorsed and expressed transphobic rhetoric. You get into a lot of extensions here, um, but okay, um, endorsed, maybe, expressed, no, it, it doesn't, no, that's, that's a whole new sentence; like, you've just, that's a whole new thing.

Although defendant Caffinated Kitty casts her statement as an opinion, she rests her entire assertion on a verifiable claim that Plaintiff Propson liked and engaged in transphobic content. By claiming she had links to this transphobic content that Plaintiff Propson liked, and she posted those links, this is not an abstract statement of opinion that Plaintiff Propson is transphobic, but a mixed opinion relying on verifiable falsehoods. Have you alleged that she didn't post links, and whether those links are transphobic is pure opinion? Like, sorry, that's, that's a matter of opinion. As a result, defendant Caffinated Kitty's statements are not privileged nor protected by the First Amendment. Um, frankly, I think this entire paragraph is garbage. Um, L, like laughable garbage, but okay. Um, we're just going to roll with it. Defendant Caffinated Kitty's assertion or accusation that Lauren the Mortician is a "Turf" is defamation per se; that's, that's exciting; that's interesting. Defamation per se normally requires certain criteria. Um, um, it's sort of hard to get to. Defendant Caffinated Kitty's arguments regarding Plaintiff Propson, Lauren the Mortician persona, potentially being transphobic and thus a matter of public concern is an admission by defendant Caffinated Kitty that Plaintiff Propson's image and professional career have been harmed by her statement. No, it isn't; those are, those are two different statements; those are entirely different sentences. Um, like, were you really bad at the match game as a kid, like where you have the cards and you have to pick two up and match them and you're just like, everything here is the same card, cuz it's feeling like that.

So under Wisconsin law, the distinction between defamation which is actionable by itself or per se and that which requires proof of special damages is not the same as the distinction between language which may be defamatory on its face or may convey a defamatory meaning only by reason of extrinsic circumstances. If the only possible meaning or meanings of the communication under all the facts of the case are defamatory as applied to the plaintiff and could only reasonably, uh, so, uh, only be reasonably so understood by the recipient, the court may hold the language defamatory as a matter of law. Um, there are people, like, there are actually people who call themselves Turfs, right? That is, there are people who wave that as a flag, so that in and of itself you lose, right? Um, you lose on that point in and of itself. Um, like, full stop. But statements are defamatory when they damage one's reputation in the community or deter others from associating with the defamed individual. Defendant Caffinated Kitty's statement that Plaintiff Propson is a "Turf" constitutes defamation per se under Wisconsin law. A statement is defamation per se if its defamatory nature is obvious and apparent; such statements damage one's reputation in the community or deter others from associating with them. Um, you're getting real repetitive here; like, make your point without repeating over and over and over again. Um, the, the judge wanted you to be under 50 pages; you could have done that, CU; your writing is sloppy AF. Defendant Caffinated Kitty's statements caused reputational harm and loss of sponsorships for Plaintiff Propson, demonstrating reput defamation per se. Um, no, that's not how this works; that would be demonstrating damages, not demonstrating defamation per se. Okay.

Plaintiff Braun and Plaintiff Brun's law have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action against Caffinated Kitty. Um, wow, we're spending a lot of time on Caffinated Kitty. I said that they were unlikely to drop the case against Caffinated Kitty, and you see how much work they've put in. Um, Kitty, you really got your claws under Janet's skin here. Um, just so you know, it's probably the Janet business; I don't know who actually co-opted into the Janet business, but it's hilarious. So defendant Caffinated Kitty's claims that Plaintiff Braun, Janet, filed a false copyright claim against her and that Janet did not represent Lauren the Mortician—she didn't actually claim that—she said if, constitute defamation per se because they imply that Janet is an unethical lawyer that files frivolous lawsuits. Now, the real fun is that if this does end up going to trial, the court may have to rule on, like, there may end up being a ruling on whether Janet is an unethical lawyer, and I'm just going to say this is like going to the world's worst uh poker table, like the world's worst roulette wheel, because at the end of the day, if you get a court finding that you are actually an unethical lawyer or that you have behaved unethically, that has significant professional consequences. I would not risk this if I could possibly avoid it, but that is a possible outcome of this proceeding. I can't say whether or not that's where the Court's going to land, but if the court does, then, um, then we got ourselves some problems.

A plaintiff pursuing a defamation claim under Illinois law must establish: one, that the defendant made a false statement about the plaintiff; two, that the defendant made an unprivileged publication of that statement to a third party; and three, that the publication caused her damages. Okay. Defendant Caffinated Kitty's defamatory statements are mixed opinions that are verifiable and not subject to First Amendment protections or qualified privilege protection. That's a lot of things to throw into one, one section, but okay. I've already criticized your writing; I don't need to keep harping on it, even though you would. So defendant Caffinated Kitty's statements that Plaintiff Braun files bad faith copyright strikes and did not represent Lauren the Mortician—again, she didn't actually say that one; I don't think that that's an honest reading of that response, but okay—meet the first two requirements of defamation because they are verifiable statements that rely on asserted facts. Tell me how an "if" is a verifiable statement. I mean, you can verify the "if x then y" itself, and you know, the "if you don't represent her then you would cause more problems" is in fact verifiable and also would be true, but like, it's an "if," it's clearly entertaining a hypothetical; it's entertaining a possibility. So a false assertion of fact can be defamatory even when couched or presented as an opinion or rhetorical hyperbole. So under Illinois Law, mixed opinions are actionable as defamatory statements even if they are presented as just an opinion. So to be sure, a speaker cannot couch a false assertion of fact in terms of an opinion and thereby evade liability. Fair, like I've already noted this before, as the Illinois Supreme Court has noted, it is well established that statements made in the form of insinuation, illusion, irony, or question may be considered as defamatory as positive and direct assertions of fact. Okay, um, fair, but like in this case it seems much more to be an actual question; like, she's actually asking Janet, "Do you represent this person or are you just off the rails?" Because quite frankly, Janet did not convey in her Communications and so forth to be, yeah, so the most, she's not the most um train, like as in on the rails, uh, here.

Defendant Caffinated Kitty's statements rest on the verifiably false claim that Plaintiff Braun filed a frivolous or baseless copyright infringement claim against her. Those sound like opinions to me. And Plaintiff Braun did not represent Plaintiff Propson when she filed them. Again, that, that really seemed more like, "Do you not, you don't…" Defendant Caffinated Kitty argues that the terms "false copyright claim" and "bad faith copyright infringement strike" are subjective opinions and poses the question, "What does it mean for a claim to be false or in bad faith, and how would one verify that?" The answer to her question can be found in the context of her own statement and the Illinois rules of professional conduct. Are we really saying that we think Caffinated Kitty checked the rules of professional conduct? Are you really saying that you think that the average viewer of Caffinated Kitty would assume that she's talking specifically about the rules of professional conduct? The innocent construction rule requires a court to consider the statement in context and to give the words of the statement any implications arising from them their natural and obvious meaning, and so they cite as well to the rules of professional conduct: "A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding or assert or controvert an issue therein unless there is a basis in law and in fact for doing so that is not frivolous, which includes a good faith argument for an extension, modification, or reversal of existing law." Didn't you just finish arguing that a DMCA complaint is not a proceeding? Um, but okay, like you're not, this isn't a proceeding; you just finished saying, Okay. Um, okay. So again, this is a super reach.

Defendant Caffinated Kitty intentionally made public statements via social media on November 21st claiming that Plaintiff Braun, Janet, filed a false copyright claim and on December 8th, 2023, that Janet did not represent Plaintiff Propson, with Meta removing defendant Caffinated Kitty's infringing post on November 4th, 2023. Oh, we're back to this. Okay. Defendant Caffinated Kitty was unnoticed that she used content that did not belong to her and thus committed copyright infringement. Do we have any basis to, for like, do we have anything to conclude that Meta actually conducts any sort of review here or do they just take down everything, right? Like, that no, Meta is not a court; there, there's no like Judge Facebook; you know, Supreme Court Justice Zuckerberg is never going to be a thing. So uh, or maybe an entirely different one. Further, by hiring a lawyer and having that lawyer communicate with uh Janet on November 13th, 2023, defendant Caffinated Kitty knew that Janet did in fact represent Plaintiff Propson. Despite this, uh, defendant Caffinated Kitty still made her false statements on November 21st, 2023, and December 8th, 2023. Um, okay. Um, I don't think that in context anybody took that as an accusation, but whatever. Defendant Caffinated Kitty, in a request for deage, uh, claims that she did not say or deage, not sure which, again, that she did not say "bad faith copyright infringement strikes" or "false copyright claim" in her November 21st, 2023, video. This argument, as well as defendant Caffinated Kitty's request to watch her full 10-minute and two-second video, is frivolous and a disingenuous attempt by defendant Caffinated Kitty to mislead and distract this court by considering defendant Caffinated Kitty's self-serving Narrative of events that are factually disputed. Um, are those actual quotes or not? Um, and not in the four corners of the amended complaint. So, um, so defendant, then they have a footnote here: defendant

Caffeinated Kitty complains primarily about a wellness check being called on her and makes the accusation that Janet did this in response to a letter that Caffeinated Kitty sent her. Defendant Caffeinated Kitty also makes the claim that she had permission to use Janet's copyrighted material. These allegations are disputed and involve additional facts beyond the scope of defendant Caffeinated Kitty's November 21st, 2023 video and the amended complaint.

Hey, fun question: did you sue for defamation over the accusation of the wellness check? Was that a claim? Hum, interesting question, right? Why? Fun, right? Um, you'd think that would be the basis of a claim, unless there's some reason why it can't be. So, um, I mean, I, I can only speculate. Uh, maybe they decided that they couldn't get enough money off of that one. I don't know. So, um, so they—uh, they quote here, and this is quoting from the defense, and this time it's not as a block quote, it's just as an inline quote—"a transcript of the November 2023 TikTok post reveals that nowhere in the TikTok post do Caffeinated Kitty actually state that Braun filed bad faith or false copyright claims or copyright strikes against her as argued above." The additional facts defendant Caffeinated Kitty is attempting to present before this court are to challenge the factual sufficiency of plaintiff Braun's claims and should be resolved on summary judgment, or um, you should be able to quote what is actually in the video um and not paraphrase, because if you are making false assertions of fact in a filing, that would be a big problem. Uh, but they say for judicial efficiency, uh, the relevant text from defendant Caffeinated Kitty's video is shown below. Okay, cool. We're going to—we're going to quote the text. Cool, now we're there.

Um, so a sizable content creator on this app has apparently hired an attorney to threaten me with all manner of legal actions, and I need to come on here and set the record straight. The name of the attorney associated with the copyright strike and it is—is—s—such a bizarre copyright infringement strike that was, in Janet and Lauren's opinions, copyright infringement, by the way. The second problem for Janet in her missive to me is she does indicate that we are not on a first-name basis and that I should call her attorney Braun. As for Lauren, the mortician herself, I'm going to throw out there that this was—uh, that there was kind of a—have you heard the phrase "that's a weird hill to die on"? Well, to make it more on-brand for your channel, Lauren, this is kind of—of an odd pool to drown in, because you yourself uh consistently use trademarked IPs, and so I'm just saying, if you're going to go that route and say that that's the case for you, you might want to put up a metaphorical pool fence to protect your own assets before one of them almost drowns in bad faith copyright infringement strikes. Um, that's not putting it on—it's not putting it on Janet; that's saying that somebody else could make a bad faith copyright infringement strike. Okay. Um, your context has some problems here, and when you're going to call it frivolous and disingenuous, that's bold given um that she was talking about hypothetical bad faith copyright infringement strikes, not the ones that she received. You're—you got to do a lot of stretching to get to where you want to be. However, like her arguments against plaintiff Propson, defendant Caffeinated Kitty ignores the context of her own statements when determining the whether the defendant statement is capable of an innocent construction. The context of the statement is critical to its meaning, and therefore the court must read any allegedly defamatory words in the context of the entire document in which the statement was published. You just said not to—you just said don't watch the entire video, and now you're saying you've got to watch the entire—my head is spinning.

Um, so defendant Caffeinated—and we have a footnote here—defendant Caffeinated Kitty, in a request for judicial notice, requests the court to take judicial notice of a certified transcript; plaintiff—or plaintiff, subject to this characterization—and note that the link is just a version of defendant Caffeinated Kitty's video with auto-generated captions. There's not a certified transcript of defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statement that is available. Um, you could make one, like Benji. Why not? Why not make one? So if you're complaining that the transcript is not accurate, why not make one, so then it'd be accurate, right? Uh, so and they cite to um a case of Hadley versus Doe, noting that the defendant statement could be reasonably construed as intended to present a fact about plaintiff, not an expression of opinion, and that the statement implied the existence of undisclosed facts. The above text shows that throughout the video defendant Caffeinated Kitty complains that plaintiff Propson, operating as Lauren the Mortician, hired an attorney to file a copyright strike against her, and that these are bad faith copyright infringement strikes, which again sounds like an opinion, right? Um, and I mean, my opinion on those copyright infringement strikes is that they are not great, because normally before you file a strike or a DMCA or anything like that, you should evaluate whether or not it is fair use, and I think that Janet has some interesting theories of fair use that maybe are not supported by—you know—well, full stop.

So furthermore, defendant Caffeinated Kitty refers to plaintiff Propson's lawyer as Janet throughout the video um and even identifies plaintiff Braun by her full name at the 3:37 mark in the video at 7:2, but then is talking at the bad faith copyright infringement strikes about hypothetical strikes that would apply to Lauren, not to—okay. Defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statement that Lauren the Mortician bad faith copyright infringement strikes through attorney plaintiff Janet applies to the existence of undisclosed facts and thus takes it to a mixed opinion relying on facts—where does it do that? I mean, you're making the assertion, but where does it do that? Okay. Um, due to this, plaintiff Braun's allegations establish the context—I'm just looking over it again here—um, um, um, I'm not really seeing it, but okay. Um, I guess they're just going to assert that, and that's fine. So uh, implies the exist—well, not really fine, but you know, it is what it is—and thus makes it a mixed opinion relying on facts. Due to this, plaintiff Janet's allegations establish the context of defendant Caffeinated Kitty's statements and show that they assert verifiable falsehoods, namely that Lauren the Mortician used Janet to file bad faith copyright infringement strikes. Um, also note that a strike is not a legal proceeding in any fashion, right? A strike is a YouTube proceeding or a TikTok proceeding or whatever else, and so saying that it—that the rules of professional conduct apply as to what you do in a hearing—it's not a hearing when you just do a thing with TikTok or whatever.

As alleged in the complaint, defendant Caffeinated Kitty created a GoFundMe page to collect and raise money from her fans to pay her legal expenses. She posted a response letter she drafted to her GoFundMe page with the subject "False Copyright Claim" and made the following claim: So this was—this was—she posted the letter that she had responded to J with. So I do understand how you have reached out with cease and desist to smaller content creators while speaking negatively about Lauren the Mortician's scandals, and while I understand your desire to protect a creator you enjoy, if you were not legally obtained as counsel for her and I speak on this via my platform, your actions are going to cause her significantly more strife. So this statement about plaintiff Braun not representing Lauren the Mortician was published without any additional context or clarification other than the accusation that plaintiff Braun does not—not represent Lauren the Mortician and was just some rogue fan. Other than the context that it was—that it was a letter from before when they had the—the prior communication—you're kind of leaving that out there. This accusation that plaintiff Janet did not represent Lauren the Mortician is a mixed opinion that is not protected by the First Amendment. The allegations of the amended complaint established that Caffeinated Kitty published her letter uh accusing plaintiff Janet of being a fan that submitted a DMCA strike without permission to her GoFundMe page without any context or qualifiers um except that people knew that this was a response that was sent to Janet—like that was okay. The allegations of the amended complaint show that this statement was published several weeks after her initial TikTok post with her clarification. All right, based on the previous interactions described in the amended complaint, defendant Caffeinated Kitty was fully aware that her post about plaintiff Propson using plaintiff Janet to file bad faith copyright infringement strikes and false copyright claims were not true and that there was a basis for removing her infringing social media posts. Um, again, you're just going back to the meta—no—no, that is not how that works.

In addition, defendant Caffeinated Kitty's publication of her letter on December 8th, 2023 was made with no qualification after she knew the plaintiff Braun was plaintiff Janet or Propson's attorney. Um, as alleged, defendant Caffeinated Kitty went ahead with these posts anyway so that she could incite her fans to donate to her GoFundMe and to set her own self-serving narrative as to why she lost her Facebook account. Um, clearly she disagrees about the basis of the—you know—of the claims and whether they were valid. For these reasons, plaintiff Janet's allegations established the first and second elements of her defamation claim against defendant Caffeinated Kitty. And now they say defendant uh Caffeinated Kitty's statements are mixed opinions that are verifiable and not subject to First Amendment protection or qualifi—wait—wait a second. Okay, so paragraph two has exactly the same header as paragraph one. Um, I'm just gonna say there—in this—there is a total of one beer, and I feel like this—you know, when I'm reading this, I feel like this had to have had like six beers and um maybe some mushrooms or something. I don't know. Um, like I feel like we're through the Looking-Glass here, folks.

Defendant Caffeinated Kitty's false statements against plaintiff Braun are not entitled to qualified privilege because she knowingly published her false statement with the sole intention of casting plaintiff Braun in a false light to encourage her fans to donate to her GoFundMe. Sole intention is interesting. The qualified privilege in Illinois defamation law is based on the policy of protecting honest communications of misinformation in certain favored circumstances in order to facilitate the availability of correct information. However, even if a privilege exists in a case, the defendant may not rely on that privilege if he abuses it, noting that a plaintiff claiming that a defendant abused a qualified privilege must show a direct intention to injure another or a reckless disregard of the plaintiff's rights and the consequences that may result to the plaintiff. Well, you just said that this was for the purpose of encouraging her fans to donate to her GoFundMe, so that is a purpose that is not injuring you—that is—so donating to her GoFundMe because you know you're suing them and they need money for that because now they have legal expenses. So okay, a qualified privilege can be exceeded and defeated in circumstances where the defendant makes false statements with intent to injure or with reckless disregard for the statement's truth. Conduct constituting an abuse of the privilege thus includes not only an intent to injure, which you've kind of defeated, but also any reckless act which shows a disregard for the defamed party's rights, including the failure to properly investigate the truth of the matter, limit the scope of the material, or send the material to only the proper parties. So here, plaintiff Janet alleges enough facts to show that defendant Caffeinated Kitty intended to harm plaintiff Janet with her false statements. Um, you just actually countered that. Um, you—you just mined that—and thus is not entitled to any qualified privilege, even if applicable. Further, plaintiff Janet alleges that defendant Caffeinated Kitty made her false statements to incite her fan base by casting Janet as a rogue fan attorney that filed a frivolous copyright strike without the knowledge or consent of Lauren the Mortician. I don't think anyone actually got that out of it. Um, so yeah. Um, I think that was more that she was trying to investigate whether there was a problem because she didn't want to throw at Lauren if—if you were just like off the rails, and once she was publishing it, it was just noting—like the putting it up on the GoFundMe was just noting the communications that had been had between the parties, so it would have actually been a bit more of an issue if she'd edited those communications, because that would have portrayed a false version of what those communications were.

In addition, the false statement that plaintiff Janet's DMCA takedown request was a bad faith copyright infringement strike was done to incite the public into thinking that defendant Caffeinated Kitty's free speech was wrongfully infringed, which sounds like an opinion to me. These false statements were knowingly—or were knowingly made for monetary gain, to injure plaintiff Braun's reputation and to make the narrative favorable to defendant Caffeinated Kitty. Huh. Um, did your lawyers put out a statement, by the way, about this case that we reviewed? I seem to recall they did. Pot, kettle. Due to this, plaintiff Janet has alleged enough facts to overcome any claim of qualified privilege. So plaintiff Janet states a claim for defamation per se against defendant CF Kitty; thus, damages are assumed. Well, if you make out the defamation per se, plaintiff Janet's allegations—the defendant Caffeinated Kitty cast her in a false light and accused her of filing bad—or filing bad faith copyright strikes and being a rogue attorney um that filed a DMCA takedown request without the consent of plaintiff Propson—are defamation per se. If a statement is defamatory per se, damages are assumed. Um, I think that the whole thing of like "rogue attorney"—she never actually said "rogue attorney," to my knowledge, but she did seem to—like the allegation is—yeah. Um, they're not really using the quotes on this anymore. If a statement is defamatory per se, def—damages are assumed. A statement is defamatory per se if its harm is obvious and apparent on its face such that damages are assumed. In Illinois, courts recognize five categories of statements as defamation per se, two of which are applicable. So one: words that impute a person is unable to perform or lacks integrity in performing his or her employment duties. And you know what I will say, if you—you know, if you impute that somebody is um, you know, unethical in the legal sense, then there may be a—you know—maybe an argument there. Or two: words that impute a person lacks ability or otherwise prejudices that person in his or her profession. Here, defendants made several false statements about plaintiffs, and each of these false statements were unprivileged publications that caused damages. Additionally, in the case of plaintiffs Braun and Braun Law, the statements made by uh defendants amount to defamation per se. Here, defendant CAF Kitty's statements fall within these categories by falsely claiming that plaintiff Braun filed false copyright claims and bad faith copyright infringement strikes and implying that plaintiff Braun did not—imply her—represent Lauren the Mortician. Defendant Caffeinated Kitty imputed that plaintiff Braun lacks integrity and ability in performing her professional duties as an attorney. Um, I think that their claim is stronger with respect to the "not representing Lauren the Mortician" aspect, but the big problem they're going to have, of course, is whether or not these things get to this at all. Um, people make statements all the time about like "this lawsuit is and was filed in bad faith." That can't—if—if that creates defamation, then pretty much we're going to have to—you know, we're going to have to start suing everybody who gets sued, which is going to just be—that—that just creates a whole rabbit hole, like every time somebody gets sued, if they make a comment about the lawsuit saying that they don't think it's a valid lawsuit, then—then they get sued again. Like you just get infinite lawsuits, like putting two mirrors facing each other and just getting a—

So plaintiff Braun and Braun Law state a claim for defamation and defamation per se against Vasquez and Marston under Illinois law. Man, this video is going to be long. I'm sorry about that, but um, it is what it is. Um, I hope you guys packed a lunch. So Braun and Braun Law have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for defamation per se under Illinois law against Vasquez and Marston. So one: defendant Marston and Marston's statements regarding plaintiff's Braun and Braun Law: so one—false copyright strikes. Defendants accused plaintiff Braun of filing false copyright strikes, implying that her actions were illegitimate and conducted in bad faith. For instance, defendant Vasquez stated, "As unhinged as Janet is, as unethical as Janet is, she's finding some success in her practices." They love that quote. This statement was made during a discussion about plaintiff Janet's legal methods and insinuated that her success was built on unethical practices. Um, or it just said that she was having success despite allegations of unethical practices. So "unethical attorney." The repeated claims that plaintiff Janet is an unethical attorney were made during discussions about her legal practices, suggesting she routinely engages in unethical conduct. These statements were made publicly in a podcast and on various social media platforms. Specifically, defendants Vasquez and Marston accused plaintiff Janet of filing false copyright strikes and of being an unethical attorney in their December 2nd, 2023 podcast episode and various social media posts. Defendants also discussed plaintiff Janet's representation of Caitlyn Dempsey—Demps—Demps is probably now a witness—alleging that plaintiff Janet used unethical—ical tactics to file false copyright strikes against smaller content creators, thus intimidating them and misusing the copyright strike system. Okay. Um, again, whether something is false, I think is probably going to be opinion, but okay. They also note defendants Vasquez and Marston continue to purposefully and incorrectly refer to Plaintiff Braun as Janet, um and we know you hate it and um it's—it's going to continue because it's still funny. The beatings will continue until they stop being hilarious. Committing perjury. Okay, this one is getting a little like stronger as a claim that can be litigated. Defendants alleged that plaintiff Braun commits perjury, accusing her of criminal behavior. Specifically, defendant Marston, referring to Plaintiff Braun's client—so Janet's client, Caitlyn Dempsey—after public—in their podcast, stated, "I got to say, one of our biggest questions in all of this is, do we think Demps knows her embarrassing excuse for a lawyer is using her name while actively committing perjury? Someone might want to tell her." Okay, now the allegation here is a little stronger, but um DMCA claims are filed under penalty of perjury, so this one is a little stronger, I think. Um, this one—if—if any claim is going to—you know, if I had to pick one claim that's going to be a problem, it's going to be that one. So defendant Marston and defendant Vasquez made unprivileged publications to a third party. Plaintiff Janet and Janet Law established the—the second element against defendant Vasquez and defendant Marston because defamatory statements were published widely and without privilege on multiple platforms, including all the things. So uh, they say that they're not entitled to First Amendment protections because they are verifiable falsehoods. False copyright strikes. Defendants accused—def—plaintiff Braun of filing false copyright strikes, implying her actions were illegitimate and conducted in bad faith, or that they disagree—that they're valid. Like the innocent construction rule means that if you can just take their simple language and their f—then—then you're stuck with that. The innocent construction rule seems to suggest that a false copyright strike would be that she's filing a copyright strike that is not valid, which doesn't n—you know, I just—I'm sorry, I don't see this. These statements were verifiable because it can be determined whether the copyright strikes filed by plaintiff Janet on behalf of her clients referenced in the defendants' video were frivolous. She didn't say frivolous; she said false. Those are different meanings. If I say somebody has falsely accused me of a crime, it doesn't mean that they have frivolously accused me of a crime. Those are very, very different statements, and you're trying to turn one thing into another. You can't make fetch happen here. Um, false and frivolous are so completely different in meaning that—yep. Okay, I got to wrap this up soon. This may have to be a two-parter because um I got to be streaming in like four hours. It's going to be exciting. Unethical attorney. Defendants repeatedly claim—maybe I'll record this in two parts and put it up as one big video. I haven't decided. Unethical attorney. Defendants repeatedly claim that plaintiff Braun is an unethical attorney, suggesting that she routinely engages in unethical conduct. This statement is verifiable because it can be investigated whether plaintiff Braun's actions adhered to legal and ethical standards. Yeah. Um, did she say legally unethical, or did she just say unethical? Because you can think—like I'm a criminal defense lawyer; plenty of people think the entire profession of criminal defense is unethical—like just my existence is unethical—plenty.

Of people think that, and I can't sue them because, you know, even if they say that online, because that's a different meaning. You're trying to turn this into something it it isn't necessarily, and again you're going to run into some problems as noted in the amended complaint.

Plaintiff Janet is an attorney in good standing with the state of Illinois, with no disciplinary actions made against her. And this information could easily have been found from the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC). Let me tell you, just because no disciplinary actions have been made against a lawyer doesn't mean that that lawyer is necessarily ethical. Because I can tell you, um, like there are plenty of lawyers who get disbarred, and their actions were unethical from the time they did the actions on, right? And it isn't like the um the disciplinary boards for lawyers are not like packed with magicians. Um, lawyers, we are not like at Hogwarts. And so a lot of the time when lawyers do something unethical, it may not be discovered right away, sometimes not at all, and it's still unethical. Like if a lawyer is stealing money from the trust account, that lawyer is unethical regardless of whether or not they have any findings against them. And I'm not saying Janet is stealing from the trust account; this is is a hypothetical, right?

Benji, please try to stay with me on this one. I know, I know this is hard, um, I but yeah, this so yeah, um, yeah, disagree with that one.

Committing perjury. Defendants proclaim that plaintiff Brun committed perjury, accusing her of criminal behavior. The statement is verifiable because it can be determined whether plaintiff Brun has ever been convicted of committing perjury. Um, no, no, that is not how that works. Um, that is not how that works at all. Like I can say that somebody committed a murder, and then there's a different question as to whether or not they've been convicted of committing a murder. Um, like those are those are different things. Um, there are plenty of, for instance, serial killers who were like believed and pretty reliably believed to have killed like a hundred people, but they convict get convicted of only like 10 of the murders because past like 10 murders, why bother, right? There's a certain point where you get like diminishing returns. This guy is going to be in jail for like 70 lifetimes, and you're like, okay, cool, we could charge more murders, but like we got you, we're we're good. Even if you manage to successfully appeal half of these, you only die in prison like 30 times over. Um, so you can still say, hey, that person murdered this other person, right? Um, you can have all sorts of reasons why somebody's never been convicted. This statement, like the statement here is obviously different whether somebody has been convicted of something versus whether somebody, and I'm not saying that there aren't problems with the whole perjury statement, but I am saying that this argument here is so stupid when you have so many better arguments that you could make. Like this is the easiest thing for you to establish; this is the easiest, um, you know, this is the easiest one on the whole, like on the, you know, tree of legal arguments; this is the absolute lowest hanging fruit. Um, this is the you will trip over it fruit, and you it up.

Benji, what the… Um, I mean, I'm not mad; I'm just disappointed. Um, okay.

So Vasquez and Martin state or Marston statements are not entitled to qualified privilege. So they say here they've alleged sufficient facts to show that the defendants intended to harm uh plaintiffs with their false statements. The statements about plaintiff Brun's DMCA takedown request being a bad faith copyright infringement strike were made to incite the public into thinking plaintiff Janet was unfairly suppressing free speech, or it was made to discuss the issue. These false statements were knowingly made to injure plaintiff Janet's reputation and create a favorable narrative for defendants. Um, they weren't charged at this point, so why did they need a narrative? They were just discussing news; they were discussing gossip and news in the sphere of the world. Therefore, uh, Janet and Janet law have alleged sufficient facts to overcome any claim of qualified privilege. Um, you think so? Do you? Thus, uh, Vasquez and Martin's Marston's false statements against plaintiff Janet are not protected by qualified privilege because they were made with a reckless disregard for the truth. Um, okay, okay, you haven't supported that at all, and you only sort of information and belief that in your amended complaint. You might want to back that up a little more and with the intent to harm plaintiff Janet's professional reputation. You didn't even information and belief that; you just made it up now, like, um, this just keeps getting worse here.

So damages are assumed because it's defamation per se. So they noted that uh, as alleged, the def statements led to a loss of clients, potential clients, and harm to Plaintiff Janet's professional reputation. Clients and potential clients were deterred from hiring her due to these defamatory statements. Um, how you going to back that up? I've said this before, but I'm saying it again; I don't think you can back that up.

False copyright strikes. Defendants accused plaintiff Janet of filing false copyright strikes. Um, such a statement impunes her professional capabil making it defamatory per se. Um, I mean, saying that somebody filed a false lawsuit isn't defamatory per se. Um, I think this one's a real reach.

Unethical attorney. This repeated claims that plaintiff Brun is an unethical attorney uh were made in discussions about her legal practices, suggesting she routinely engages in unethical conduct. Um, what does ethical mean here? You're trying to say that it means means specifically the rules of professional conduct, but that's not how lay people typically use the word, and they're lay people. So in addition, all attorneys in the state of Illinois must pass character and fitness to be barred to practice in the state. If any attorneys have violated the rules of professional conduct, the attorney in question could be suspended or even disbarred. You're saying you're going to get disbar over a over a YouTube video. Um, lawyers are subject to dis discipline when they violate or attempt to violate the rules of professional conduct. As such, defendant statements directly attack plaintiff Janet's professional integrity, which Illinois recogniz or Illinois Law recognizes as defamation per se. Huh. Um, starting to annoy me here, Janet. Um, just a wee bit, making me uh making me ponder committing perjury.

Defendants alleged that Braun committed perjury, accusing her of criminal behavior. Committing perjury is a class three felony in the state of Illinois. This is the better argument. Defendant's serious allegations of perjury directly impact her professional reputation, suggesting she is untrustworthy and engages in illegal activities. Illinois courts have consistently held that false accusations of criminal activity are defamatory per se. As mentioned, this is the stronger argument. The defense is trying to say that this is just to say that she's dishonest, but dishonest and perjury are, to my mind, different things. So yeah, if there's a claim here, this is the claim.

Continuing on, plaintiffs Braun and Braun law started a claim for defamation and defamation per se against defendant Day under Illinois Law. So that's Becca Day. Defendant Day statements accusing plaintiff Janet of unethical conduct and making false copyright strikes constitute defamation per se because they imp plaintiff Janet is an unethical lawyer who engages in frivolous and illegitimate practices. There's a lot of quotable lines in here. So plaintiff Janet and Janet law have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action of defamation and defamation per se under Illinois law against defamation Day. Um, their subheadings kind of, yeah, I don't really like how this is written, but you probably already understand that at this point.

So defendant Day's publishing of the same false claims, the defendant C Kitty that plaintiff Janet files false copyright strikes is an unethical attorney and is a rogue attorney are defamatory statements that were made with reckless disregard for the truth. Um, I'm not really sure how Rogue attorney is sufficiently falsifiable to be actionable. Um, like I've already sort of covered the others, but Rogue attorney is really vague.

So defendant Day's statements regarding plaintiff Janet and Janet law, so first false copyright strikes. Defendant Day stated that plaintiff Janet uses an unethical tactic to scare creators off this app and that plaintiff Janet issues false copyright strikes, which again seem like sort of unverifiable statements of opinion, especially as mentioned coming from a lay person. You know, they're going to say, oh, that this suggests that she was violating the rules of ethics, as I mean, lay people don't typically use the rules of ethics; they just talk about what they think is ethical, and those can be very different things. So unethical attorney. Defendant Day claimed that plaintiff Janet is unethical, suggesting she routinely engages in unethical conduct and that the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission told her they received multiple credible complaints about Janet Brown, and they've assigned multiple attorneys to investigate this matter. See that part is a statement of fact, and there we're getting a little better, right? Do we actually have an issue where the ARDC received multiple credible complaints or or not? Okay. So Rogue attorney. Defendant Day claimed the plaintiff Janet was an unethical attorney in a since-deleted TikTok story post. Specifically, Day states to her fans, but I just wanted to make uh make it very clear that my position is to ensure there's not a a rogue attorney on this app. Again, I don't know what a rogue attorney means, um, but they're going to tell us what they think it means, I guess. Due to the number of videos defendant Day was posting with plaintiff Janet when she made the statement, defendant Day's fans presumably knew that defendant Day was talking about plaintiff Janet. Okay. Um, fine, we'll just assume that's true. Defendant Day statements were published to third parties on social media. We'll we'll give you that one because they were posted on TikTok. Cool. Um, defendant Day statements are verifiable and mixed opinions relying on underlying facts. So they're really going to do a lot with this mixed opinion thing, and so far the mixed opinions thing hasn't really uh blown my skirt up, but let's see.

False copyright strikes. Defendant Day statements that Janet uses an unethical tactic to scare creators off this app and issues false copyright strikes are verified viable because it can be determined whether the copyright strikes filed by plaintiff Janet were frivolous. As discussed above, um, is false the same as frivolous? No, those are very different meanings. So I I think you're telling us that you think you're going to lose here because you wouldn't be playing that sort of verbal uh three-card monte if you thought you had a good case on false copyright strikes. So instead, you're trying to rewrite what defendant Day said to be frivolous copyright strikes. Those those are different things; those are very different animals, and you can't just pretend that one animal is the other, which is, you know, why it's safe-ish to eat at McDonald's. Okay.

Unethical attorney. The claim that plaintiff Janet is an unethical attorney and that the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission told defendant Day they received multiple credible complaints about uh Janet Brown and they've assigned multiple attorneys to investigate this matter are verifiable. One could check with the ARDC to learn one whether plaintiff Janet had ever been disciplined for ethical violations. Not the same thing; not the same thing because they said credible complaints, and they've assigned attorneys to investigate the matter. That is not a claim that there's been a finding; that's a claim that there's an investigation. And two, how the ARDC handles ethics complaints of attorneys barred in the state of Illinois. Have you pled that it's not true that they have received complaints and that they've assigned attorneys to investigate the matter? Cuz um, I know that there was at least one complaint. I know that it's been dismissed, at least the one I've, you know, I know about, wasn't for me; I heard about it from a third party, but um, so you didn't say there weren't complaints; you're just saying why would they have told defendant Day about the complaints? And the reason, sometimes information leaks, like things that are supposed to be private don't always stay private. You might actually have a claim against the ARDC, but without doing some better homework, you I don't think this claim is going to uh this claim's necessarily got some issues.

So Rogue attorney. As alleged, defendant Day statements showcase the existence of verifiable falsehoods in her statement that plaintiff Brun did something wrong as a rogue attorney on the TikTok app. What do rogue attorney mean? Well, they're going to tell us. In essence, defendant Day is claiming that plaintiff Janet is an unethical attorney using false copyright strikes to harass creators, which as shown above is false. Um, is that what Rogue attorney means means, or does Rogue attorney potentially mean all sorts of things? I don't think Rogue attorney is actionable here.

So defendant Day statements are not entitled to qualified privilege here. Plaintiff's Janet and Janet law pled sufficient facts to show that defendant Day intended to harm her with false statements. Um, they basically just said, we on information and belief think this. Um, they've tried to information and belief their way into it, but I don't think they've actually pled sufficient facts. So, for instance, defendant Day statements about plaintiff Brun issuing false copyright strikes was made to incite the public into thinking plaintiff Janet was unfairly suppressing free speech. I mean, unfairly is a that would be an opinion, right? Is there an objective standard for unfair? What's the objective standard for unfair, like this? And defendant Day's other false statements were knowingly made to injure Brun's reputation and create a favorable narrative for defendant Day. Facts not cited. Therefore, plaintiff Janet has pled sufficient facts to overcome any claim of qualified privilege. Um, again, like where's those sufficient facts? I'm not seeing the sufficient facts; you're just kind of drawing some conclusions, but where's the facts that actually justify those? How do we get to was made to incite the public? What tells us that that was the reason? Is there a a fact you wanted to tell us that you pled? I I'm not seeing the fact.

Defendant Day's false statements against plaintiff Janet are not protected by any qualified privilege because they were made with reckless disregard for the truth and with the intent to harm plaintiff Janet's professional reputation. Um, reckless disregard, I don't think they're going to meet here, but okay, they're trying to create a new standard; it looks like. Defendant Day's false statements are defamation per se because they imply that defendant Janet is not ethical and is incompetent in their profession. So damages are assumed. Now this probably, you know, where you attack somebody's professional standing, like they're standing as a a professional in certain professions, which would include lawyer, then you are probably into defamation per se if made out. So as alleged in the first amended complaint, defendant Day used the above false statements to incite an angry mob in harassment campaign against Miss Janet and her past clients that are social media influencers. Defendant Day's statements have caused severe damage to plaintiff Janet's reputation and professional standing. Or was it the wellness checks? Um, what caused damage to me, like to my eyes, in plaintiff Janet's reputation and professional standing was plaintiff Janet's own actions. And yeah, I mean, we've got the wellness check. She says she was doing them for legitimate reasons. I've looked at those reasons, and I was not convinced. You can see she's got her own press release, you know, and so forth, but um, and I read her statement of claim, and her statement of claim is, in my opinion, because this is a statement of opinion, um, God awful. God awful, not being actionable. And Benji, you might want to start writing some stuff down here. So uh, where were we?

Further, defendant Day statements impute that plaintiff Janet is an attorney that is committing unethical acts as part of her practice. Due to these attacks on her profession and character, plaintiff Janet's damages are assumed because defendant Day statements are defamation per se. Now again, there is a fair bit of twisting of those actions going on, but okay, well, yeah, fair enough. Um, if you can if they can get to the court to saying, hey, this is an allegation of unethical under the um, you know, under the rules, then maybe.

Plaintiff Janet and Janet law stated a claim for false light against defendants under Illinois Law. And now they say plaintiffs Janet and Janet law have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action of false light under Illinois law against defendants. And the first sentence is plaintiffs Janet and Janet law have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for false light under Illinois law against defendants. Holy crap, is this repetitive? Do you just hate the reader? Maybe they knew I would read this and they're just like, you know what, we we don't think we're going to win, but screw this Runkle guy; just going to make him suffer when he reads this. Um, I don't think that's actually what's going on, but it feels like it. It's um, I got some suffering going on. All right. So to state a claim for false light under Illinois Law, the plaintiffs must allege that one, they were placed in a false light before the public as a result of the defendant's actions; two, that false light would be highly offensive to a reasonable person; and three, the defendants acted with actual malice. I don't see how they get us to actual malice here, but they're going to try to tell us that. So and uh, they've omitted some quotations, but they've cited again to Aeno uh here. Plaintiffs Janet and Janet law have pled sufficient facts to establish the defendants' actions placed Janet and Janet law one or in a one false light, two that is highly offensive to a reasonable person, and that three defendant's actions were malicious. So one, defendant statements cast plaintiff Janet and Janet law in a false light. If they lose on this, by the way, it's going to be embarrassing if they lose on the facts because if they say, hey, this did put them in a True Light, then that'll be really embarrassing. Um, so defendants Caffeinated Kitty, Vasquez, Marston, and Day made numerous false statements that cast plaintiffs Janet and Janet law in a false light by accus accusing plaintiff Janet of unethical and illegal conduct. Specifically, defendants stated that plaintiff Janet files false copyright strikes and is an unethical attorney who commits perjury. Uh, I don't think you can mix everyone here together that way because not all of them made those claims. Um, you got to sort of match your claims to your persons here. Um, these statements all imply that plaintiff Janet engages in dishonest and criminal activities, which significantly distort her professional reputation and character. So bad faith copyright infringement strikes and false copyright infring infringement strikes or false copyright strikes. Uh, it's late. Um, this is the second round of me recording this video, but I'm doing it late at night. Defendants all individually accused plaintiff Janet of a variation of filing bad faith copyright infringement strikes and false copyright strikes. Plaintiff Janet's allegations establish that the context of these statements was to paint plaintiff Janet in the false light of being an unethical attorney that engages in dishonest and frivolous copyright enforcement practices. Um, frivolous is again a new word, right? Dishonest is a new word. False copyright strikes don't necessarily mean that. So so so they cite to Intercon Intercon Soul and Incorporated, uh, noting that plaintiff's allegations that the defendant stated that the plaintiff engaged in improper business practices and criminal wrongdoing to impute a lack of inability in its a lack of inability in its trade profession or business was sufficient to state a false light claim. Um, I think that they may um I think they may have mangled that quote, that citation. A lack of inability. I think if people were imputing a lack of inability to Janet, she wouldn't be upset. I think that maybe they um they put in a negative and then they put in a second negative, and they forgot to remove the yeah. Um, proofread your stuff, folks.

Unethical attorney and Rogue attorney and not representing Lauren the mortician. Defendants Day, Marston, and Vasquez repeatedly referred to plaintiff Janet as unethical, suggesting she routinely engages in unethical conduct in her legal practice or possibly suggesting that they considered one tactic unethical. You're trying to spin this; you're trying to stretch it. It's [Music] like um, yeah, they can have an opinion of you, but that you're turning it into a different sentence entirely. So further, defendant Day's accusation that plaintiff Janet is a rogue and unethical attorney painted plaintiff Janet in the same light as someone engaging in dishonest and unethical practices as part of her profession. Didn't they make it pretty clear what they were talking about? Defendant Caffeinated Kitty statement that plaintiff Janet did not represent Lauren the mortician was intended to have the same effect. That wasn't what the statement was. Um, I'm not finding this to be a terribly accurate recitation of the facts, um, even the facts as pled. So yeah, um, I know the feelings I'd be having if I was the judge reading it. Um, they might be, you know, rage.

Committing perjury. Defendant Marston stated, do we think Demps knows her embarrassing excuse for a lawyer is using her name while actively committing perjury? Someone might want to tell her.

As the allegations of the amended complaint establish, defendant Marston’s statement referred to Plaintiff Janet based on her reference to Plaintiff Janet’s CL client deps and was meant to imply that Plaintiff Brun committed the crime of perjury. So, um, one of the things that was an interesting development is that Bunny XO had said statements along the lines of, you know, “I fired Janet because she did this without my instructions.” Well, one of the things, you know, and I said in the video that I did talking about that at the time, that there were really two possibilities: one, Janet might have been acting without instructions—that was one of the possibilities as it seemed at the time—or two, Bunny XO might have been full of crap. And since then, Bunny XO has, um, had additional copyright claims sent out, DMCA claims, um, with Jen on as the lawyer. Some point I need to do a video on that; I meant to, I was just super busy. Um, however, what this suggests to me, and again this is me sort of trying to draw a conclusion, is that it’s probably not that Janet was in like that Janet was the problem there.

So, on that particular instance, the issue of the allegation of like the apparent allegation of perjury—not from any of the defendants but from Bunny XO—um, it looks like that, you know, like H, that doesn’t seem to have panned out, but we’ll have to see more, right? We’ll have to see what’s going on, but um, but I don’t know, that could have been what they were referring to. That said, those, you know, those details are not in evidence. If that’s going to be the argument, then it would have to go to some Discovery to figure out what all that is. So, fair enough. Um, as I said, the perjury claim may be the strongest one simply because, uh, the defense is trying to say perjury just means liar, but perjury has an over and above meaning above liar that might get it to more specific.

All right, defendant statements were highly offensive because they imply that Plaintiff Janet is an unethical attorney that is committing illegal or dishonest acts and practices. This really needed to be broken up by defendant, not by everybody, because you’re mixing everything together. The false statements made by defendants are highly offensive to a reasonable person as they accuse Plaintiff Janet of serious professional and criminal misconduct. Being labeled as unethical and accused of committing perjury directly attacks Plaintiff Janet’s integrity, lawfulness, and her ability to perform her professional duties as an attorney. This type of accusation is particularly damaging in the legal profession where reputation and adherence to ethical standards and the law are paramount. Fair, right? Um, I would not be happy if somebody’s suggesting that I was unethical. Where I get that she’s upset here, and I get why she’s upset. As alleged, these statements were made publicly, yeah, we’re fair, uh, through multiple platforms including podcasts and social media, reaching a broad audience and causing significant harm to Plaintiff Janet’s reputation. I think she’s going to have a hard time proving the actual reputational damages within, um, you know, within the field, but I’m really interested to see how she tries. The privilege issues seem really difficult, so they cite Lovren versus Citizen First National Bank, noting that falsely disparaging someone’s integrity before the public can be highly offensive. Here, falsely accusing Plaintiff Janet of committing a felony, e.g., perjury, as well as performing unethical conduct is far more offensive than merely questioning someone’s financial integrity. Thus, defendant statements were highly offensive. The problem they’re going to run into is that the defamation claims fall, um, if those fall then these fall as well. So three, all defendants acted with actual malice because their statements were either knowingly false or made with a reckless disregard for the truth so that they could make content to boost their social media careers and engagement.

So actual malice. Now, actual malice doesn’t mean what most people think it means. Actual malice sounds like you are a mustache-twirling villain tying some young damsel to a, you know, to the train tracks and, you know, whatever else. That’s not what actual malice means. So actual malice means that the defendants made the state false statements with knowledge of their falsity or in reckless disregard for their truth or falsity. So what does that mean? Well, you, you know, if you, you make a statement that you know is false, but how do you prove knowledge of falsity? Well, this is typically very hard. Um, typically this means you have to have some sort of communication from that person where they say, “I know this is false.” Um, that that’s rare to have in a defamation claim, um, or in reckless disregard for their truth or falsity. And the reckless disregard has typically meant something along the line of, you had to have really good reasons to question it, or you have to have been in actual questioning of it. Uh, so when we saw the Taylor Loren, um, defamation case with, uh, Ari Jacobs, the issue there was a statement made that said, “I don’t think this statement is true. This statement, you know, causes me some serious doubt,” and then it was published anyway. That got to actual mou, or at least got over the hurdle of a motion to dismiss on the point of actual malice, which, you know, it wasn’t proven at trial, it was just enough that state like that there was enough to overcome the motion to dismiss. So that is, um, that’s kind of what it takes usually. So, although malice may be alleged generally, the bare conclusory claim of malice unaccompanied by allegations from which the required subjective element of malice might be inferred is insufficient to survive motion to dismiss. That sounds like a quotation that the defense would be using. Why is the prosecution using it? Why are okay.

Um, so furthermore, this court has previously found that the general allegation of the defendant acted with actual malice and rest reckless disregard for the truth, knowing these statements were clearly false, was sufficient to show actual malice when coupled with the inferences in favor of plaintiffs. Okay. Um, now this is again citing to Aend Dero, so maybe I’ll have to do a video just on Aend Dero to see, hey, is Aend Dero as helpful as the plaintiffs claim? So we’ll have to go through that at some point, probably. So here, plaintiffs have alleged that defendants acted with malice and a reckless disregard for the truth. In addition, plaintiffs Janet and Janet Law have pledged specific facts that, when held in their favor, support a finding that defendants acted with actual malice. Okay, what are those facts? For example, Plaintiff Janet has pled facts that Defendant Caffeinated Kitty insinuated that Plaintiff Janet was a rogue attorney who filed false copyright strikes for another without their permission, even though Defendant Caffeinated Kitty hired a lawyer and had that lawyer communicate with Plaintiff Janet almost a month before her statement. Okay. Um, hasn’t how does that get you to okay.

As another example, defendants could have checked with the attorney, uh, Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commissions, uh, ARDC, to see that Plaintiff Janet is an attorney in good standing with the State of Illinois, has not been disbarred, has not been reprimanded, or otherwise punished for unethical behavior or misconduct. So, um, reckless doesn’t necess like doesn’t mean could have checked more; it means, you know, had good reason to doubt. And the allegations here are not that she’s been disbarred. Nobody said she was disbarred. I haven’t said she was disbarred. Nobody has said she was disbarred. The allegations weren’t she has been [Laughter] sanctioned like that. You don’t need a you don’t need a finding from this is such a a bait and switch here. This is such a little rhetorical shuffle that, um, I’m just like, what? Okay, you, you can’t do that. You can’t swap it in like nobody, somebody saying that they think your actions in this case are unethical doesn’t mean that they think that you have been found by the ARDC to be unethical. Those are different statements. Those are entirely different universes. Uh, therefore, based on these examples and other facts alleged in the amended complaint, plaintiffs have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for false light. If that’s the best you can do to defend yourself here, if that’s the best you’ve got, then, um, this is pretty weak. Um, this is pretty weak if that’s the best you can do to support things in the fact. All right, plaintiff stated like this is the place where you do a lot of citation to specific things, and they could have had the room like, you know, they by their calculation came in at 48 pages, so they had two more pages of room to cite things, but also they could have cut out a lot of repetitive things here and come down even more like, hey, what things actually show us that these people had doubt or that these people knew those statements were false? Yeah, and okay, okay.

Uh, plaintiff stated a claim for trade libel against defendants under Illinois and Wisconsin law. So plaintiffs Janet and Propson state claims for trade libel under Illinois and Wisconsin law respectively because they’ve adequately alleged that defendants made injurious false statements with reckless disregard for the truth intending to harm plaintiff’s reputations and divert their business to defendants. What, what? Okay, that, that’s going to be a thing, I guess. We’re resulting in significant damages as detailed in the amended complaint. Um, this is especially funny when you see that they’ve, um, combined the plaintiff’s reputations, um, as opposed to just like pleading sep as opposed to like suing separately, because it’s like, and divert their business to defendants. Are you saying that like the Do We Know Them podcast is suddenly going to be become like copyright and trademark lawyers? I don’t think that’s what you meant. I think that they are saying, oh yeah, maybe they’re going to get some of the views off of, but again that’s not really how the internet works. Um, you can’t really steal a viewer typically. Um, usually people who watch one video watch multiple videos, and this is why, for instance, you do collaborations like when you’ve got influencers out there going, “Let’s do a collab,” and so forth. It’s not because they think that you’re going to, you know, that people are going to steal viewers. Cuz if they thought that, then no one would ever do a collaboration, right? Why would I bring Joe Schmo onto my channel to talk about things if I thought people were going to be like, oh yeah, let’s, let’s dump RLE and go check out this person because I can only ever watch one influencer? I can only ever watch one content creator? No, it’s because sort of their audience is exposed to me and my audience is exposed to them, and both audiences grow. This, this is a really bad misunderstanding of like how the content creator sphere works. Well, I’m, I’m being charitable here and saying it’s a misunderstanding because it’s either a misunderstanding or a mischaracterization, and I’m going to be charitable to assume that they’re not mischaracterizing things to the court. Um, so, but if it’s a misunderstanding, then we have a big problem because isn’t Plaintiff Janet somebody who literally does this for a living? Like, isn’t so, um, maybe understand it better because if you’re trying to advise a client as to how to navigate an issue in the social media influencer sphere, then it’s important to understand these kinds of wrinkles. Hey, um, by doing these videos, some people have found me via, you know, other content creators like Mad Caters is doing discussion of this and, you know, others. It’s not like I’m stealing his audience or he’s stealing my audience; it’s people watch both videos, and that’s perfectly fine, right? That’s how this works. Okay, enough rant. More, uh, more things to rant about. We recharge the rant engine here.

Plaintiff Propson has pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for trade libel under Wisconsin law against Defendant Caffeinated Kitty. So to state a claim for the tort of trade libel under Wisconsin law, a plaintiff must establish an injurious falsehood, which 623a U of the restatement of torts defines as a statement that the speaker knows to be false or makes with reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. So again, that sounds like actual malice to me. The Seventh Circuit, while deciding on a case applying Wisconsin law, noted that section 626 calls the subject trade libel and covers disparagement of quality of goods. So, you know, if you say somebody’s, you know, somebody, somebody delivers zucchinis and you’re like, yeah, their zucchinis really suck, they, they always ship like old moldy zucchinis, there’s they’re, you know, they’re limp, they’re insufficient for your zucchini needs, well, then that might be trade libel, cuz maybe their zucchinis are just fine. Maybe you knew that. Um, so in this case, the injurious falsehood is that Plaintiff Propson endorses transphobic content and rhetoric, which affects current and potential viewers’ perception of the quality of her goods and services, i.e., her content. How, how like if I say that Bob is, I don’t know, let’s pick something really ridiculous. If I say Bob is literally a vampire that, you know, drinks the blood of the innocent, and that doesn’t say that Bob’s zucchinis are awful, Bob might be a vampire who makes perfectly excellent zucchinis. Um, similarly, you know, whether your videos on child safety seats are awful isn’t something that was addressed by Becca Day or Caffeinated Kitty or any of the others. Um, they said you’re awful. That’s that’s the thing you’re upset about is you’re saying, why are people saying I’m awful? That’s your allegation is they’re saying you’re awful, not that your videos are awful. So there’s a a bit of a jump there, bit of a bit of a hurdle. Additionally, Defendant Caffeinated Kitty mentioned that Propson follows a bunch of red-adjacent folk. That’s a that’s a new claim. You didn’t put that in your I didn’t see that in your statement of claim. That seems to be new, further suggesting that Plaintiff Propson’s content is politically charged or contains transphobic jokes. What, what? Um, you’re leaping, and it’s probably because there are chasms that your claim is about to fall into, and you don’t want your claim to fall into those, but you don’t get to leap. Like, follows red-adjacent folks doesn’t say anything about the content at all, it’s and I mean you didn’t allege any claims about the content.

Plaintiff Propson and Defendant Caffeinated Kitty are competitors in the online content creation space. That’s not really how it works, but okay. Defendant Caffeinated Kitty’s own motion to dismiss acknowledges that fans of both parties often confuse one for the other, demonstrating their competition in the same market. Again, this is not really a competition in that people don’t watch only one content creator, and often their desire for content is not satisfied by any one content creator. I don’t care how prolific you are on TikTok; there is no way that you are creating like the eight hours of content that sometimes people use to get through their workday. You’re, you’re just not. Um, you ain’t got that kind of time. So, um, or I guess your TikTok content is literally you at your workday and it’s garbage, and no one is watching you, and you compete with nobody other than like paint peeling off the walls or slowly dying of boredom. Um, but yeah, it’s not competitors. The the claim that was made in Caffeinated Kitty’s own motion to dismiss was not that she was upset that you were competing in the online content creation space, but you know you were the issue is whether people were confusing, you know, her and giving her grief over who they think Plaintiff Propson is, and note that that that issue was predating anything that Defendant Caffeinated Kitty did. So yeah, as alleged, Defendant Caff Kitty intentionally made false statements about Plaintiff Propson to damage her reputation and divert her audience to herself. Um, you haven’t actually sufficiently alleged that at all, um, resulting in significant harm to Plaintiff Propson’s business, including the loss of a contract with a well-known travel documentary channel. Hey, cool. Um, so is Caffeinated Kitty doing a travel documentary if she’s stealing your business? No, huh? She, she didn’t steal that contract. Huh, interesting, interesting.

B. Plaintiffs Janet and Janet Law have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for trade libel under Illinois law against defendants. To state a claim for trade libel under Illinois Law, a plaintiff must show that the defendant is a competitor or business rival and that the defendant made a statement to take away business and give it to another. Um, this is going to be rich. How are you going to say any of these people are competitors or business rivals? That’s, um, so Plaintiff Janet often posts monetized informational legal videos on TikTok to inform the public about areas of the law and advertise her legal services. Was any of that pled? Um, did you, did you plead that? I didn’t remember you pleading that. Um, now to advertise her legal services, are you going to say that any of these people are lawyers? So defendants Caffeinated Kitty, Dave Vasquez, and Marston are similarly engaged in creating online content, making them direct competitors. Wait, all online content is competition with other online content. Like, are you saying that I’m competing with I don’t know, OnlyFans right now or, you know, CornHub? I guess maybe, um, maybe someone up there if that’s you, don’t tell me, I, I don’t need to know. Um, okay. Um, that’s a real stretch, and you’re throwing in some new factual allegations in here, and I think that’s because you read your factual allegations and went, “Oh, crap, these are not sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss, so we better throw some new stuff in.” They’re commercially incentivized to sensationally depict Plaintiff Janet as an unhinged and rogue attorney for their TikTok gossip channels to draw in more viewers. That’s not because they’re competition, and Janet, I’m just going to say in the whole influencer sphere, um, you are a very small fish to the sense that like if the influencer fear was a fish tank, you would be Plankton, and like you don’t have a lot of followers, you don’t have, um, so you’re not the kind of channel that people attack to get more views. Okay. Defendants’ false statements, such as insinuating that Plaintiff Janet is an unhinged and unethical attorney who commits perjury, were intended to damage her reputation and dissuade the public from hiring her or her law firm so that they would hire like Becca Day as a lawyer. Is that what you’re saying? I, I don’t see it. These statements simultaneously incentivize viewers to watch defendants’ content to learn the truth about Plaintiff Janet. The defamatory remarks have led to significant harm, including negative reviews, a loss of clients, and damage to Plaintiff Janet and Janet Law’s reputation in business. Don’t review Janet or Janet Law unless you are actually a CL client of Janet or Janet Law. I also don’t think she can prove a loss of clients, but I’m really interested to see her try, um, and to navigate that ethical minefield. So, based on these examples and other facts alleged in the amended complaint, plaintiffs have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action. I don’t think you have, but okay, we’ll see what the court says. To establish a cause for trade libel under both Wisconsin and Illinois Law, the intentional and injurious statements made by defendants, driven by competitive motives. The competitive’s motives is so thin that if this was a Shadowrun game, you could use this to cut people’s arms off. Um, um, we’re talking monomolecular wire thin on these competitive motives. Um, yeah, I’m just going to go ahead and call this argument, I guess, ballsy, um, cuz courageous doesn’t really carry the right connotation. Courageous sounds just like brave; ballsy is more like brave plus stupid. You know, it’s the kind of courage that like gets you to charge into the minefield. Uhh, okay. You know, it’s the kind of courage that’s like, “I’ve had three beers, I can fight that [Laughter] lion.” It’s a hell of an argument. Um, yeah, um, it’s bold, we’ll go with that.

Plaintiff Propson stated a claim for tortious interference with contracts stated against Defendant Caffeinated Kitty under Wisconsin law. At Plaintiff’s Janet and Janet Law stated a claim for tortious interference with existing potential business relationships and defendants under Illinois Law. So plaintiff state claim for tortious interference with contracts and business relationships because they have sufficiently alleged that defendants intentionally and unjustifiably interfered with their existing and prospective contractual and business relationships, causing significant damages. Which facts are you going to cite as alleged in the amended complaint? Defendants have all made false statements with the intention—you’ve got no evidence on their intent—of making money off disparaging plaintiffs and ruining their reputation and careers with false statements. Um, again, real thin, not a lot like these are just bare assertions. Normally this is the place where you want to back things up to specific, you know, specific pleadings and so forth, but they’re not doing that at all. They’re just saying, “We did good enough. Give us the gold sticker; we did good enough,” and I’m going, “M, no gold sticker. Um, no bronze sticker, no brass sticker. Um, you can like have a wood chip with some glue on it.” Plaintiff Propson has pled sufficient facts to establish cause of action for tortious interference with contracts under Wisconsin law against Defendant Caffeinated Kitty. So, um, state a claim: one, the plaintiff must have had a contract.

Or, personal, or prospective contractual relationship with a third party; two, the defendant must have interfered with that relationship; three, the interference by the defendant must have been intentional; four, there must have been a causal connection between the interference and the damages; and five, the defendant must not have been justified or privileged to intervene.

Okay, so a different test here. Here, plaintiff Propson had a valid content creation contract with a well-known travel documentary channel, who—um, they’re still not naming. And if they get far enough into this, they’re going to have to name them, right? And so if they’re not naming this travel documentary channel now, do they think this is not going to come out? Because it’s going to come out. And if they’re hiding this and they think it’s going to continue to be hidden, they’re either wrong about that, or um, or they don’t expect this to go all that far. Um, now I can’t say which is which because they could really not expect this to go all that far for good reasons, or they could not understand that this is going to be information that comes out for um, for dumb reasons, or reasons of dumb, I guess.

The amended complaint alleges that defendant Caffeinated Kitty was aware of plaintiff Propson’s contract through a research and study of plaintiff Propson’s social media activity. Um, it states that, but there’s not a single whiff of anything to support it; like, not even—there’s not even a fart in an elevator to tell us how she would have been aware of this, right? How how would she have known about your contracts? That’s really weird. Um, did you post your contracts online? You haven’t. I didn’t see any allegations that you posted your contracts online.

So it is further alleged the defendant Caffeinated Kitty intentionally used her platform to—pulse—post false uh statements accusing plaintiff Propson of being transphobic with the intent to ruin plaintiff Propson’s reputation and content partnerships. Um, where did she say that was her intent? Like, again, this is stated like they—they assert this as a bald assertion, but maybe they should have attached some, I guess, hairy facts to it to support it, which we don’t have. As a result of defendant Caffeinated Kitty’s actions, the travel documentary channel terminated its contract with plaintiff Propson in November 2023. Is it a direct causal result? Um, like, did they actually specifically link that video? Because I don’t think they did. This termination directly resulted in damages to plaintiff Propson, including lost income from the contract and a substantial loss of goodwill and reputation.

Um, what lost income? Cuz normally I would have pled this contract would have paid X amount of money, right? You normally plead your—the amounts of your damages unless they’re unknown amounts, right? So somebody comes and stabs me in the chest and, you know, I can say, listen, I’ve got damages for my medical bills; they came out to this much money. I lost work, you know, I couldn’t work for this amount of time; I lost exactly this many dollars from loss wages that I would have earned during that time. This was my favorite shirt; it’s a, you know, $4 shirt or whatever. Um, it was ruined by the stab hole and the blood and the, you know, um, medical personnel cutting it into ribbons and all of the things, right, that ruin shirts when you get stabbed. Um, when you get stabbed, loss of shirt is a predictable outcome, so I could say, you know, I want the money for the shirt, too. And, you know, now some things might not be quantifiable; it might be—and being stabbed made me really sad and it hurt a lot, so those are unquantifiable damages at this stage. Court, you’re going to figure out what those cost, but I want—I want half a million dollars for being really sad about the stabbing. It—it stabbed me right in my happy place and now I have a sad—but, you know, here we just have lost income. What was the income? Was it like $20? Were they—you know, what was the income here? I—I don’t know. Um, I’m guessing it was probably going to be like a referral code and a percentage, in which case that—that’s going to get real hypothetical real fast because those referral codes don’t necessarily make you a whole heap of money.

These facts, as alleged, sufficiently demonstrate the elements of a tortious interference with contracts claim under Wisconsin law: the existence of a contract, intentional interference by the defendant, lack of justification, and resulting damages. You haven’t even argued some of these things in your point here. I guess you’ve got page counts; fair enough. Uh, plaintiffs Janet and Janet Law have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for tortious interference with existing and potential business relationships under Illinois law against defendant Caffeinated Kitty. So this requires: one, a reasonable expectation of continuing or entering into a valid business relationship; two, the defendant’s knowledge of the expectation; three, purposeful interference by the defendant that prevents the plaintiff’s legitimate expectation from ripening; and four, damages caused by the first three elements. So plaintiff Janet and Janet Law had ongoing and prospective business relationships with several clients for legal services. The amended complaint details that defendants Vasquez and Marston disparaged plaintiff Janet’s clients and past representations with the intent to interfere with her existing client relationships and to prevent other content creators from hiring plaintiffs Janet and Janet Law. Defendants’ false and defamatory statements about plaintiff Janet’s—plaintiff Janet’s legal practice led to members of the public who had never worked with plaintiffs Janet and Janet Law to leave negative reviews and the termination of several client engagements.

Um, how are you going to talk about the client engagements? This is insanity to me. You have to see this privileged train coming in the tunnel you’re walking through, right? Do you not—do you not see the lights? Do you not hear the chugga chugga chugga? Do you not hear the woo woo of the horn? Like, this train is coming down this—these tracks, and do you have a plan for this? Cuz if you’re walking through the train tunnel, you should have a plan for the train, especially when it’s so freaking obvious. Like, this is an obvious train. How do you cover the termination of several client engagements without—without privilege issues?

So these allegations establish that plaintiff Janet had a reasonable expectation of continuing business relationships. Um, how are you going to tell the court that they were terminated because of these videos? Um, that defendants were aware of this expectation and that defendants purposefully interfered with this expectation. That’s a—that’s a stretch, but okay. Uh, resulting—like, resulting in damages to plaintiffs Janet and Janet Law based on the detailed allegations in the amended complaint and the applicable case law, plaintiffs have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for tortious interference with contracts and tortious interference with existing and potential business relationships. The allegations demonstrate—okay, so they’re just going to say more and more the same. Okay, now we’re on to intentional infliction of emotional distress. This one is going to be even thinner.

So yeah, under Illinois and Wisconsin law. So under Wisconsin law, they say plaintiff Propson has pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for IIED under Wisconsin law against defendant Caffeinated Kitty. Plaintiff Propson has pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for IIED under Wisconsin law against defendant Caffeinated Kitty. Don’t—don’t you need to repeat the header as the first line of your paragraph? People know that’s what you’re talking about because you’re assuming that they read your header because that’s why you put it in there. You wrote it down so that the person would read it, and we just read it, and now you’re doing this to us because why, Benji Christ? You need an editor. Um, and you know what? It can be helpful to sit and read your—to a mirror because when you’re reading your—to a mirror, um, this kind of stuff makes you go, oh crap, this is terrible. The state of claim for IIED under Wisconsin law: a plaintiff must prove four elements: one, the defendant’s conduct was intended to cause emotional distress; it’s going to be a big stretch. Two, the defendant’s conduct was extreme and outrageous. Okay. Three, the defendant’s conduct was a cause in fact of the plaintiff’s emotional distress; you haven’t really pled any specific emotional distress either, other than like vague emotional, you know, they’ve been very vague, but they haven’t said like we had to go to a therapist, we had to—anything. Four, the plaintiff suffered an extreme, debilitating emotional response to the defendant’s conduct. Okay.

Um, this is going to be interesting. Regarding the extreme and outrageous standard, the conduct must be so egregious that it can be characterized as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized society. You know, something like, hey, we—you know, we made you think your child was dead, kind of thing. Like, your kid’s at the hospital; I find out that they’re kids at the hospital; I—you know, as a prank—which, don’t do this as a prank; this is a stupid prank—that is a hypothetical establishing liability, right? Um, I grab a phone from the hospital so it shows the hospital number and I call the parent and I’m like, yeah, your child just died because, you know, we used them as a skateboard or something. Um, you know, don’t—like, that would be the kind of atrocious and utterly intolerable conduct that, you know, people can’t tolerate in a civilized society. Um, don’t do that. But are we there here? Additionally, intent can be shown if the defendant knew that emotional distress was substantially certain to—to result from their actions. Further, the resulting emotional distress must be of such substantial quantity or enduring quality that no reasonable person in a civilized society should be expected to endure it; I.E., this is not the hurt feelings patrol; this is—this is the PTSD patrol; this is the—this is the crippling depression area; this is why you typically need like medical, you know, issues here. Plaintiff Propson has sufficiently alleged in the amended complaint the defendant Caffeinated Kitty’s conduct was extreme and outrageous. Um, so—and they cite to a thing saying the term “racist” is of course an exceptionally negative, insulting, and highly charged word; it is hard to imagine being called much worse. Wait a second. Are you seriously suggesting that anytime somebody calls somebody a racist that—that we’re into intentional infliction of emotional distress? Go yourself and your hat and the horse you rode in on because that ain’t going to fly.

Furthermore, plaintiff Propson has alleged that defendant Caffeinated Kitty intended to inflict emotional distress or acted with knowledge that there was a high probability their conduct would cause such distress. Um, so—and their—their citation for this is this. In her initial TikTok video, defendant Caffeinated Kitty states that the only reason I’m saying anything about it is because I’m getting confused for plaintiff Propson, acknowledging that her video would likely mobilize her fan base to ensure she wouldn’t be confused for plaintiff Propson going forward. How does that establish intentional infliction of emotional distress? Well, um, yeah. So in addition, plaintiff Propson is sufficiently alleged that defendant Caffeinated Kitty’s conduct in question did indeed cause severe emotional distress to plaintiff Propson, manifesting in humiliation, embarrassment, headaches, depression, anxiety, lack of sleep, and mental anguish with physical symptoms. Um, how much did she spend on therapists for that? Because I think that—that is as a starting point where you’ll need to be, and nothing was alleged on that. So plaintiff Janet and Janet Law have pled sufficient facts to establish a cause of action for IIED under Illinois law against defendant Caffeinated Kitty. In Illinois, the elements of IIED are similar: the plaintiff must demonstrate: first, the conduct involved must be truly extreme and outrageous. Okay. Second, the actor must either intend that his conduct inflicts severe emotional distress or knows that there is at least a high probability that his conduct will cause severe emotional distress. Um, I’m not seeing it here, but okay. Third, the conduct must in fact cause severe emotional distress. Regarding the extreme and outrageous standard, Illinois case law emphasizes that the conduct must go beyond all possible bounds of decency and be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.

Um, that’s going to be hard because if it is beyond all public bounds of decency and regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community and they put that into a video, then you would think that the community would in fact be burning down the followings of Caffeinated Kitty because their viewers are part of a civilized community, right? She’s—they’re—their viewer base is not like, you know, some uncivilized tribe of what—you know, of—yeah, like, no, this is—they’re—they’re not like, you know, recruiting some space monsters to watch their channel. This is not how this works. Um, you know, it’s not like the aliens from Mars Attacks that are out to kill people are like, yes, this is the content we want. It is—if you behave online in an atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community fashion, um, your content gets taken down and also people criticize the heck out of you. So I—I—I don’t see this one. Additionally, recklessness can suffice for the intent requirement if the actor knows that severe emotional distress is certain or substantially certain to result from his conduct. Apparently, we should know that lawyers can’t take criticism. Further, distress must be so severe that no reasonable person could be expected to endure it.

Um, I wonder, did—did Janet like stop working? Did she have to take time off for this? I’m betting she didn’t. I’m betting she did not at all. Um, cuz she would have alleged that right here. As alleged in the amended complaint, defendants’ conduct, specifically their false statements which incited online hate mobs and threats, was extreme and outrageous. Furthermore, plaintiff Janet has alleged that defendants intended to inflict emotional distress or acted with knowledge that there was a high probability their conduct would cause such distress. I mean, they stated the intention—or plaintiff—you know, Janet stated that there was such an intention—like a blanket statement—but there really isn’t the facts to back that up. And plaintiff Janet has sufficiently alleged that the conduct in question did indeed cause severe emotional distress to plaintiff Janet, manifesting in humiliation, embarrassment, headaches, depression, anxiety, lack of sleep, and mental anguish with physical symptoms. Interesting; they suffered exactly the same problems. Um, you’d think that like different things would affect them differently, but no, apparently exactly the same. I’m guessing that it’s because this is a boilerplate list of IIED, you know, checkbox ticking, but without things like, and this required treatment, or, and I lost work as a result of this, or, and I was unable to function, because none of that was in there.

Venue is proper. So venue is basically just where should this case be heard? For the Northern District of Illinois, with regards to plaintiff Propson’s claims. So in addition to the foregoing motions to strike under anti-SLAPP statutes and motions to dismiss under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, defendant Caffeinated Kitty has also set forth a motion to dismiss for improper venue with regards to the claims asserted by plaintiff Propson. In particular, Caffeinated Kitty argues that venue is improper with regards to Propson—let’s—Lauren the mortician, if you’ve forgotten, because it’s—it’s a long video—claims against Caffeinated Kitty because Propson is a resident of Wisconsin, uh, Caffeinated Kitty is a resident of Georgia, and none of the claims asserted by Propson against Caffeinated Kitty have any connection to Illinois. So as such, defendant Caffeinated Kitty further argues that plaintiff Propson should have filed her cause of action in Wisconsin or Georgia instead. So they say venue is proper if a civil action is brought in: one, a judicial district in which any defendant resides, if all defendants are residents of the state in which the district is located; two, a judicial district in which a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred, or a substantial part of the property that is subject to the action is situated; or three, if there’s no district in which an action may otherwise be brought as provided in this section, any judicial district in which any defendant is subject to the court’s personal jurisdiction with respect to such action. So given that the actions—events giving rise to plaintiffs Janet and Janet Law’s claims occurred within this district and that their claims are intertwined with plaintiff Propson’s claims—um, they aren’t really that intertwined, cuz not a single statement is said to cover both people; it’s—it’s different statements against different people; they could entirely have been sued separately—venue is proper under the law. The logical relationship between the claims and the presence of common questions of law and fact further support maintaining venue in this district to ensure an efficient and comprehensive resolution of this dispute. Which questions of law and fact are you referring to? Um, let’s—let’s hear it. Because defendants reside in various districts, including districts of California, Georgia, and Missouri, no venue is proper. As such, plaintiff Propson asserts that venue is proper. Okay, they don’t actually get around to telling us which common questions of law and fact, right? Which ones? They—they—they don’t tell us that there are any common questions of law and fact here, but I think the court is going to be reluctant to toss it for venue. Courts usually are. So next, a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred in Illinois. Okay, venue is proper in this case because the claims against the defendants arise from the same case or controversy, tying both plaintiffs together. Do they though? Um, because they’re very different statements. So under 28 U.S.C., a civil action may be brought in a judicial district in which a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred. Here, the defamatory statements made by the defendants about both plaintiffs in singular posts constitute a series of related events central to the claims of—of both plaintiffs. Um, okay, we’ll see if the court agrees. In Morton Grove, the plaintiff argued that venue was proper because the second amended complaint alleges the defamatory statements were disseminated in Illinois to Illinois residents and that the plaintiff suffered economic and reputational injury in Illinois. So furthermore, this fact was not disputed by the defendant, who merely argued that the newsletters containing the allegedly defamatory statements were primarily intended for Michigan residents, both in content and distribution. Therefore, the substantial part of the events giving rise to the plaintiff’s claims did not occur in Illinois but in Michigan. The court on Morton Grove did not find the defendant’s arguments persuasive and denied the motion to dismiss for lack of venue. So similarly, in this case, defendant Caffeinated Kitty’s false statements were disseminated across the internet, including across Illinois to Illinois residents, and as such, uh, plaintiff Propson suffered economic and reputational injury in Illinois. Um, have they—met to plead that anybody—like that any single person in Illinois other than Propson saw those things? That might be—so.

Furthermore, defendant Caffeinated Kitty’s only counter to this position is that her statements were not made or directed at Illinois, but as noted above, this is not the standard based on Morton Grove. In a defamation suit, it is sufficient to allege that defendant Caffeinated Kitty’s statements were disseminated in Illinois to Illinois residents and that as a result, plaintiff Propson suffered economic and reputational injury in Illinois. It’ll be interesting to see whether they—CU—there’s a difference between um, distributing a leaflet in Illinois versus putting something on the internet, because if we’re saying that putting something on the internet is sufficient, then the test isn’t really Morton Grove; the test is just yes; it’s just true in all situations; you have jurisdiction. Because the internet reaches the entire planet, and so by this logic, could they have sued in I don’t know, Washington D.C., or Kentucky, or Canada, or Uzbekistan? Or—I mean, I’m sure there’s somebody in Uzbekistan who saw this video. Um, I don’t know what opinions they formed or, you know, what, but like, why not Uzbekistan? So therefore, venue is proper for plaintiff Propson’s claims because as a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred in Illinois. I suspect we’re going to see some pushback on this in the response. Alternatively, plaintiff Propson may file her claims in this district because the court has personal jurisdiction over defendant Caffeinated Kitty, even if defendant is correct in their claim that venue is improper. Plaintiff Propson alleges that venue must be proper under a different section of the law. So defendant Caffeinated Kitty argues the plaintiff Propson should have filed her claims in either Wisconsin or Georgia because these are the districts in—in where plaintiff Propson and defendant Caffeinated Kitty reside respectively. However, this is not the correct standard for cases with multiple plaintiffs and defendants, as previously mentioned above. Venue is not proper in either Wisconsin or Georgia under the law. I’m not going to read out the law citations for each of them, but you can look it up if you want. Um, all of this is on CourtListener, so—or PACER if you want to pay for it. Um, because some defendants reside in California and Missouri. Similarly, if this—

Court found that venue is improper in this District under other law, uh, section two. Then venue must also be improper in Wisconsin or Georgia by the same rationale. As it could be argued the defendant's statements were disseminated in Wisconsin to Wisconsin residents and in Georgia to Georgian residents.

Okay, you've lost me. Um, and I think it's because this makes no sense. It might be because it's late, but I think it's because this makes no sense. Nevertheless, plaintiff Propson argues that venue is proper. Um, it it's not because of the statements. Like this, this looks to me like a shell game because it's like the reason why it would be Wisconsin and Georgia is because that's where the people live, um, not where the statements are. So nevertheless, plaintiff Propson argues that venue is proper at least under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b)(2) since this court has personal jurisdiction over defendant Caffeinated Kitty with regards to Plaintiff Propson's claims.

Um, where's the personal jurisdiction? Um, you okay? Um, so basically you've said that it's proper because they have personal jurisdiction over the claims, and then you conclude therefore they have, but the middle doesn't work. Um, so where's the personal jurisdiction? Explain this to me. Plaintiffs respectfully note that none of the defendants, including defendant Caffeinated Kitty, have moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(2) for lack of personal jurisdiction in any of the currently pending motions. Instead, they've challenged plaintiff's claims on their merits and waived personal jurisdiction defenses. Didn't they specifically argue a lack of jur—like they're arguing improper venue? As such, all defendants, including defendant Caffeinated Kitty, are subject to this Court's personal jurisdiction with regard to all claims filed. So basically they're saying you didn't deny personal jurisdiction; therefore, there's personal jurisdiction.

Um, okay, it's a waiver argument. Um, it's it's thin, but it's a waiver argument. Therefore, if this court finds that there's no District in which plaintiff Propson may otherwise bring her cause of action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1391—or um, except that you could in Wisconsin or Georgia—so um, plaintiff Propson may bring her civil action in any judicial District in which defendant Caffeinated Kitty is subject to this Court's personal jurisdiction, including this one.

Okay, this argument has some holes in it. Um, if it was a cheese, it wouldn't even be Swiss; it would be Swiss fraud cheese because if you buy a cheese with this many holes in it, you're basically just buying air—like a slice of air that maybe is vaguely cheese-scented.

Um, now courts are reluctant to toss on venue issues. Um, they just are because typically they want things to be heard on merits. As much as people have this notion that the law is all about throwing things out on technicalities, courts are real reluctant to do that. So yeah, plaintiffs argue that plaintiff Propson and her claims against defendant Caffeinated Kitty should be joined to this suit under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 20(a)(2)(A) as plaintiff Propson's cause of action arose out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences as plaintiffs Janet and Janet Law's cause of action, and the questions of law and fact are common to all plaintiffs in this case. I would have elaborated on this—like I would have said which questions of law and fact, how are they the same, how is it the same transaction—but instead they just assert this and they're like, "Court, we're we're correct on this. Um, we're not going to show our work; just assume we're right."

Okay, so all of this is—they want this, you know, they want this to proceed, and they want—yeah, they want it dismissed with prejudice and other such—so they want to deny the Motions to strike, just to toss the Motions to strike with prejudice and award um, other relief as the court wishes, which is what you always ask for. You always just say, "Court, if you would give us more stuff, please give us the stuff," because the court will only give you things that you asked for. And so it is theoretically possible that the court could say, "We would have given you more stuff, but you didn't say we could give you more stuff if we wanted, so so whoops, we can't." So you always ask for that; you never get it, but you always ask for it. Um, I don't think there's a whole lot of cases where the court has said, "Oh yeah, we'll give you this extra stuff you never asked for," but it could happen, and you never want to be the person where the court says, "We would have given you it, but sorry, you forgot."

Okay, so that's where things sit now. What's the next step? Well, we're going to see a reply to this, I'm sure, and it's going to be interesting. At least I think they get to file a reply. Um, so yeah, uh, some of the arguments are better than others. Uh, some of them I think are downright shaky. Um, some of them are ones I wouldn't have—I mean, I I say I wouldn't have made, I might have made them just because sometimes you don't really have anything else and so you got to throw what's in there in there. All right, so um, thank you guys for watching. I know this has been super long and super obnoxious, and maybe you have a headache and some, you know, anxiety with physical symptoms. Hey, maybe you could sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Please don't sue me. Don't sue Benji over this either because that would be stupid. I'm making a joke, not a legal advice. None of this is legal advice because if you're getting your legal advice off of YouTube videos, then you would probably do dumb things, and then the courts would not find that to be a good decision. So um, thank you guys for watching. I hope you found it to be interesting or educational. As mentioned, I'm going to keep on this as we get more filings. This is a long one, but we'll probably get a long reply too, and then we'll go through that. So I also want to thank my Patreon supporters at the $50 level: Purple Dragon, Air Cell, CCFR, PJs Forever, Canada's National Firearms Association, and the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. I also want to thank my $20 supporters: Lindsay Metcalfe, Larry KAC, Kyle Fox, Drunk All of the Bailey, Cameron Johnson, Andrew Elich, Vicky, and Dorky Danne. Thank you as well to my $10 supporters, uh, who will be in the crawl immediately following. Thank you for watching. Hope this armed you with knowledge. See you next time. [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Music]