[thesausageking]

Craig Wright, the guy who brought this lawsuit, has been suing people left and right for years.

He lost a high profile case last year against a podcaster who called him a fraud. The judge ruled against Wright and found that he had "advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial".

[barnbuilder]

> He lost

Sadly this is not true. Wright was ruled to have won the case but had the damage award reduced to only 1 pound.[1] (Wright is being bankrolled by billionaire Calvin Ayre. They are not worried about the money here.)

How someone can win a case while found to have "advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial" just goes to show how utterly deranged the British legal system is. As long as it is such, scammers like Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre will continue to torment innocent people.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/01/craig-wri...

[nullc]

It's more complicated than that, as the judgement wrote:

> looking at the “big picture”, Dr Wright was awarded only nominal damages, so Mr McCormack is the successful party, as were the defendants in Joseph v Spiller and FlyMeNow,

...and the court awarded McCormack his costs for the trial on an indemnity basis-- which still doesn't cover his time lost and stress due to this, but it's about as good as you can get as a defendant. EXCEPT, in the interest in finality the court declined to reverse a ruling from an earlier stage of the trial that awarded Wright his costs, and Wright has now delivered his bill of £3.379m, still attempting to deliver on his public promise[*] of ruining McCormack.

So the fact that Wright "won" £1 isn't preventing a somewhat just outcome this case... because the court still rightfully regarded that as a loss for the purpose of awarding costs. The bigger issue is that the UK awards costs incrementally and so has left McCormack potentially paying Wright's inflated costs for his earlier efforts to get the deliberately false case discharged. And, of course, Wright is appealing is his "win" too.

Since Wright himself isn't funding his litigation, this suit was well worth his time in chilling his critics. And it has worked too: it's been difficult to get outlets cover what he's doing, except in the form of repeating both-sideism rendition's of Wright's press releases. I had previously been told outright by a least one journalist at a big publication that they didn't want to print on his claims being falsified because they didn't want to get mired in litigation.

[*] The most recent of which was also breach of a court embargo in the ruling on the case, which Wright was sent up for contempt for ... which had no effect "Faced with a 17,000-word skeleton argument advanced by Wright’s new attorneys, buttressed by 1,600 pages of legal authorities, [The court] concluded that the cost of continuing outweighed the benefits." in other words, he simply DOSed the court and the court dropped it.

[Bran_son]

Could the deranged British legal system then be turned against those two, with equally vexatious retaliatory lawsuits? Fight fire with fire, as it were.

[nullc]

"never wrestle with a pig – it gets mud all over you and the pig likes it". It would probably be just about as effective as piling cash and a wheelbarrow and lighting it on fire.

For whatever their motivations they already seem to be intentionally racking up their legal bills as high as they possibly can. Some have suggested that since in the UK it's possible for non-attorneys to own firms that this could be used to launder money (Wright's known sponsor spent a decade on a DHS most wanted list for money laundering), though I've seen nothing but speculation. ... whatever the reason they clearly don't mind spending on litigation.

If you win anything they won't pay-- they already have an unpaid judgement against them for ~$140 million dollars in Florida-- their latest gambit in that case has been to announce Wright's wives are actually the plaintiff, that they've fired the plaintiff's attorney and appointed their own. ( Probably a good place to read was the real plaintiff's ultimately unsuccessful motion to strike the fake one's appearance https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.52... the entire docket there is confusing now because you have to scroll to the bottom of each brief to find out if its the real plaintiff or the fake plaintiff).

Wright himself almost certainly couldn't pay-- he has no known source of funding except from extracting money from sponsors via his creator of Bitcoin fiction. Losing cases in and of itself hasn't made him stop or even really slowed him down. Engaging with him in civil court at all is necessary to prevent the personal ruination of his targets, but doesn't seem like a likely path to make him quit.

[pipes]

What do you mean by in UK non attorneys can own firms? Of course anyone can own a firm here. I think I'm missing something.

[nullc]

Historically, In the US ethics rules have mandated a law firm may not be owned by a non-attorney nor have fee sharing agreements with non-attornies. There has been some recent push away from that, but e.g. when they attempted it in California the legislature stepped in: https://www.advocatemagazine.com/article/2022-november/new-c...

[batmaniam]

Except the fire is not on your side. It's on the money's side. So really, it's just money vs money. Or specifically, YOUR money vs billionaire's money.

Who do you think will win that fight? The fundamental flaw of the court system is that it's biased towards those who have money due to how politics work.

Here's food for thought, why isn't Prince Andrew in any serious trouble regarding the Epstein rapes? I don't know a single citizen who can just put their hand up and say "nope", and walk away without repercussions, unless you know, they're extremely rich. And we see that in the news again and again in every category of crimes.

The system is broken, worldwide. The only true way to fight 'fire with fire' is solidarity. Look at France, fighting together and protesting against raising the pension retirement age. It's been a month and they're still fighting. And for the government to just push that forward without regard to its populace, who do you think that action is actually for? Not the people.

[UncleEntity]

I’m confused, is the French fighting spirit supposed to symbolize the validity of the lawsuits in this analogy?

[batmaniam]

No, I'm saying the only way to actually fight back is not through a system that's already inherently corrupt. You'll never win that fight, you'll just end up losing your hard earned savings.

The only fight worth fighting is one where you stand shoulder to shoulder. The French are doing just that. And even though their government passed the pension age raise, they're still fighting. Because at the end of the day, who did they pass that for? Not for the working class. Look at how fast they got it out without regard to what their citizens were saying.

If you were to fight that in court, not only would you be fighting billionaire funded defense lawyers, but it'll take years and ... ? You see the discrepancy? They're fast to pass laws favorable to billionaires, but for the people? It takes years?

Don't waste money on courts. Real change comes from blood and solidarity. Workers in the past have died for our benefits today.

[dennis_jeeves1]

Summary of what you said: might is right, cliched but profound.

[LegitShady]

I'm pretty sure the french fighting spirit is burning shit in the streets when they try and raise the pension age.

[kranke155]

They didn’t try - it’s done

[nullc]

But here is what winning means for his target: In addition to years of his life tied up in this, "Craig Wright has just submitted a bill of costs for £3.379m for his costs of my dropped defences and a two day hearing in February 2021. Defences I dropped due to excess cost My whole budge to trial was £1.3m." ( https://twitter.com/PeterMcCormack/status/165230790417358029... )

Obviously he's fighting the costs, which are due to earlier phases of the proceedings where McCormack tried to get the case summarily dismissed and was unsuccessful, resulting in Mr. Wright being awarded costs.