UpToEleven.ca

I’d wager that 95% of legal documents written constitute some of the dullest reading you could come across. The exception to the rule is the “You’re an idiot, and here’s why” legal smackdown letter.

IBM has filed a couple good ones in their lawsuit with SCO, but the best one I’ve seen recently comes from one of the many RIAA vs. The People lawsuits. Specifically, its this letter from the lawyer of one of the defendants to the RIAA’s lawyers essentially stating that unless the RIAA could establish some probable cause for the lawsuit, they’d be facing a raft of well-justified counter-suits.

Nestled amongst paragraphs of procedural issues and citations of legal precedent are gems like:

Mr. Merchant has and had no more duty to respond to attempts to “sell” him one of your clients’ boilerplate, non-negotiable $3750 settlements than he has to return cold calls from pushy life insurance salespeople. If your client (and your law firm?) are seeking probable cause shelter in a settlement negotiations house of straw … all of you should consider the prevailing winds of the Evidence Code before making yourselves too comfortable. Straw will burn.

and the entirely pragmatic:

Your client take the position that my middle-aged, conservative clients should speculate regarding the identity of persons your clients claim used their AOL account to download pornographic-lyric gangsta rap tracks as predicate to possible case resolution. In an age of Wintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the only tech-savvy response to such a request is, “You’ve got to be kidding.” The extensive press that has been generated over computer security (and the insecurity of Windows XP and its predecessors) underscores the complete absence of facts on which probable cause to sue my clients could be established and your clients’ willingness (even insistence) that others be implicated in Big Music’s speculative, “driftnet” litigation tactics. Sorry: Mr. Merchant cannot and will not expose himself to still more litigation by speculating.

There’s just something special about spreading that thin layer of legal civility over an email that basically says “fuck off,” and it seems to have had the desired effect: shortly after receiving the letter the RIAA dropped the lawsuit.