Courts

Dibson Gunn And Meta Get Hit With A Reverse Card After Trying To Drain Their Opponents’ Pockets

You know they can see what you're doing, right?

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Businessman adding money fuel to a large closed fireWe’ve all done it. Playing dumb is a vital part of any petty person’s repertoire. Diplomatic strategies like saying, “Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” to something you definitely caught to force the other person to hear how stupid what they just said was or only responding to the parts of an email or text that you feel like entertaining have their places. The courtroom may not be one of them. If they read it earlier, these two cents could have saved Gibson Dunn and Meta about a million dollars. From Law360:

Facebook and its counsel Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP must pay $925,000 to social media users in multidistrict litigation over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, a California federal judge ruled Thursday, citing their “unusually egregious and persistent” misconduct delaying discovery and gaslighting of opponents in seeking to extract a lower-priced settlement.

Gibson knew Gatekeep, Gaslight, Girlboss was just supposed to be a meme, right?

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in a scathing orderpartially granted the Facebook users’ $2 million sanctions bid, finding that the Meta Platforms Inc. unit and its counsel at Gibson Dunn used “delay, misdirection and frivolous arguments to make litigation unfairly difficult and expensive for their opponents.”

While this kind of litigation conduct isn’t uncommon, the judge said in this case it was “unusually egregious and persistent.”

“Sometimes lawyers and their clients engage in conduct of this sort because they are incompetent. Facebook and Gibson Dunn are not incompetent,” Judge Chhabria said.

I love a good competency is culpability compliment. What response do Meta and Gibson have? “No your honor, you don’t understand. We are total clown shoes and had no idea that egregious and persistent strategies were inconveniencing opposing counsel. The Ivy League degrees we’re all decked out in are just because our parents are rich.” And while that last part may actually be true, Gibson can’t openly admit that if they want to continue billing their clients $600 an hour for doc review.

“[T]he court finds by clear and convincing evidence that Facebook and Gibson Dunn’s conduct reflected a sustained, concerted, bad-faith effort to throw obstacle after obstacle in front of the plaintiffs — all in an attempt to push the plaintiffs into settling the case for less than they would have gotten otherwise,” he said.

…

Facebook’s witnesses and lawyers also deliberately prevented the users from getting probative information during depositions, the order states. For instance, during the deposition of a Facebook employee who was testifying about the company’s information-sharing practices, a Gibson Dunn attorney told the witness not to answer “at least 22 times,” according to the order.

The behavior exhibited was in bad form to opposing counsel, but here’s whey they messed up. They went so far as to annoy the court too!

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“All the while, Facebook and Gibson Dunn had the audacity to accuse the plaintiffs’ lawyers of delaying the case, and to assert that the plaintiffs’ reasonable efforts to obtain obviously relevant discovery were frivolous,” Judge Chhabria said. “It’s almost as if Facebook and Gibson Dunn spent the better part of three years trying to gaslight their opponents, not to mention the court.”

Word to the wise, it is really hard to DARVO when there is a paper trail that shows what you’re doing. When people can see what you’re doing, act like it. You’d think Meta would know a thing or two about surveillance. Meta and Gibson are jointly liable to pay up for $925k within 21 days. If billable rates or advertisement costs go up in the near future, this may be why.

Facebook, Gibson Dunn Sanctioned For ‘Egregious’ Conduct [Law360]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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