Judge Upholds Award of Attorneys' Fees Against RIAA

So far, the RIAA has sued over 18,000 indi­vid­u­als for allegedly shar­ing music over the Internet. But the indus­try uses slap­dash inves­tiga­tive meth­ods to find its tar­gets, and so inno­cent peo­ple as well as guilty ones can find them­selves entan­gled in an expen­sive and drain­ing process. One recent vic­tim was a woman who didn’t even own a com­puter. Another law­suit tar­get was deceased. If Ms. Foster is awarded attorney’s fees, it will encour­age future inno­cent vic­tims to stand up for them­selves in court. — EFF

The judge did indeed award attor­neys’ fees, and refused to recon­sider the award:

A fed­eral judge has denied the RIAA’s motion for recon­sid­er­a­tion of his attor­neys’ fees award in Capitol v. Foster. Calling the RIAA’s motion for recon­sid­er­a­tion one of “very lim­ited appro­pri­ate­ness,” Judge Lee R. West found fault with just about every one of the RIAA’s argu­ments. — ars tech­nica

EFF gives some background:

Last year, Judge Lee R. West dis­missed the case against her with prej­u­dice after it became clear that Ms. Foster was sim­ply the Internet access account holder in her home and had no knowl­edge or expe­ri­ence with file shar­ing soft­ware. EFF, Public Citizen, the ACLU, and the American Association of Law Libraries filed an ami­cus brief in the case, sup­port­ing Ms. Foster’s motion for fees.

Of the orig­i­nal order award­ing attor­neys’ fees, Groklaw writes:

The court’s analy­sis goes like this: ordi­nar­ily a court has dis­cre­tion to award fees or not, and some of the fac­tors it will con­sider will be such things as friv­o­lous­ness. Other fac­tors, Judge West states, are “moti­va­tion, objec­tive unrea­son­able­ness of the non-​​prevailing party’s case, and need in par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances to advance con­sid­er­a­tions of com­pen­sa­tion and deter­rence.” In the US, fees are not nor­mally granted if a case is dis­missed with prej­u­dice. But in excep­tional cir­cum­stances, it can hap­pen, such as “where a plain­tiff makes a prac­tice of repeat­edly bring­ing claims and then dis­miss­ing with prej­u­dice ‘after inflict­ing sub­stan­tial lit­i­ga­tion costs on the oppos­ing party and the judi­cial system.’”

And more from Groklaw:

[T]he music indus­try, which has been suing the poor and powerless—some believe so as to build a body of one-​​sided case law around US Copyright Law—has been told where the line in the sand is. The plain­tiffs who massed against this defendant—Capitol Records, UMG Recordings, Maverick Recording Company, BMG Music, Arista Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Records—have been told they will have to pay a rea­son­able amount, yet to be deter­mined, of this vin­di­cated defendant’s legal fees, because she has been ruled the pre­vail­ing party, against all odds.

The RIAA is noto­ri­ous for these suits, as they attempt to use the judi­cial sys­tem for their advan­tage. However, pro­vided one has an attor­ney will­ing and able to resist, the sys­tem does strive ulti­mately for fair­ness. That, of course, is one rea­son I am in law school.