Folks I am spreading the wealth on my travails with the Aaron Broussard’s henchmen as recently laid out on these pages. I am talking with a couple of different lawyers but I want to hear from a variety of practitioners before I pull the trigger and enroll a lawyer. Given what I have posted this week the time is right to make a public announcement.
The requirements:
Be licensed in Mississippi or Louisiana
Have a background of Federal court practice
Have familiarity and experience with media and free speech law in Louisiana or Mississippi (Louisiana applicants special motion to strike experience a must)
Civil RICO experience a plus (Mississippi applicants).
Slabbed would be willing to pay all court costs and like front end costs and fees. Banner ad placement option in exchange for deferred billing preferred. Great opportunity for positive publicity in the premier lay written legal affairs blog in the South.
Part 2 of this series ended with the allegations contained in the Concrete Busters lawsuit that Fred Heebe, along with several co-conspirators has been waging a coordinated campaign to unmask and otherwise harass internet commenters sharing information on the political scandal in Jefferson Parish. I’ve always pointed to the first post I did on Aaron Broussard’s curious connections to an Eco lodge in Nova Scotia Canada in January 2010 as the beginning of this saga but it really isn’t as the retaliation didn’t begin in earnest until May, 2010 as the following blast from the past should jog everyone’s memory:
Interim Jefferson Parish President Steve Theriot Citing defamation and “suffered embarrassment” allegedly caused by online comments posted at www.NOLA.com, Jefferson Parish interim President Steve Theriot has filed a lawsuit requesting the identities behind 11 user accounts on the website.
and this.
The suit was filed by attorneys Nan Alessandra and David Korn of the Phelps Dunbar law firm.
The lawsuit also references messages posted on a local web log called slabbed.wordpress.com, but doesn’t specifically identify any comments, screen names or accounts used there.
“We haven’t actually been contacted by Jefferson Parish at all, as far as official channels,” said Doug Handshoe, who co-founded that site in Mississippi. After reading the lawsuit, he said: “I think it’s certainly designed to intimidate and silence online commenters.
“We don’t intend to alter what we’re doing at all,” he said.
Let’s leave aside for the moment that only the Parish Council has the legal authority to sue on behalf of the Parish or that the taxpayers of Jefferson Parish picked up the tab for TheRiot’s jackassery but it is what it is. Later the same day I would appear on Fox 8 in a Val Bracy report which aired on the 9PM news:
Vaughn Perret and Charles Leary of Trout Point Lodge