An “experienced paralegal” had some harsh words for Postle’s new legal team.
In a blog post on their website, @jeff_jumpin put forward some serious criticism of the 35-page complaint drafted by Lowe & Associates.
The post was retweeted by defendant Veronica Brill who described it as "an interesting read."
Due care
First up @jeff_jumpin reassured us of their legal chops.
“I have worked as a paralegal for over a decade for both government and private attorneys," they wrote. "And have a lot of expertise in the drafting and filing of legal documents. [...] I am not an expert in defamation law, but I can tell you if a pleading has been drafted with care and I can compare it to other pleadings of the same general type and get a good sense of the quality of a given pleading.”
Paralegal @jeff_jumpin is quick to point out that some of the document's superficial oddities might be location-specific. For instance, Sacramento — the court to which this complaint is being addressed — might have old-fashioned formatting guidelines. These guidelines could create the illusion of reusing out of date boilerplate.
For example, the document uses double-line left margins, appears to have been filed by fax, and uses page numbering that starts on page zero.
The possibility that the complaint was written by “someone who is not very meticulous about the presentation of the pleading” would have equal explanatory power.
The legal blogger compares the Postle complaint with another complaint of similar length: Sandmann v. Post. They note that “The Postle complaint [...] barely touches on the specifics of what the defendants did other than to say he was cheating and even more notably does not broach what Postle's defense might be to refute these allegations. Sandmann directly refutes the Post and other media outlet's assertions [...] Postle's complaint does not directly address his innocence other than to state that the defendant's statements were false.”
"There / their"
When the Postle lawsuit does get to the courts, @jeff_jumpin doesn’t like its odds.
They write that “in the Postle complaint there are numerous typos including some pretty egregious ones. Like a "there / their" error and inconsistent use of apostrophes and commas. Judges and attorneys in general are pretty anal people in my experience [...] and can tell when a motion has been filed by someone who just cribs citations and half-asses a boilerplate document.”
Critics have viewed Mike Postle’s legal forays as suspect in the past. For example, he claimed on one occasion to be representing himself legally. But then he stood accused of using a lawyer behind the scenes, violating the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
This unusual filing has led to various theories by those in the poker community. Some users on TwoPlusTwo point out that the defendants have not been served yet. They view this as evidence that the document might just be an attempt to scare critics quiet. But as one TwoPlusTwo user noted, the scanned documents do not display a court stamp or filing date, and so cannot be served to the defendants yet.
This all means we'll have to wait and see. How quickly can the smoke and COVID-choked California clerks sort through their in-trays? That is anyone's guess. But once they do get to this case, we'll cover it here.
