I'm not a lawyer, but I personally would move to dismiss - and someone
here will know the exact section of the FRCP - in that your lawsuit
fails to state a claim to which the court can grant relief.
"I have on occasion wanted to express an opinion that you would not be
qualified to shovel shit in a manure factory but I have to take that
back as you do an excellent job of shoveling shit here every day." -
Paul Robinson to Ray Gordon, May 27, 2003, at
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.legal/browse_thread/thread/b92c3c82ed1b613/5...
You can't pro-se file a class action which I think if you were arguing
that they have damaged the public by some falsity in their
programming, even if you had grounds to file against them, would, I
think require a class action, not a personal lawsuit. And I don't
think you represent any sort of class to which you have grounds to
sue.
Also I think the claim that the court in Pennsylvania having
jurisdiction over them is bogus based on *International Shoe*
(International Shoe Co. v. Washington 326 U.S. 310 (1945)), and I
think it also lacks jurisdiction under Quill Corp. v. North Dakota,
504 U.S. 298 (1992). Merely selling by mail or website to someone in
a state is not sufficient to make the party who operates that website
or is selling by mail subject to the jurisdiction of that state. There
has to be minimum contacts: an agent or office there.
Further, I don't see how anything they've done has had an effect on
you, personally. Your life would have exactly zero change as a result
of the broadcast of their program. I would also argue you lack
standing to sue as you were not damaged by anything they did and will
not suffer damages as a result of their actions, presuming for the
sake of argument that they did anything which is in violation of law.
As for your claims of plagiarism I think you're claiming copyright
protection on your ideas, not on the expression of them, and even if
they did use your ideas - which I would be really surprised if it was
the case that you thought up everything first - it's still not
actionable because ideas are not protected, only the expression, for
copyright purposes. If you had a patent on some method that might be
another matter, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been
relatively lax in granting overbroad patents that should never have
been allowed.
At best from what I read in your lawsuit - to the extent I read it, I
think I quit after 15 or 20 pages. there may be grounds for the
Federal Trade Commission to act if you're claiming the program was
fraudulent or staged but even that's probably a stretch as there are
First Amendment issues dealing with creation of entertainment
programs. Now, if you're claiming violation of the laws against
running rigged game shows that's an entirely different matter which
the FTC, FCC, DOJ or some other agency might have grounds to prosecute
or perhaps file a civil claim, but again, that would be the government
acting over a violation of law, and you still would not have standing
to intervene.
You're lucky you're a pro-se, if some lawyer had filed this piece of
crap you're foisting on the courts, (s)he'd be hit with sanctions for
filing a lawsuit that (1) they knew or should have known was baseless
and that (2) they clearly must have known that the court lacks
jurisdiction to handle. If anything, this should have been filed in
one of the jurisdictions where at least one of the parties is a
resident. Filing it in New York or even California would have been
far better than in Pennsylvania, although it's still a groundless
lawsuit to begin with. There is definitely no grounds to file in PA
and even you should know that.
Hell, I'd argue for sanctions anyway then let you try to argue that
they're not warranted. Especially in view of your constant practice
of filing groundless lawsuits.
In short, your attempt to hitch onto a gravy train is going to get
derailed very soon. "As usual, the Ray Gordon Litigation Train derails
again in a spectacular crash, or it will once Google gets the same
decision in psychopath Gordon Roy Parker's attempt to extort money
from them." - Paul Robinson, January 28, 2006 at
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.seduction.fast/browse_thread/thread/4196f61a3...
