{"id":643,"date":"2012-02-26T09:34:40","date_gmt":"2012-02-26T14:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/?p=643"},"modified":"2012-02-26T09:34:40","modified_gmt":"2012-02-26T14:34:40","slug":"myth-you-can-fool-some-of-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/?p=643","title":{"rendered":"MYTH: You Can Fool Some of the People……"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Lincoln is famously quoted as saying \u201cYou can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.\u201c<\/em> And we\u2019ll famously caution you, when it comes to the legal system, never<\/strong> try any of the time. \u00a0Shepard Fairley can attest to that from a probable future jail cell.<\/p>\n

Recall our earlier articles on how during the process of\u00a0interviewing your prospective lawyer, your candidate\u00a0is doing likewise with respect to your credibility, or lack thereof?. There is a simple reason why we\u00a0litigators\u00a0are a cynical bunch – we get lied to.\u00a0 In fact we get lied to a lot.\u00a0 Oft times it is the client or wanna be client, who is cranking out a\u00a0script at soap opera speed. The substantial monetary awards and settlements achieved by legitimately aggrieved creators have fueled the desire by others to make similar money through litigation.<\/p>\n

Money is of course,\u00a0the usual\u00a0motive especially\u00a0if the client has even the most remote dream of the attorney representing him\/her on a contingency fee basis, The clich\u00e9’ that “When something is too good to be true – it usually is” comes to mind.\u00a0 Additionally, lay people falsely believe that “The lawyer\u00a0can say anything in Court”.\u00a0 Clients with even greater “risk tolerances” falsely assume that they will avoid the truth in the legal process hoping to settle well before the day of reckoning.\u00a0 No matter how many times we advise potential clients that lying to their prospective lawyers or worse, to their adversaries or judges,\u00a0is the dumbest thing they can do,\u00a0some fail to heed our advice.\u00a0 We make every effort under the sun to avoid representing such rodents. If we have the slightest belief at any time from the initial meeting or thereafter they are lying, we send them packing.<\/p>\n

The Federal Courts – where copyright cases are heard – have very, very strict rules on both the client and the attorney verifying in writing and under oath that testimony and\/or documents submitted to it by them are legitimate. At the end of the day the entire legal system is based on the veracity of BOTH legal documents and oral testimony.\u00a0 Attorneys who value their licenses rid themselves of clients with questionable credibility.\u00a0 Sure its theoretically possible to “put one over” on the opposition’s attorneys, their clients, the judge AND the jury.\u00a0 The odds of so doing are quite remote\u00a0and the penalties\u00a0justifiably severe.<\/p>\n

We now look at yet another aspect of the famed\u00a0Shepard Fairey case.\u00a0 Multiple media reports have the famed artist\u00a0Mr. Fairy,\u00a0confessing to lying to the Federal Court, his lawyers and destroying and\/or fabricating\u00a0relevant documents in connection with his CIVIL case regarding the alleged Obama photo rip-off.\u00a0 Federal Judges take these matters very, very seriously.\u00a0 Indeed, Mr. Fairy could very well be doing up to 6 months\u00a0jail time in a Federal prison after he is\u00a0to be sentenced by the Court in mid July.<\/p>\n

Those who break the rules risk sanctions including,\u00a0fines and\/or\u00a0criminal prosecution.\u00a0 Fairey told Magistrate Judge Frank Maas that when he created the Obama poster in January 2008, he believed he was basing it on a cropped version of a photograph of Obama taken with\u00a0actor George Clooney in front of an American flag at a public event. He said it was only a few days after his lawsuit was filed, when he saw a blog comparing the Clooney picture with another AP photograph, that he realized the image he had used was a different AP picture of Obama taken at the same event.<\/p>\n

He has been reported to have confessed that\u00a0before meeting with his lawyers six weeks later, he deleted the files showing he had used the Obama photo that did not include Clooney and printed documents to make it appear that he had used the picture with Clooney in it. He said he continued to hide the truth for months, even arranging for a witness to support his false claim in a deposition with lawyers, before one of his employees searching for documents for his attorneys came across the files he thought he had deleted.
\n“I immediately confessed what I had done to my lawyers, and then to my wife, employees and friends,” he said. “Days later, I authorized my lawyers to write a letter to the court and the AP explaining what I had done.”<\/p>\n

We don’t know nor are\u00a0interested in how this “confession”\u00a0will affect the financial settlement achieved by Fairy and AP.\u00a0\u00a0Rather we are offering this post as a cautionary tale.\u00a0 When you see an attorney do not assume that he or she is an idiot who makes no effort to ascertain whether your story holds water.\u00a0 Ditto your legal adversaries. We have thrown out more than one prospective client from our office smelling, seeing and touching a bogus lawsuit in the making. Lawyers are very reluctant to risk their licenses lying on behalf of fakes,\u00a0phonies and frauds\u00a0some of whom are photographers, illustrators and models.\u00a0 Don’t try lying to your lawyer as the odds are that if anyone is going to the pokey – it won’t be the attorney who is likely\u00a0way too smart to run the risk.<\/p>\n

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President Lincoln is famously quoted as saying \u201cYou can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.\u201c And we\u2019ll famously caution you, when it comes to the legal system, never try any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyright-info"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":649,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions\/649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}