Shaun Martin posts about a recent California Court of Appeal case, Malin v. Singer at the
California Appellate Report.
Martin summarizes the case pretty well, which
involves an anti-SLAPP motion in response to an extortion suit. What this basically means is that the
plaintiffs sued for extortion and the defendants responded by arguing that this
lawsuit is meritless and was filed to quash speech that is protected by the
First Amendment. The court quoted the
contents of the letter. Here is the
boring, normal part:
I am litigation counsel to Shereene Arazm. I am writing to
you with respect to your outrageous, malicious, wrongful and tortious conduct.
As a result of your embezzlement, conversion and breach of fiduciary duty, you
have misappropriated more than a million dollars from my client. As a result
thereof, my client intends to file the enclosed lawsuit against you, Lonnie
Moore, and various business entities that you and Mr. Moore control. As alleged
in the Complaint, you, Mr. Moore and several of your co-conspirators have been
embezzling and stealing money from Ms. Arazm and Geisha House, LLC for years.
As set forth in detail in the Complaint, you and Mr. Moore have devised various
schemes to embezzle money from the restaurants and clubs which you own and/or
manage, including, but not limited to Geisha House and WonderLand. You and Mr.
Moore have created a special account or ‘ledger,’ which allows you to keep tabs
on how the stolen funds are divided among you, Mr. Moore and your various
co-conspirators. My client intends, as part of the lawsuit, to seek a
full-fledged forensic accounting of the books and records for Geisha House,
LLC, 2HYPE Productions, Inc., LTM Consulting, Inc., and Malin & Moore
Enterprises, LLC, in addition to your personal accounts.
In addition, as set forth in the Complaint, we have
information that you and Mr. Moore have engaged in insurance scams designed to
defraud not only the insurers of your establishments, but also the insurers of
WonderLand. You have also taken steps to hide your assets from creditors as
well as from the taxing authorities. We are aware that you have converted my
client’s monies and deposited them in accounts in the Cook Islands.
We
have also confirmed that you have planned to illegally transfer your shares in
Geisha House Los Angeles to Sylvain Bitton in a further attempt to hide from
creditors and avoid tax liability.
Here is where it gets interesting:
Because Mr. Moore has also received a copy of the enclosed
lawsuit, I have deliberately left blank spaces in portions of the
Complaint dealing with your using company resources to arrange sexual liaisons
with older men such as ‘Uncle Jerry,’ Judge [name redacted] a/k/a ‘Dad’
(see enclosed photo), and many others. When the Complaint is filed with
the Los Angeles Superior Court, there will be no blanks in the pleading.
My client will file the Complaint against you and your other
joint conspirators unless this matter is resolved to my client’s satisfaction
within five (5) business days from your receipt of this Complaint. . . .
(Italics added.)
The court then quoted the relevant part of the
draft complaint:
[O]ver the past several months, _______________ has arranged
through email and through Internet websites such as craigslist.org to have multiple
sexual encounters with [redacted] which include _________________________.
Based on information and belief, _______________ used company resources to
facilitate these rendezvous and to communicate with various [redacted]
including _______________, _______________, and _______________.
Strong writing all around. My favorite line is “(see enclosed photo).”
The court concludes that this is not extortion
for a few reasons. First, the court
notes that the sexual information is related to the subject matter of the
lawsuit because it allegedly involved embezzled money. Second, the court notes that third parties
are not being threatened by this letter within the meaning of the extortion
statute because the third parties need to be related to the threatened party.
Since my internships so far have all been working
for the government in a criminal prosecution context, I have not yet had the
opportunity to write a demand letter.
Fortunately, this opinion seems to provide a compelling, and apparently
not-extortive, template.
It is basically extortion. "We know you've done some illegal things. We know you solicited sex for money (a crime) and here's a photo to prove it. Either you pay us what we want or we're going to sue and expose you."
ReplyDeleteNow imagine this letter. "We know you robbed a bank. We have photos to prove it. Either pay us what we want or going to police."
Blackmail...Extortion. The law just happens to side swivel around knit picking.