Cease and Desist Letters, and a Case Study from Brewer and Pritchard P.C. (bplaw.com)
This week I’ll be looking at some aspects of Cease and Desist Letters and Libel Law, and why they are - to a large extent - paper tigers, and are often tools of intimidation or shadow boxing.
In the UK at least, I think we have far too much respect for lawyers writing letters about material on internet sites - I would term it the Privatisation of Censorship. This is a really serious problem, so I’ll start with this area.
Note: This article does not comprise legal advice.
Cease your Desistance - a few points
1 - A Cease and Desist letter is exactly that: a letter that someone has written or been paid to write. It is a personal letter, there is no requirement that the contents be true.
It may well be peppered with defamatory and untrue material - but because there is no publication involved, there is no downside for those sending it.
2 - A lawyer or solicitor is a hired gun - their duty is to deliver an optimal service to their client, rather than to seek a just or fair solution.
3 - Cease and Desist letters are termed “standard operating procedure” - they are a cheap and easy way to get people to do what you want without the need to take them to court. The use of a legal-sounding imprimatur can be a very effective tool - even if it is a bluff.
4 - Ask the right questions - focus on the facts, not on the fluff:
a) Is what I have said true?
b) What is this person writing this letter playing at?
c) What are their motives?
d) How serious are they?
e) What should I do?
One policy is:
Keep calm, reflect and carry on if you think you are in the right.
Lawyers biting themselves in the bottom: Case Study
Lawyers make mistakes to, and since I’m on Cease and Desist letters, let me revisit one aspect of the first Cease and Desist letter of the entire Dave Walker affair - sent to Phil Groom, which is something of an object lesson in how lawyers can bite themselves in their own bottom if they are not VERY careful. The letter was sent to Mr Groom on 21st July by Mr Mark Brewer - the day before Dave Walker received his own Cease and Desist demand.
The exploding cigar (think Oliver Hardy) is in the message header:
From: Brewer@bplaw.com
Subject: Demand to Cease and Desist
Date: 21 July 2008 18:04:17 BDT
To: Phil Groom, Clem Jackson
It looks pretty innocuous, but there are two important points here.
1 - Defamatory Material Published to the Media?
Clem Jackson - to whom this message was copied - is a journalist. His email address is at premier.org.uk, and premier.org.uk is the main Internet presence of Premier Radio, which is a Christian Radio station in London.
Clem Jackson works for Christian Marketplace, a magazine which is one the media properties of the owners of the Premier Radio Group. The Cease and Desist email carried no statement requesting confidentiality (which would be unlikely to stand up anyway).
Or - to put it bluntly - all of the allegations included in this Cease and Desist letter (full text here), which Phil Groom rejects out of hand as being simply untrue, were simultaneously published to the British media. Libel law in Britain requires publication only to a single third party - never mind a magazine and a radio station.
And that looks to me as if Mr Brewer may well be potentially on the receiving end of a Libel Action himself as a result of his Cease and Desist letter. Ooops.
Houston - we have a problem. Perhaps he should have hired a lawyer to advise him about Defamation and Libel.
2 - And sent from a Business Email Address
This Cease and Desist letter was sent from the email address Brewer@bplaw.com. (Quoted here as it is both on public databases and directly germane to the point at hand).
The same email address ws used to send Cease and Desist correspondence to Rev Sam Norton, in which Mr Brewer claimed to be a “private individual” - twice.
That email address doesn’t seem very “private” to me. It looks like a corporate email address used for the official business of Brewer and Pritchard PC, whose website is at www.bplaw.com.
It is also the administrative contact for the domain bplaw.com (see screenshot), and is therefore in the public domain.
I wonder what the legal regulators in Texas - never mind the other Partners and officers of Brewer and Pritchard PC - think about potentially defamatory material being published direct to the media in foreign countries from a business address of a prominent Law Firm?
Maybe we had better ask them.
Wrapping Up
Personally, I would give the bottom 6 inches of my left leg to be a fly on the wall when Mr Pritchard - the other half of the “Brewer and Pritchard” (bplaw.com) name - finds out the full gory detail of what has been going on here.
Tags: libel law, sam norton, mark brewer, spck, cease and desist
Categories: All WW, Campaigns, Comment, Ethics - Religion, Free Speech Campaign, Humour, Knockabout, Media, News - Current Affairs
I note with some regret from this page that Mark Brewer like me is a Cambridge alumnus, or at least claims to be. At least no one can claim that his only education was from Oral Roberts the prosperity preacher’s university. The information here seems a bit confused but suggests that he studied at Cambridge 1983-86 while also with the US Aur Force not far away at Mildenhall, Suffolk.
I see that spckwatch has picked up some of this information, but I can’t comment there.
Thanks for the comment, Peter.
Matt
I don’t know how things work over there Across the Pond, but on this side of the pond, legal communications are normally sent via certified mail, return receipt requested. The postman is required to get the addressee’s signature, and that receipt is then returned to the sender. It’s a nice, legal way to make sure whoever’s getting the communication has actually received the message–so s/he can’t say later on, “I never saw it before.” Really heavy-handed stuff is delivered by a process server.
Email seems a very dodgy medium for sending heavy-handed legal threats. You can ordinarily have only the vaguest idea where it goes after it leaves your keyboard. You can’t know what overzealous email or server administrator has taken an idle glance at it. You can’t ever be sure if it’s actually reached its destination. If a mailbox is full you might (or might not) get a courteous message from the destination server. You might (or might not) be blacklisted, blocked, or black-holed. Or your addressee might take a look, think “to hell with this,” and redirect it casually to nul–or the recycle bin.
A knock on the door from the postman, bearing an envelope of good stationery with a green sticker attached to it would cause a lot greater concern. I think it shows just what a desultory effort this really is.
Annes last blog post..Now I’m Dave Walker, Sam Norton, and Phil Groom
@Anne: There are case rulings on the status of email. I’m not sure where we are at the moment.
Matt