- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
[This is currently a placeholder for the finished post, which will go into the procedural history of the case at trial court and appellate level. Thanks to @Useful Mistake both for input into this OP, as well as having obtained many of the critical documents. All useless mistakes are my own.]
Cast of Characters
First, a quick list of the people involved:
Taylor Swift: Highly successful singer-songwriter with four consecutive albums selling more than a million copies, the highest paid female musician of the 2010s, and more other accomplishments than could be listed here. However, for our purposes, she is someone who has been repeatedly sued by Russell Greer for not going out on a date with him.
Ariana Grande: A recording artist who started her Grammy-winning career on Broadway at the age of 13. Also sued by Greer for refusing to accept her gifts at a meet and greet he bought a ticket for, even though it had rules prohibiting such gifts.
Farrah Abraham: A reality TV personality, singer, and porn actress. Also sued by Greer for rejecting his sexual advances. Beginning to notice a pattern?
Null: Joshua Conner Moon. This should speak for itself. He runs this site and is one of many defendants sued by Russell Greer.
Greg Skordas: An attorney who has represented both Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift, as well as Moon in lawsuits brought by Russell Greer.
Gregory Keenan & Andrew Grimm: The two attorneys who represented Greer in his successful appeal of his trial court loss. Authors of the profound legal theory of "my flu turned to Covid, so I need more time to respond."
Matthew Hardin: An attorney who recently started representing Moon in this case. He was also responsible for obtaining a broad filing injunction against a vexatious litigant named Melinda Scott who unsuccessfully sued Moon.
Russell Greer: Greer is the star of this story. His general mentality is best summed up by one of this Tweets.
According to himself, he is a man of constant plights who is persecuted solely because of his disability, a condition called Moebius Syndrome which causes a form of facial paralysis and makes it somewhat difficult to eat. He is otherwise entirely able-bodied.
However, the facts about Greer show clearly that there are many more reasons that he receives criticism, not only from the Kiwi Farms but from mainstream news outlets. Indeed, Kiwi Farms only noticed him after news coverage (such as this) about him suing Taylor Swift for refusing to accept unsolicited songs from him, specifically, "I Get You Taylor Swift."
During the course of that litigation, her lawyers referred to Greer's stalking of Swift and her family as "troubling and invasive." This, among other things, was his response:
He also took issue with this characterization in legal filings:
This was not not the only female celebrity he sued, believing himself to be entitled to some sort of relationship with her. Another was Ariana Grande. Luckily, we have a recording of that small claims lawsuit, in which Greg Skordas represented Grande.
He also received a restraining order from another woman and an electronic harassment charge for, among other things, threatening to kill himself in front of her residence because she had rejected his sexual advances. An unofficial transcript of the plea hearing is here (archive).
This was far from his first run-in with the criminal system, though, which would have been when he was arrested for writing a "kill list" in a bathroom stall (archive) in his high school, along with a threat to bring a "gunn" into school to kill the people on the list.
This is a very brief summary of a few of the highlights of this man's prolific litigation history and does not even begin to scratch the surface. Luckily for us, another of his lawsuit victims is Fremantle, the company responsible for America's Got Talent, which Greer filed a vexatious lawsuit against for not letting him on the show so he could meet Heidi Klum.
It includes a number of other sex-related incidents involving Greer, including multiple restraining orders from sex workers. The core of the document is a simple list, although the full document includes the pertinent legal documents as exhibits.
Since it is such a critical document, it is included as a PDF attachment to this post, as well as the zip file containing that PDF as well as the entirety of the exhibits, largely legal cases in which Greer has targeted women for legal and extralegal harassment.
The Facts
This case involves a link to a Google Drive which to this day still serves the copyrighted content in question, a book by Russell Greer with the self-explanatory title Why I Sued Taylor Swift: and How I Became Falsely Known as Frivolous, Litigious and Crazy (archive).
While the Google Drive is still linked elsewhere on the site, I'm not going to hotlink it in this post.
The timeline of the events leading up to this suit are as follows:
On November 4, 2017, Russell Greer announced the publication of his book on Amazon Kindle. Its appearance on Kindle was soon noted on Kiwi Farms (archive).
Later on the same day, it was noted that the Kindle link was serving up the entire document for free (archive) despite declining attempts to pay.
Shortly thereafter, a Kiwi Farms user posted a link to a Google Drive containing the document. This post has subsequently been deleted. While a link to the Google Drive remained in the original post to this thread (archive) for some time, it is now gone with only a mention that it used to be there.
On February 3, 2018, Greer emailed Moon, the administrator of the Kiwi Farms, ordering him to "remove my book" from the site, even though Moon obviously could not remove content from Google.
Greer did not identify any allegedly offending urls, and Moon's terse response on the same day was:
"I don't even know what you're talking about and this isn't a valid complaint.
Good luck."
Despite a threat to commence action if Moon posted the email, he posted the exchange on the same day.
Subsequently, on August 5, 2018, Greer sent another email to the Farms, entitled "Final Cease and Desist," claiming that a "police officer" had suggested he do this, and again requested the email not be posted. Needless to say, it was. As with the previous email, no url or content was specified, and the "Cease and Desist" was disregarded.
This was the final informal correspondence between the parties.
Sometime before but close in time to April 15, 2019, Greer released a song called "I Don't Get You Taylor Swift" through the music distribution site CD Baby.
Sometime on April 15, 2019, a Kiwi Farms poster purchased a copy of the song "I Don't Get You Taylor Swift" and posted it to the site. There is no current archive of this although it was discussed on or about that time. The discussion mentions that it was downloaded from CD Baby.
On April 18, 2019, Greer sent what purported to be a DMCA notification (archive) and explicitly cited 18 U.S.C. § 512(c). However, despite this, it did not include all the elements required under § 512(c)(3)(A)(iii), that is, "identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material." Greer essentially said "find it yourself" while referring to a forum with approximately 35,000 posts in it.
Moon, as is his uniform practice, posted the notification and the subsequent correspondence (archive) to the Kiwi Farms dedicated subforum for discussing such copyright notifications.
In response to Moon's rejection of the DMCA notification for deficiencies, subsequently on April 28, 2019, Greer sent a revised DMCA notification and further correspondence followed (archive).
Unlike the original DMCA notification, this complied with the relevant requirements by supplying URLs where the allegedly infringing material, which were URLs to posts containing the link to a Google Drive, and the song "I Don't Get You Taylor Swift."
Moon stated that he did not intend to comply with the notification, citing fair use and other considerations.
On September 16, 2020, Greer filed a lawsuit against Moon, captioned Greer v. Moon, No. 20-cv-00647 (D. Utah Sep. 16, 2020).
The Case
Trial Court
On September 24, 2020, Russell Greer was granted the ability to proceed in this case in forma pauperis (for free). The same day his complaint was entered (though it was received on the 16th) into the court docket. Feeling as if he was unbound by requirements of other litigants, he immediately attempted to circumvent the normal filing requirements and filed a motion demanding that he was to be allowed to serve Null by email. Without waiting for any response from the court, or without actually even serving his opponent, a day later, Russell Greer then asked the court to grant an Preliminary Injunction against his opponent asking the court to "enjoin Joshua Moon and Kiwi Farms from operating his website during the case, and/or removing every webpage about Greer from Defendant’s sites". Ten days later, the court denied his request to serve Null by email (though ultimately this would prove a pointless victory). By January 26th even the court grew tired of Russell Greer bumbling around, and ordered him to either tell them who he wants served, so they can do it for him, or to file a motion showcasing that he is entitled to serve Moon by alternative means. Greer chose the second option. As beforementioned, the original dismissal of this motion was a hollow victory, because his second motion for service via email was granted on February 16th. Russell Greer successfully served Null on March 19th. Thus, finally, the lawsuit could actually get started.
On April 9th, Null entered the case represented by Gregory Skordas, and filed a motion to dismiss alongside his answer to Greer's preliminary injunction (that was so far ignored by everyone for eight months). On April 20th, Russell Greer his answer to Null's answer and slightly over 2 weeks later filed his answer to Null's motion to dismiss, and two days later he filed a request for an oral argument (not his forte). 11 days later this request was denied. On May 19th, Null filed his response to Russ' response to Null's motion to dismiss. Greer countered this three months later by filing a motion to amend his complaint (though he named it as a Leave to File Supplemental Brief). What was in it? Byuucide. Very relevant. Slightly over two weeks later, Null responded. And, of course, after that Russ responded to Null's response. By September 17th, Russ was getting tired of the court not ruling on his motion, so he filed another motion asking to amend his complaint again. What was in it? Well, just complaining about a mean email he got (with picture of Hitler), and complaining about British Hooker leading a campaign to get all hookers to ban him from whorehouses, hooker that she believes acted on behest on Kiwi Farms (she had joined during the campaign, but as soon as the regulars stopped showering her every waking moment with praise and attention she left). On September 21st, the court dismissed Greer's requests, granted Null's motion to dismiss, while pointing out that Byuucide had nothing to do with the case. Eight days later, Russell asked the court to reconsider, and the court refused his request a month later. That very same day, October 26th, 2021, Russell informed the court that he was appealing this decision.
The docket (and the documents) for this case are archived in the Russell Greer thread, but can also be seen here.
Appeal
A day later his appeal got docketed in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. By November 17th, Gregory Skordas and Null correctly announced themselves to the appellate court (he tried since the 12th but repeatedly kept failing), and the appellate court had to remind him to do his job properly.
Everything was going smoothly until on 6th of December all of us were blindsided by the announcement that Russ had found some lawyers to handle his appeal for free. These lawyers have failed to submit their IRS documents for three straight years. The lawyer that is the one submitting all the documents is a masochist.
Immediately after joining Russ' cause, they asked for more time because they hadn't even read Russ' case yet. The request was granted. From January 3rd, 2022 to (at least) April 26th, 2022, they were in mediation, with Null accusing the opposite side of purposely drawing it out. On June 2nd, Russ' lawyer asked for more time, again, because of the flu. By June 17th, the flu magically became Covid. On June 3rd Null confirmed that mediation was really over as the users suspected. On 21st, the request for more time was granted.
Two minutes before the deadline, they submitted their required brief. In true Ty Beard style, it was full of mistakes. The lawyer fixed them, and then the court found that they weren't fixed. The lawyer fixed it again, the court found it still wasn't fixed, and then decided it actually was after all. On August 12th, Null filed his response. Russ' lawyer then (on the 13th of September) had sex, so he needed more time to file an answer. The court granted the request. On the 30th of September, the lawyer filed a self-admitted improper motion for more time - 5 minutes before the deadline. It was granted. Still, his lawyer filed an answer 16 seconds after the new deadline (worth noting that the clerk had already threatened them to stop doing this before). The lawyer then asked for more time to be in compliance. Granted. He then proceeded to ignore another court order, and again only complying long past the deadline. On January 13th, there was an oral hearing between Russ' lawyer and Null's.
On 16th of October, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court judgement using unsound logic to punish Null for encouraging and thereby inducing crimes that had occurred before his alleged encouragement. Two days later, Null recruited another lawyer to help overturn this result.
All in all, this whole appeal debacle cost him $7,500.
On October 30, 2023, Matthew Hardin filed a petition for rehearing en banc by the entire Tenth Circuit.
The next day, on October 31, 2023, Greer was ordered to file a response. The general rule is that no response is required unless explicitly ordered.
On December 4, 2023, the Tenth Circuit denied en banc rehearing.
On December 12, 2023, the Tenth Circuit awarded costs of $225.25 pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 39(a), as he prevailed in the appeal.
On December 13, 2023, U.S. Judge Tena Campbell, who had ruled favorably for Null in the District Court, recused herself without explanation, and was replaced by random selection by U.S. Judge David Barlow, a Trump appointee who had been previously appointed a U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah by Obama.
On December 26, 2023, Null filed a motion for a scheduling order or conference, the most interesting information in which is that the Digital Justice Foundation, which represented Greer in his successful Tenth Circuit appeal, is no longer representing him, leaving him once again pro se at the trial court level.
On January 17, 2024, Defendants' attorney Matthew Hardin filed four motions in the trial court:
A Motion Under Fed. R. P. 19 to join Google as a necessary defendant, as Google is the party alleged by Greer to host the allegedly infringing content that is the subject of the suit, and as Google would necessarily be the target of any injunctive relief, as neither Moon nor Kiwi Farms can remove content from Google's servers, as Greer demands;
A Motion for a More Definite Statement under FRCP 12(e) requesting that the complaint be drafted in a more coherent fashion so that it can be understood and responded to. As it is, it is replete with vague accusations that unknown third parties did unspecified things, causing unknown harms to Greer;
A Motion to Transfer, that is, for a change of venue to the Northern District of Florida, on the grounds that Null is a domiciliary of Florida despite currently living in Eastern Europe, while none of the parties reside in Utah, where the case is currently located, nor did any of the relevant events in the case transpire there;
And a Motion to Strike irrelevant parts of the complaint that were dismissed and abandoned on appeal.
Additionally, Defendants filed an Answer to the Complaint, admitting and denying the factual statements therein. Generally, such admissions or denials take this form:
On the following day, January 18, 2024, Lolcow LLC, the corporate defendant, moved to intervene as a defendant, as Greer had improperly attempted to sue "Kiwi Farms," which as a website lacks any legal personality and cannot be a defendant.
The court referred the motions to Magistrate Judge Jared C. Bennett.
The day after, January 19, 2024, Greer filed a change of address to a nonexistent street address as well as requesting an extension of time to respond to the foregoing motions as well as to "reply" to the answer.
On the same day, Defendants filed an opposition to Greer's motion, limited to opposing his improper attempt to file a "reply" to an answer, something that he is not entitled to do. The court agreed.
Then followed various procedural orders related to scheduling, which Greer disregarded and chose not to obey.
On March 4, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States docketed the Matthew Hardin-authored cert. petition for review of the Tenth Circuit opinion. A cert. petition is how one appeals a case to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court only grants approximately 1% of petitions drafted by counsel.
Court watchers can follow the course of the process at the Supreme Court docket tracker for the case or in this thread.
On March 9, 2024, Matthew Hardin filed a Notice of Returned Mail by Kiwi Farms, stating that Russell Greer, for whatever reason, has filed a fake nondeliverable address with the District Court despite his obligation to maintain a legitimate address.
On March 20, 2024, in a major procedural victory for the defense, Moon's Motion to Transfer was granted, transferring the case from the District Court for the District of Utah to the District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Perplexingly, the magistrate judge refers to Moon as "pro se" despite the motion having been filed by attorney Matthew Hardin.
Also on March 20, 2024, despite having opted not to respond to the change of venue motion in defiance of a court order, suddenly Greer filed a tardy opposition after having already lost.
On May 13, 2024, the Supreme Court issued a list of cert. rulings and other orders. Unsurprisingly, the petition in Greer v. Moon was denied.
On June 11, 2024, explicitly ignoring direct precedent to the contrary, the Northern District of Florida chose to play a game of "jurisdictional ping-pong" and retransfer the case to Utah, apparently believing itself to be an appellate court with jurisdiction over Utah, as it purports to order the other court to ignore res judicata on matters it has already considered and ruled on.
This is the current CourtListener link to the re-docketing of the case in Utah.
Cast of Characters
First, a quick list of the people involved:
Taylor Swift: Highly successful singer-songwriter with four consecutive albums selling more than a million copies, the highest paid female musician of the 2010s, and more other accomplishments than could be listed here. However, for our purposes, she is someone who has been repeatedly sued by Russell Greer for not going out on a date with him.
Ariana Grande: A recording artist who started her Grammy-winning career on Broadway at the age of 13. Also sued by Greer for refusing to accept her gifts at a meet and greet he bought a ticket for, even though it had rules prohibiting such gifts.
Farrah Abraham: A reality TV personality, singer, and porn actress. Also sued by Greer for rejecting his sexual advances. Beginning to notice a pattern?
Null: Joshua Conner Moon. This should speak for itself. He runs this site and is one of many defendants sued by Russell Greer.
Greg Skordas: An attorney who has represented both Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift, as well as Moon in lawsuits brought by Russell Greer.
Gregory Keenan & Andrew Grimm: The two attorneys who represented Greer in his successful appeal of his trial court loss. Authors of the profound legal theory of "my flu turned to Covid, so I need more time to respond."
Matthew Hardin: An attorney who recently started representing Moon in this case. He was also responsible for obtaining a broad filing injunction against a vexatious litigant named Melinda Scott who unsuccessfully sued Moon.
Russell Greer: Greer is the star of this story. His general mentality is best summed up by one of this Tweets.
According to himself, he is a man of constant plights who is persecuted solely because of his disability, a condition called Moebius Syndrome which causes a form of facial paralysis and makes it somewhat difficult to eat. He is otherwise entirely able-bodied.
However, the facts about Greer show clearly that there are many more reasons that he receives criticism, not only from the Kiwi Farms but from mainstream news outlets. Indeed, Kiwi Farms only noticed him after news coverage (such as this) about him suing Taylor Swift for refusing to accept unsolicited songs from him, specifically, "I Get You Taylor Swift."
During the course of that litigation, her lawyers referred to Greer's stalking of Swift and her family as "troubling and invasive." This, among other things, was his response:
He also took issue with this characterization in legal filings:
This was not not the only female celebrity he sued, believing himself to be entitled to some sort of relationship with her. Another was Ariana Grande. Luckily, we have a recording of that small claims lawsuit, in which Greg Skordas represented Grande.
He also received a restraining order from another woman and an electronic harassment charge for, among other things, threatening to kill himself in front of her residence because she had rejected his sexual advances. An unofficial transcript of the plea hearing is here (archive).
This was far from his first run-in with the criminal system, though, which would have been when he was arrested for writing a "kill list" in a bathroom stall (archive) in his high school, along with a threat to bring a "gunn" into school to kill the people on the list.
This is a very brief summary of a few of the highlights of this man's prolific litigation history and does not even begin to scratch the surface. Luckily for us, another of his lawsuit victims is Fremantle, the company responsible for America's Got Talent, which Greer filed a vexatious lawsuit against for not letting him on the show so he could meet Heidi Klum.
It includes a number of other sex-related incidents involving Greer, including multiple restraining orders from sex workers. The core of the document is a simple list, although the full document includes the pertinent legal documents as exhibits.
Since it is such a critical document, it is included as a PDF attachment to this post, as well as the zip file containing that PDF as well as the entirety of the exhibits, largely legal cases in which Greer has targeted women for legal and extralegal harassment.
The Facts
This case involves a link to a Google Drive which to this day still serves the copyrighted content in question, a book by Russell Greer with the self-explanatory title Why I Sued Taylor Swift: and How I Became Falsely Known as Frivolous, Litigious and Crazy (archive).
While the Google Drive is still linked elsewhere on the site, I'm not going to hotlink it in this post.
The timeline of the events leading up to this suit are as follows:
On November 4, 2017, Russell Greer announced the publication of his book on Amazon Kindle. Its appearance on Kindle was soon noted on Kiwi Farms (archive).
Later on the same day, it was noted that the Kindle link was serving up the entire document for free (archive) despite declining attempts to pay.
Shortly thereafter, a Kiwi Farms user posted a link to a Google Drive containing the document. This post has subsequently been deleted. While a link to the Google Drive remained in the original post to this thread (archive) for some time, it is now gone with only a mention that it used to be there.
On February 3, 2018, Greer emailed Moon, the administrator of the Kiwi Farms, ordering him to "remove my book" from the site, even though Moon obviously could not remove content from Google.
Greer did not identify any allegedly offending urls, and Moon's terse response on the same day was:
"I don't even know what you're talking about and this isn't a valid complaint.
Good luck."
Despite a threat to commence action if Moon posted the email, he posted the exchange on the same day.
Subsequently, on August 5, 2018, Greer sent another email to the Farms, entitled "Final Cease and Desist," claiming that a "police officer" had suggested he do this, and again requested the email not be posted. Needless to say, it was. As with the previous email, no url or content was specified, and the "Cease and Desist" was disregarded.
This was the final informal correspondence between the parties.
Sometime before but close in time to April 15, 2019, Greer released a song called "I Don't Get You Taylor Swift" through the music distribution site CD Baby.
Sometime on April 15, 2019, a Kiwi Farms poster purchased a copy of the song "I Don't Get You Taylor Swift" and posted it to the site. There is no current archive of this although it was discussed on or about that time. The discussion mentions that it was downloaded from CD Baby.
On April 18, 2019, Greer sent what purported to be a DMCA notification (archive) and explicitly cited 18 U.S.C. § 512(c). However, despite this, it did not include all the elements required under § 512(c)(3)(A)(iii), that is, "identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material." Greer essentially said "find it yourself" while referring to a forum with approximately 35,000 posts in it.
Moon, as is his uniform practice, posted the notification and the subsequent correspondence (archive) to the Kiwi Farms dedicated subforum for discussing such copyright notifications.
In response to Moon's rejection of the DMCA notification for deficiencies, subsequently on April 28, 2019, Greer sent a revised DMCA notification and further correspondence followed (archive).
Unlike the original DMCA notification, this complied with the relevant requirements by supplying URLs where the allegedly infringing material, which were URLs to posts containing the link to a Google Drive, and the song "I Don't Get You Taylor Swift."
Moon stated that he did not intend to comply with the notification, citing fair use and other considerations.
On September 16, 2020, Greer filed a lawsuit against Moon, captioned Greer v. Moon, No. 20-cv-00647 (D. Utah Sep. 16, 2020).
The Case
Trial Court
On September 24, 2020, Russell Greer was granted the ability to proceed in this case in forma pauperis (for free). The same day his complaint was entered (though it was received on the 16th) into the court docket. Feeling as if he was unbound by requirements of other litigants, he immediately attempted to circumvent the normal filing requirements and filed a motion demanding that he was to be allowed to serve Null by email. Without waiting for any response from the court, or without actually even serving his opponent, a day later, Russell Greer then asked the court to grant an Preliminary Injunction against his opponent asking the court to "enjoin Joshua Moon and Kiwi Farms from operating his website during the case, and/or removing every webpage about Greer from Defendant’s sites". Ten days later, the court denied his request to serve Null by email (though ultimately this would prove a pointless victory). By January 26th even the court grew tired of Russell Greer bumbling around, and ordered him to either tell them who he wants served, so they can do it for him, or to file a motion showcasing that he is entitled to serve Moon by alternative means. Greer chose the second option. As beforementioned, the original dismissal of this motion was a hollow victory, because his second motion for service via email was granted on February 16th. Russell Greer successfully served Null on March 19th. Thus, finally, the lawsuit could actually get started.
On April 9th, Null entered the case represented by Gregory Skordas, and filed a motion to dismiss alongside his answer to Greer's preliminary injunction (that was so far ignored by everyone for eight months). On April 20th, Russell Greer his answer to Null's answer and slightly over 2 weeks later filed his answer to Null's motion to dismiss, and two days later he filed a request for an oral argument (not his forte). 11 days later this request was denied. On May 19th, Null filed his response to Russ' response to Null's motion to dismiss. Greer countered this three months later by filing a motion to amend his complaint (though he named it as a Leave to File Supplemental Brief). What was in it? Byuucide. Very relevant. Slightly over two weeks later, Null responded. And, of course, after that Russ responded to Null's response. By September 17th, Russ was getting tired of the court not ruling on his motion, so he filed another motion asking to amend his complaint again. What was in it? Well, just complaining about a mean email he got (with picture of Hitler), and complaining about British Hooker leading a campaign to get all hookers to ban him from whorehouses, hooker that she believes acted on behest on Kiwi Farms (she had joined during the campaign, but as soon as the regulars stopped showering her every waking moment with praise and attention she left). On September 21st, the court dismissed Greer's requests, granted Null's motion to dismiss, while pointing out that Byuucide had nothing to do with the case. Eight days later, Russell asked the court to reconsider, and the court refused his request a month later. That very same day, October 26th, 2021, Russell informed the court that he was appealing this decision.
The docket (and the documents) for this case are archived in the Russell Greer thread, but can also be seen here.
Appeal
A day later his appeal got docketed in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. By November 17th, Gregory Skordas and Null correctly announced themselves to the appellate court (he tried since the 12th but repeatedly kept failing), and the appellate court had to remind him to do his job properly.
Everything was going smoothly until on 6th of December all of us were blindsided by the announcement that Russ had found some lawyers to handle his appeal for free. These lawyers have failed to submit their IRS documents for three straight years. The lawyer that is the one submitting all the documents is a masochist.
Immediately after joining Russ' cause, they asked for more time because they hadn't even read Russ' case yet. The request was granted. From January 3rd, 2022 to (at least) April 26th, 2022, they were in mediation, with Null accusing the opposite side of purposely drawing it out. On June 2nd, Russ' lawyer asked for more time, again, because of the flu. By June 17th, the flu magically became Covid. On June 3rd Null confirmed that mediation was really over as the users suspected. On 21st, the request for more time was granted.
Two minutes before the deadline, they submitted their required brief. In true Ty Beard style, it was full of mistakes. The lawyer fixed them, and then the court found that they weren't fixed. The lawyer fixed it again, the court found it still wasn't fixed, and then decided it actually was after all. On August 12th, Null filed his response. Russ' lawyer then (on the 13th of September) had sex, so he needed more time to file an answer. The court granted the request. On the 30th of September, the lawyer filed a self-admitted improper motion for more time - 5 minutes before the deadline. It was granted. Still, his lawyer filed an answer 16 seconds after the new deadline (worth noting that the clerk had already threatened them to stop doing this before). The lawyer then asked for more time to be in compliance. Granted. He then proceeded to ignore another court order, and again only complying long past the deadline. On January 13th, there was an oral hearing between Russ' lawyer and Null's.
On 16th of October, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court judgement using unsound logic to punish Null for encouraging and thereby inducing crimes that had occurred before his alleged encouragement. Two days later, Null recruited another lawyer to help overturn this result.
All in all, this whole appeal debacle cost him $7,500.
On October 30, 2023, Matthew Hardin filed a petition for rehearing en banc by the entire Tenth Circuit.
The next day, on October 31, 2023, Greer was ordered to file a response. The general rule is that no response is required unless explicitly ordered.
On December 4, 2023, the Tenth Circuit denied en banc rehearing.
On December 12, 2023, the Tenth Circuit awarded costs of $225.25 pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 39(a), as he prevailed in the appeal.
On December 13, 2023, U.S. Judge Tena Campbell, who had ruled favorably for Null in the District Court, recused herself without explanation, and was replaced by random selection by U.S. Judge David Barlow, a Trump appointee who had been previously appointed a U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah by Obama.
On December 26, 2023, Null filed a motion for a scheduling order or conference, the most interesting information in which is that the Digital Justice Foundation, which represented Greer in his successful Tenth Circuit appeal, is no longer representing him, leaving him once again pro se at the trial court level.
On January 17, 2024, Defendants' attorney Matthew Hardin filed four motions in the trial court:
A Motion Under Fed. R. P. 19 to join Google as a necessary defendant, as Google is the party alleged by Greer to host the allegedly infringing content that is the subject of the suit, and as Google would necessarily be the target of any injunctive relief, as neither Moon nor Kiwi Farms can remove content from Google's servers, as Greer demands;
A Motion for a More Definite Statement under FRCP 12(e) requesting that the complaint be drafted in a more coherent fashion so that it can be understood and responded to. As it is, it is replete with vague accusations that unknown third parties did unspecified things, causing unknown harms to Greer;
A Motion to Transfer, that is, for a change of venue to the Northern District of Florida, on the grounds that Null is a domiciliary of Florida despite currently living in Eastern Europe, while none of the parties reside in Utah, where the case is currently located, nor did any of the relevant events in the case transpire there;
And a Motion to Strike irrelevant parts of the complaint that were dismissed and abandoned on appeal.
Additionally, Defendants filed an Answer to the Complaint, admitting and denying the factual statements therein. Generally, such admissions or denials take this form:
On the following day, January 18, 2024, Lolcow LLC, the corporate defendant, moved to intervene as a defendant, as Greer had improperly attempted to sue "Kiwi Farms," which as a website lacks any legal personality and cannot be a defendant.
The court referred the motions to Magistrate Judge Jared C. Bennett.
The day after, January 19, 2024, Greer filed a change of address to a nonexistent street address as well as requesting an extension of time to respond to the foregoing motions as well as to "reply" to the answer.
On the same day, Defendants filed an opposition to Greer's motion, limited to opposing his improper attempt to file a "reply" to an answer, something that he is not entitled to do. The court agreed.
Then followed various procedural orders related to scheduling, which Greer disregarded and chose not to obey.
On March 4, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States docketed the Matthew Hardin-authored cert. petition for review of the Tenth Circuit opinion. A cert. petition is how one appeals a case to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court only grants approximately 1% of petitions drafted by counsel.
Court watchers can follow the course of the process at the Supreme Court docket tracker for the case or in this thread.
On March 9, 2024, Matthew Hardin filed a Notice of Returned Mail by Kiwi Farms, stating that Russell Greer, for whatever reason, has filed a fake nondeliverable address with the District Court despite his obligation to maintain a legitimate address.
On March 20, 2024, in a major procedural victory for the defense, Moon's Motion to Transfer was granted, transferring the case from the District Court for the District of Utah to the District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Perplexingly, the magistrate judge refers to Moon as "pro se" despite the motion having been filed by attorney Matthew Hardin.
Also on March 20, 2024, despite having opted not to respond to the change of venue motion in defiance of a court order, suddenly Greer filed a tardy opposition after having already lost.
On May 13, 2024, the Supreme Court issued a list of cert. rulings and other orders. Unsurprisingly, the petition in Greer v. Moon was denied.
On June 11, 2024, explicitly ignoring direct precedent to the contrary, the Northern District of Florida chose to play a game of "jurisdictional ping-pong" and retransfer the case to Utah, apparently believing itself to be an appellate court with jurisdiction over Utah, as it purports to order the other court to ignore res judicata on matters it has already considered and ruled on.
This is the current CourtListener link to the re-docketing of the case in Utah.
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