Come see what may be next for the $62.5 million dollar lawsuit against Games Workshop from our interview with the man who filed it, David Moore.
If you haven’t heard yet, there is a suit against Games Workshop, which you can get all the details for here.
So where do we go from here? Lets dive right in!
David Moore says that the clock is now ticking and GW has been served. Apparently they have up to 30 days to either ask for more time to prepare in general or to just come to the table immediately. After this will eventually come discovery, where due to the nature of the case GW may very well again have to divulge sales and production numbers about their products in open court.
Why this is important Moore says, is because now we may be able to see where all those items wound up for sale in more prevalence, on GW’s site (remember they are a MANUFACTURER and not in essence a RETAILER) or to the independent stockist stores that helped build up their business here in the states since the 1980’s.
It may also show the amount of “web exclusive” products that were just never differed to retailers in the first place as well, both points that should be very important to the case (and consumer’s hearts and minds).
Moore also points out in several places that the rules of any game are not copyright-able, so that as well may come up in court with regards to this criminal complaint.
As far as how he wants to proceed, her revealed his 3 tiered strategy in regards to this complaint.
The first tier is that part that seeks interim relief for stores in general
Declaratory relief Ordering GW to estoppel and stay of any and all interferences direct and indirect and Stores or customers, including but not limited to PROHIBITING GW from:
Contacting any parties of any kind, from Amazon, to eBay, to Facebook, et al, to ‘enforce’, inquire, track, undermine, harass, interfere with any persons or parties who may or may not be engaging in their Right to exchange, trade, sell, buy, or anything pertaining to ‘GW’s-alleged-dubious-so-called-licensed-products’, or any others; and,
Hacking or spying on private and/or business computers with ‘cookies’ or other means to steal and undermine sales methods, or sabotage networks of customers, etc; and,
‘Suspending’ or interfering in any Stores continued orders for GW’s ‘monopoly’ product for three game stores with up to $40.000/month each without GW interference from their Direct online ordering format at 50%…
The Second is expanding the Criminal Charges that have been lodged to federal prosecutors,
Violations of the U.S. Law and RICO under 18 & 15 U.S. CODE, including but not limited to Fraud, Price Fixing, Tortious Interference, Breach of Contract, Unjust Enrichment, Restraint of Trade, Conspiracy and Antitrust Violations.
Then the Third is developing a set of templates that anyone (from store owners, to the end user hobbyists) can download fill out and file themselves in small claims court for the filing fee, against Games Workshop for any of these similar issues.
Now remember that he is asking for part of any relief the court grants to go into a public trust as well, so if you would like to communicate any grievance you have had on any of these issues being alleged against GW, Mr. Moore would love to hear from you.
You can send him an email at the following address: sifulama at aol.com
David Moore is a 20 year watchdog of the table top industry, and is a Retired Disabled Veteran with an LLM in Law, and has won attribution previously against Wizards of the Coast.
What do you think about this complaint? Another site had this to say about it after speaking with a legal consultant.
Case Thoughts
- Clearly somebody is very angry.
- The plaintiff is representing himself, pro se. He possesses an LLM, which is similar to a doctorate in law. It’s roughly equivalent to what you would have if you were going to teach law school, or specialize in a practice area, like Torts, or Environmental law, oil and gas, etc. The plaintiff may have been a lawyer at one point, but it is unclear.
- The court has sent him notifications for not following proper legal filing procedures.
- This is a federal case filed in Florida, where the plaintiff lives, but the named parties are from other states, such as South Carolina.
- The plaintiffs have claimed just about everything you can claim and named essentially all of GW’s executives. It will be difficult to get jurisdiction on them personally.
- At a high level, this is what is called a “bathtub case”. The kitchen sink wasn’t big enough so the plaintiff threw the bathtub at them.
- It reads as essentially a laundry list of complaints about how GW has done business over the last twenty years – distilled into a lawsuit. Some of this could have teeth, as any company running its own retail stores and adjusting stock levels in the way asserted is a grey area.
- On the other hand self-represented pro se cases almost invariably go nowhere.
- On the other, other hand Games Workshop hasn’t responded yet, which likely means a voluntary extension.
Checkout out coverage on the Chapter House studios case, and be sure download the full complaint itself on our legal watch page, and judge for yourself!
About the Author: Rob Baer
