As a general rule (which I’ve broken before), I try to keep this blog from being just a series of quick news updates, as opposed to deeper dives getting into the nitty-gritty of these topics. But today’s news is too awesome not to share right away. That’s right, notorious video game cheater Billy Mitchell has just lost another lawsuit.
This time, we’re talking about Billy’s frivolous lawsuit against Pac-Man champion David Race. I haven’t done a full breakdown of this lawsuit before now, relying on brief updates here and there. Ostensibly, this case was about phone calls David recorded while David was in Ohio, where it’s perfectly legal to record one’s own calls without the consent or knowledge of the other party. You may recall, David was previously a member of “Team Billy”, and assisted with Billy’s defense against the cheating allegations before David realized what a massive liar Billy had been all along. This ultimately led to David releasing some of his saved phone recordings, including the one exposing Billy’s wacky plot to present fake evidence for one of his contested Donkey Kong scores. Of course, when I said this case was “ostensibly” about phone recordings, what I mean is that this was really about Billy seeking revenge against David for switching sides and providing evidence for Twin Galaxies, with the matter of recording law being Billy’s opportunity to subject David to litigious harassment.
The judge at the lower level ruled in favor of Billy, allowing the case to proceed under Florida’s jurisdiction. In other words, Billy could sue David in Florida for allegedly violating Florida law while being in and residing in Ohio. This opened up a number of possibilities, including full discovery and depositions and such. But that process was halted by an appeal, which David won. The appeals court ruled Florida did not have jurisdiction to try David in Florida for his actions out of state. But of course, it didn’t end there. Billy appealed that ruling the the Florida State Supreme Court, leaving us waiting for another court decision for over a year.
This morning, that decision finally came down. You can read the whole ruling for yourself at the above link. There seems to have been a legal snafu in the way the case was brought to the Florida Supreme Court, where the circuit court presented an argument about one issue, but the appeals court settled something different. I’ll do my best to break all that down later. But the important passages are these:
We initially accepted jurisdiction to review the decision of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Race v. Mitchell, 357 So. 3d 720 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023), based on a certified conflict. See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const.; see also Fla. R. App. P. 9.030(a)(2)(A)(vi). After further consideration, and for the reasons that follow, we conclude that jurisdiction was improvidently granted. We therefore exercise our discretion, discharge jurisdiction, and dismiss this proceeding.
After describing the particulars of these legal conflicts, the author (along with concurrence of the rest of the court) reiterated their order to dismiss Billy’s lawsuit:
In the end, while this case presents many interesting issues, we conclude those issues are largely academic in the context of the unique procedural history of this case. As a result, we exercise our discretion, discharge jurisdiction, and dismiss this proceeding. It is so ordered.
Oh, and don’t miss this little bit at the end:
NO MOTION FOR REHEARING WILL BE ALLOWED.
In other words, no court in Florida is going to save Billy on this one.
I can’t tell you at this particular moment what options Billy may or may not have to appeal this ruling to an even higher court (assuming Billy could even afford such an appeal financially), but such a court would have to be on the federal level. Since federal law recognizes David’s right to record his phone calls without Billy’s consent, it seems highly unlikely Billy will get any more traction on this case.
And as if this wasn’t bad enough for Team Billy, we got this sweet, succinct ruling on Billy’s request for attorney fees as well:
Petitioner’s motion for attorney’s fees is hereby denied.
Again, I’ll do a full post-mortem on this case front to back, as soon as I feel like that would be more fun than catching up on Mega Man, lol. No seriously though, I will, but since I have the option to get this immediate news out right away, I’ll take the time to do that complete overview right. And I’ll attempt to tease apart the legal minutiae behind this ruling as best I can.
Either way, this is fantastic news. And this means Billy’s lawsuit against Karl Jobst in Australia is the final Billy Mitchell lawsuit on the current docket. There may actually be an end to this nonsense. We can hope.
Again, thanks very much for providing these updates ersatz! Look forward to the detailed breakdown.
I suppose I should ask the million dollar question; given that David was called to the stand as a witness and provided testimony for Karl’s proceedings, do you believe the outcome of this ruling of dismissal, in a jurisdiction on the other side of the world, will have an effect on Judge Barlow’s ruling?
“I can’t tell you at this particular moment what options Billy may or may not have to appeal this ruling to an even higher court (assuming Billy could even afford such an appeal financially), but such a court would have to be on the federal level. Since federal law recognizes David’s right to record his phone calls without Billy’s consent, it seems highly unlikely Billy will get any more traction on this case.”
Just to clarify because you’re a little off here.
Any appeal at this point would have to be to the US Supreme Court, and that appeal would have to be on the grounds that the state of Florida violated Billy’s constitutional rights in their decision.
There really isn’t anything here that he can appeal on. Due process would be the closest, but the reality is that Billy’s case here is DoA. Its done. Finito.
Great News! I literally brought this up to Robert M the other day.
“This morning, that decision finally came down. You can read the whole ruling for yourself at the above link. There seems to have been a legal snafu in the way the case was brought to the Florida Supreme Court, where the circuit court presented an argument about one issue, but the appeals court settled something different. I’ll do my best to break all that down later. But the important passages are these:”
Also to summarize it for you or anyone else who is reading, it basically goes like this.
The question of this case is based on whether or not Race is subject to personal jurisdiction. Basically, Race recorded the call in his state (where it is legal) but the call came from Florida (where it is not). The question then becomes, can Race be sued in Florida. In order to sue in Florida you need to establish Personal Jurisdiction, that the state of Florida has the right to sue someone for something done outside that state.
The test to determine this requires two things:
1. Do they fall under Florida’s Long-Arm Statute. For this, the person needs to have done one of a number of things, such as engaging in business, owning real estate, having a kid or in this case committing a tort.
2. Does the person have minimum contact with Florida. This is nebulous but basically, do you have enough connection to Florida that it is reasonable to drag your ass to Florida.
At the initial trial, both parties agreed ‘eh, lets agree on section 2 for the sake of argument’ and focused on whether or not it was a tort. They did not hold an evidentiary hearing on whether or not section 2 was met, they just ignored it at that point.
On appeal, Race then argued that “Okay, well even if it is a tort, you don’t have personal jurisdiction”. The fourth appeals court found that “Yeah, that is reasonable” and told Billy to kick rocks. However, in Florida they have what is called ‘Conflict Certified’ which is where one district decides a thing and at the end goes “Oh, and we disagree with district (x) on this matter” where district (x) has made an opposite ruling. It is a way for lawyers to look at the case and argue that the two are in conflict.
Notably, on appeal the fourth district never actually addressed point #1, whether or not it was a tort. This is important, because it is where Billy gets into trouble.
In this case Billy appeals and it goes to the Supreme Court of Florida. They look at it and go “Oh, this is in conflict with the second district, specifically a case called France v France, we should figure this shit out.”
But once they look at it, they realize, there isn’t actually a conflict, despite the cases being very similar.
See, in France v France the decision went sort of backward. France (the husband) was recorded by France (the wife) and sued. But when it went to court the trial court decided ‘No, doing this isn’t a tort’. So when they sued it to the 2nd circuit the question on offer wasn’t ‘do they have personal jurisdiction’ it was ‘is this a tort for the purposes of the long-arm statute’. The appeals court decided that yes it was.
That *feels* like it should be in conflict, because both have nearly identical circumstances and came to contrary conclusions, but because France was technically about the Tort part and Race was technically about jurisdiction, there is no actual conflict.
So when the Supreme Court finally sat down to look at the cases they realized “Wait, these two cases don’t actually conflict. They look like they conflict, but they actually both agree that it was a tort. They differ on whether personal jurisdiction was established, but since there isn’t enough of a record for us to decide, we’re just going to ignore this”
And on those grounds, they told Mr. Mitchell to pound sand.
The funny thing is, based on France v France, Billy probably should have won this. The precedent is there, he just lives in the wrong district. This is very, very funny to me.
Essentially the “act” itself was not committed within the state of Florida. It’s not just minimum contacts though. “Fair play and substantial justice” has a lot to do with it.
“The court reasoned:
Where a defendant legally records a phone conversation in his home state, and has no other significant contacts with Florida, it offends traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice to require him to appear in Florida to defend against a lawsuit for an alleged violation of the Florida Security of Communications Act.”
The state would violate Due Process if they provided jurisdictional authority over a person in Ohio. The State of Florida has no interest in gathering out of state evidence and defendants in another jurisdiction. Both the venue and jurisdiction would not be proper. Billy should have filed in a US District Court, but he would have lost. The “act” is not even a violation under U.S. Code.
Thank you tremendously for this summary!
Not a problem. One thing I forgot to mention is forum shopping. Forum shopping is the practice of choosing a court that will provide the most favorable outcome for the plaintiff when there may be concurrent jurisdictions. The courts (including the US Supreme Court) really dislike forum shopping.
Dating back to the origins of the U.S. Constitution under Article 3, section 2, two citizens of different states were meant to meet in a federal court (U.S. District Court today) under diversity jurisdiction. The act of recording a call without permission is not a tortuous act in Federal courts or Ohio’s courts. Knowing this, Billy arguably made a forum shopping decision to file in Florida courts.
This is why state long-arm statutes are not always a good idea. Yes, concurrent jurisdictions exist, but in reality it’s just another fight between federal and state powers. The Commerce Clause and 10th Amendment are other good examples of that. A battle between Congress’ legislation and state legislation, but I digress.
Absolutely, thank you. If you look up the filings in Billy’s lawsuit against Cartoon Network, forum shopping was a big topic of discussion there. Billy filed the suit in New Jersey, and had basically no justification for why it shouldn’t be his home state of Florida or CN’s home jurisdiction of California.
No problemo, figured it’d keep your readers entertained till you get around to it. 🙂
lmao Sorry, I missed that the continued summary was from someone other than who wrote the first part. Thank you both!
Wow, this is wonderful news indeed !! And I can only imagine how relieved that David Race must be feeling right about now.
Thanks for the update…this made my day !!
LET’S GO!!!
Oh yeah, GET FUCKED BILLY.
Note that the decision was unanimous among all seven Supreme Justices.
He seriously ought to countersue.
I’m happy for Mr Race, this is great news for him 👍
Now let’s just hope he loses to Karl too!
hello you tremendous gentlemen, I hope Birr Mitchel lose all his case.
thanks for watching you gentlemen and I will see you in next video