Judgment Day

by ersatz_cats

I swear, every time we’ve awaited a ruling from Judge Wendy Chang, I think “Maybe this is the moment she finally sees through Team Billy’s obvious bullshit”, and every time, I end up disappointed again.

Don’t worry though. While you can’t say TG defeated Billy Mitchell’s latest legal maneuver outright, cheater Billy once again didn’t get anything he particularly wanted. Billy’s bogus Donkey Kong scores still aren’t reinstated to the real scoreboard, and he’s still banned from TG. Judge Chang granted Billy a limited exception to the confidentiality clause of his settlement with Twin Galaxies – in plain terms, he has the court’s permission to publish exactly two specific passages from that otherwise secret out-of-court settlement.

As some of you guessed, I waited on this update to give Billy ample time to demonstrate whether he would take advantage of this option; to date, he has failed to do so. (Some might say that’s because this wasn’t really what Billy wanted in the first place.) While recent legal filings were made public on the Los Angeles court site, anything pertaining to the settlement itself was redacted from those documents, in compliance with the settlement’s confidentiality clause. However, there is a lot to be gleaned from the available portions of those filings – and that’s what we’re here to do today. So grab some snacks and get comfortable, as we hopefully put the Twin Galaxies legal battle nonsense to bed once and for all.

SETTLING THE SCORE

We’re going to skip all the ancient backstory on this one, and start our recap with the settlement earlier this year. You can read this lengthy two-part overview of how it all went down if you want, but in short, Twin Galaxies and notorious video game cheater and fraudster Billy Mitchell settled their years-long legal battle out of court back in January. Billy attempted a big victory lap on social media, until people quickly remembered that Billy Mitchell is a compulsive liar, and discovered that his scores weren’t actually “reinstated” to the TG leaderboard:

The scores were placed in a “historical database”, which as Karl Jobst explained in a YouTube video hours after Billy’s failed brag, is kind of like TG’s version of the Internet Wayback Machine. In other words, “Here’s what the Twin Galaxies leaderboard looked like the day Jace Hall bought it from Walter Day, cheaters and everything.” In that same video, Karl published new correspondence between himself and Jace Hall. While Jace was not allowed to discuss the terms of the confidential settlement directly, he was able (or so he believed) to simply answer questions about the current state of affairs at Twin Galaxies:

In March, Billy’s side filed a “Motion to enforce settlement”, claiming that TG had violated some publicly-unspecified aspect of their private agreement, and that court intervention was required to repair this alleged breach. The above email featured prominently in their filing, although you wouldn’t know it if you relied only on Control-F to find the literal text:

LMAO Seriously, what was even the point of redacting that? It was public by way of Karl’s video, which Billy’s lawyer Kristina Ross goes on and on about. Who do they think they’re keeping that text secret from? That’s like Prince Adam spraying on a suntan and being like “Now they’ll never know I’m secretly He-Man!”

In my last update in March, I reviewed those three questions-and-answers, and summarily dismissed the third one as a possible cause of action. Thus, I posited:

That leaves us with two, more objective questions and answers. And look at that, Team Billy are crying about two claimed grievances! Throw in the confidentiality stuff, and I think we can make a reasonable assumption – that Billy is claiming some or all of the following:

• That the settlement requires TG to unban Billy;
• That the settlement requires TG to reinstate Billy to the actual main leaderboard, and not the historic archive;
• That Jace’s one-word answers constitute discussion of the terms of the settlement.

Oh, and Team Billy were super butthurt about TG’s merch store full of “NOT ARCADE” paraphernalia, etc. Meanwhile, Billy was going around lying about how “satisfied” and “relieved” he was with the resolution he was simultaneously dredging back up in court, because that’s what you do when you and the truth are allergic to each other.

OPPOSITION

Billy’s motion was filed on March 11th. Two months later, on May 16th, we received TG’s response:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-16-TG-Opposition-to-motion-to-enforce.pdf

As expected, these filings are once again full of redactions. (And Tash did them correctly this time, lol.) Right off the bat though, what we do see confirms one of my hypotheses from before: Billy is claiming Jace Hall was not allowed to discuss Billy’s ban status, in any capacity.

Of course, this position is quite silly for a number of reasons, some of which we’ll get to later. If I may quote myself from my previous update yet again:

[A]ny reasonable person should see a distinction between discussing settlement terms as settlement terms, and simply stating facts about your high score leaderboard which, throughout your tenure, has always promoted transparency above all else. TG is certainly not required to publicly specify which gamers are banned from submission, but they’ve always chosen not to hide that information. I’m sure, at this point, Billy would love for TG to be functionally paralyzed by court intervention, but I doubt Jace would have agreed to anything that would explicitly bind his stewardship in that way.

I find passages like this interesting. All the stuff about Billy’s scores being on “a historical archive” is openly acknowledged. Tash even goes so far as to specify that this inclusion in the archive is “part of the settlement” – something which everyone already understood to be the case, even if it wasn’t explicitly spelled out in the big TG statement in January. But then there’s one sentence at the end of that paragraph that has to be blacked out. Unless Tash decided to insert an unprompted aside about his mama’s meatloaf or something, I’d say that missing clause relates directly to the subject matter of the rest of the paragraph, but in a confidential context. It sure sounds as if the fact that Billy’s scores weren’t going back on “any of Twin Galaxies’ current and active leaderboards” was explicitly understood as part of the settlement, but of course Tash is limited in what he can say about settlement facts that are not already public.

Even more interestingly, that paragraph leads into a fully redacted segment on the settlement negotiations. The redaction actually goes on for nearly two full pages – a major portion of a ten-page filing! (For any nitpickers out there, I’m not counting the “Proof of Service” page as part of the filing.) And concurrent to TG’s opposition filing, Tash filed a declaration with an even longer blacked out segment, once again with headlines “Background to settlement negotiation” and “Negotiation of [REDACTED]”:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-16-TG-Declaration-of-David-Tashroudian-enforce.pdf

We’re going to get heavy duty into reading between the lines later, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what’s essentially being argued in this lengthy diatribe on settlement discussions: “Whatever Billy Mitchell thinks he’s entitled to, he negotiated it away, and we can show it.”

Returning to the main filing, we’re then given legal arguments, which shed yet more light on the issue at play:

Gosh golly, all this stuff about ambiguous terminology in settlement contracts! That certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with Billy’s grievances, would it? Like mama’s meatloaf, Tash must have just arbitrarily had the topic on his mind when he wrote this.

Here we get some legalese, basically saying “What’s important is what the person making the promise believed the person receiving the promise thought they were getting.” I know that’s kind of a mouthful, but it seems aimed at preventing a bad faith actor who willfully entered into an agreement that said X from arguing “Technically, you could interpret the contract as though it says Y.” This person knows damn well they agreed to X, both parties understood the contested passage as meaning X, and the bad faith actor is just trying to waste the court’s time by securing a concession they knowingly negotiated away. (Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.) The last portion of these arguments drives home the legal standard:

“The language of a contract should be interpreted most strongly against the party who caused the uncertainty to exist.”

It would seem a bit weird for Tash to argue “against the party who caused the uncertainty to exist” if TG was the party who caused that uncertainty, does it not?

Following two-and-a-half more pages of redaction – that would be one quarter of the whole filing – Tash segues out of redaction and into discussion of Karl Jobst’s January video:

This is a bit subtle, but there’s a clear delineation between two claimed grievances Tash is responding to. What we could call a “Set of Facts” supports an argument behind the redaction, and then, to quote Mr. Tash, “The same facts support the argument that Twin Galaxies did not breach the agreement by telling Karl Jobst that Plaintiff was still banned.” Of course, I’m curious exactly what facts were being cited here, and what argument they were cited in support of. Regardless, the only point of potential misconduct we see Tash acknowledge is if TG had prematurely disclosed elements of the then-upcoming announcement, which Tash specifies did not happen.

If you thought this was interesting, just you wait. The real fireworks came via a new declaration from Jace Hall:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-16-TG-Declaration-of-Jace-Hall-enforce.pdf

Of course, Jace objects to Team Billy’s silly complaints about TG’s merch store. As is pointed out in both the main filing and Jace’s declaration, this was especially hypocritical considering Billy has been going around to conventions selling “Not MAME” merchandise. Jace also argues the obvious, that he is not involved with the production of Karl’s videos, and that the reason Karl was able to get a video response out so rapidly is because most of the facts were known, and because everyone knew a settlement statement was forthcoming.

But that’s just for starters:

lol There we have it. Jace left no doubt about this one. Nor did he leave us wondering what the ban was for:

So basically, “We had to ban Billy; he cheated. And we can’t unban him until that’s addressed and the community can be sure he won’t cheat again. Also, we would never agree not to discuss Billy’s current membership status, because TG users have a right to know the current standing of any member.” And then, just as before, Jace either concludes that paragraph with a non-sequitur about grandma’s casserole, or he says “That’s literally why there’s nothing in the settlement saying we couldn’t discuss Billy’s status.”

As for why it was so important for TG to clarify these things so soon after the settlement announcement, Jace discusses that timeline as well:

As we discussed back in the “Dot” series, Billy Mitchell and Walter Day love to ride statements that, while technically true, are designed to give readers the wrong impression, which they can then deny having facilitated. (That’s aside from the many blatant objective falsehoods Billy in particular also loves to tell. He’s generally a bit freer with those than Mr. Day is.) And in that fashion, as soon as TG’s statement was published, Billy was happy to jump on social media and declare that TG had “reinstated” his scores, while hoping people didn’t notice that the observable facts didn’t match what they believed they were reading. Of course, it’s highly dubious for anyone in the Year of our Lord 2024 to take anything Billy fucking Mitchell says at face value – and it’s even worse when self-styled “news” outlets do this. But in his declaration, Jace was able to offer examples of misleading articles relying on Billy’s deceptive interpretation of TG’s statement, including:

It should be pointed out that, yes, the whole battle for the settlement truth on January 16th was a bit complicated. First, you could say the negotiated TG statement itself didn’t help matters, as on its face it seemed to reaffirm the narrative Billy was selling. However, Billy’s misleading fingerprints are all over that statement as well. When TG issued a statement on Billy’s scores without the need to run it through the negotiation of a legal settlement, they were very clear that the contested scores were not produced as he had claimed, and that the evidence against Billy’s DK tapes was extreme enough to necessitate a removal of all of Billy’s scores. So any confusion in 2024 from phrases like “reinstate” and “historical database” is still wrapped up in Billy’s ultimate goal of bullshitting as many people as he can. And on that note, we should also keep in mind that the reason Billy was able to get such a favorable negotiated statement in the first place was because he got nothing else he wanted in the settlement (no reinstatement, no retraction, and presumably no cash), and thus TG had no leverage to also say “Guess what, you’re gonna eat shit in our announcement, too.” TG was happy to end this massive waste of a legal battle, which I don’t blame them for, and in that process you unfortunately have to give the other party something they want.

While I’m not going to rehash the entire sequence of events at this time, the TG statement was posted at exactly 9:00am U.S. Pacific time. This was likely a stated condition of the confidential settlement, which Billy would have been fully aware of. This allowed Billy to pounce on the initial confusion with his own non-negotiated statement on Twitter, posted at 9:03:

If you follow through the early reactions, you see many expressions of disgust and outrage following Billy’s proclamation, prior to clarifications by TG, Karl Jobst, and yours truly. The timestamps in my TG screenshot are offset by several time zones, but you can see many of these top replies to the TG statement coming in several minutes after Billy declared victory:

The problem here isn’t just that the negotiated announcement was confusing. Both parties were allowed to agree on a settlement statement that baffles everyone, if they so desired. From a legal perspective, that’s all fine and dandy. And I’ll go a step further and say that, unless specifically forbidden in the contract, it’s probably not a legal violation for Billy take a fake victory lap that deliberately misleads everyone as to what he “won”, as long as he does not objectively lie or otherwise violate confidentiality. But for him to do so, and then waste the court’s time complaining that the other side had the gall, the temerity, the chutzpah, to quell the resultant outrage by posting their own legitimate corrections, which happen to be strictly factual and not misleading (and not in violation of confidentiality), is just completely asinine. And any judge worth their salt should have tossed this bullshit right out the window.

Now, you might say “Well, what if the contract specifically binds what TG could say, but did not bind Billy’s side? Contracts can do that.” For starters, I would be shocked if Jace had walked into such an obvious trap. But more to the point, later on in Jace’s declaration, we actually do see Jace clarify outside of redaction that the settlement did not prohibit him from discussing the items in its “clarification” (meaning, the three questions and answers as sent to Karl and as posted in those replies):

Jace also added that these remarks did not affect the post’s “stand-alone nature”, which I assume is intended to address a “good faith” / “bad faith” argument. (In other words, while a settlement may not specifically prohibit a party from immediately saying things that undercut a negotiated statement, obvious chicanery to that end is likely to be frowned upon.) In his conclusion, Jace tied this all together, making clear that Billy’s opportunism necessitated elucidation:

It is critical to understand that the need for this clarification arose solely because of the misleading information campaign pursued by Mr. Mitchell. Had he not deliberately misrepresented the nature of our original announcement, for his own benefit, there would not have been a widespread confusion or user questions to Twin Galaxies necessitating further clarification.

Chicanery, indeed.

MORE LIES

On May 22nd – about a week after TG’s response and about a week before the hearing – we got Team Billy’s rebuttal:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-22-Billy-Reply-in-support-of-motion-to-enforce.pdf

If you’re expecting some insightful legal treatise full of truth and wisdom, I’m sorry to say, you’ll be disappointed. First, they relied on the wholly fabricated narrative of TG having “a demonstrated history of violating confidentiality”:

They offer no examples of course, because there are none – at least, none that survive a cursory evaluation. We’ve already been over it many times, but this is obviously in reference to the deposition transcripts and such TG offered to Karl Jobst and others. None of this material was confidential at the time it was shared, and later depositions that were designated confidential (such as Jace Hall’s) were never disclosed. But that won’t stop Team Billy from crying and howling about it for as long as they think they can get any traction. This is just a variation of the Big Lie. Keep repeating it, and eventually suckers (and marginally invested judges) will believe there must be some truth to this thing they keep hearing.

Oooh, I like Mad Libs! Let’s see, “Defendant clearly breached the Settlement Agreement by eating all the cake and by breaching the pickleball provision of the Settlement Agreement by including an unsolicited Star Trek reference which was thirty years old and by providing aid and comfort to the enemies of democracy.” Somehow, I suspect that’s about as legally compelling as what Kristina actually wrote.

It is interesting though that there seems to be three distinct claimed grievances, all rolled up into a single run-on sentence. Perhaps one of those gripes is over the TG merch store yet again, though I’m not sure why that would be redacted. At any rate, she makes clear their goal is to secure a retraction to the… something… of the Settlement Agreement, and to allow Billy to “remedy the breach” through an action of some sort. Oh, and money. Always money.

This would seem to be a response to Tash’s argument that the terms of the contract proved ambiguous, and that the court should interpret this ambiguity a certain way. “Well, nothing was ambiguous, and even if it was, it’s TG’s fault for…” selling merchandise? I guess? Note that there doesn’t seem to be a redacted passage corresponding to the claim that “it is clear that [any ambiguity] is due to Defendant negotiating in bad faith” – not unless it’s all explained in that brief redaction on line 14. Yes, there is over a page of redaction preceding this passage, but that is wrapped up with the assertion that “Defendant’s claim of ambiguity is ludicrous”. So it’s ludicrous, but… then… it’s also not? For unspecified reasons?

Team Billy are super-offended at this and that, which of course we aren’t allowed to see or identify. Kristina argues that something is “expressly included in the Settlement Agreement”, but we can’t say what it is. For all we know, she’s referring to “the Confidentiality Clause” or similar, while misrepresenting what that clause actually entails.

(Lest you think I’m being especially hard on Billy’s side versus TG’s side, I direct you to read my many previous updates on this case, reviewing filings lacking redaction, to see how both parties have conducted themselves throughout this endeavor. Twin Galaxies has always relied on the truth, while all Team Billy has ever had going for them was a mountain of lies and bullshit.)

The other interesting bit about that segment is a mention of a “second posting”. While it’s not made clear, this could be in reference to at length comments Jace offered about the state of Twin Galaxies a day after the initial furor:

Those comments go on to repeat the three questions-and-answers which seem to be at the heart of this dispute. Of course, Jace doesn’t discuss what’s in the actual settlement itself. He just clarifies that TG is unmoved by Professor Pervert’s half-assed technical opinion, and explains why TG chose to end this with an out-of-court settlement.

It’s hard to parse some of these filings from Manning & Kass through the redaction. But later on, we get a clear view of what Team Billy’s actual strategy was all along:

In other words, “Gosh, Billy didn’t misrepresent anything! He just told everyone his scores were being reinstated to the historical leaderboard. And if everyone got the wrong impression, that’s their own fault.” Weren’t we just talking about this? I swear, if these clowns weren’t able to lie and mislead, they’d probably just shrivel up and starve.

Ross concluded by repeating the usual tropes again:

“Defendant […] knew it would immediately breach”… by posting a clarification after the immediate misrepresentation by her client. Right. Lastly, Kristina identifies her cost for filing this motion at almost $10,000.

Concurrent to this rebuttal were brief declarations from Kristina and Mr. Mullet:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-22-Billy-Declaration-of-Krsitina-Ross-enforce.pdf

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2024-05-22-Billy-Declaration-of-William-Mitchell-enforce.pdf

Basically everything relevant in Kristina’s declaration is fully redacted, while Billy’s features no redaction at all. In the second of those, I did find this part interesting:

Hmmm, “agreed upon standalone article” you say? Where, may I ask, was this “standalone article” agreed upon? Okay, it’s not like this is some big revelation or anything. Everyone reading this is older than two, so we all understood that the exact text of the announcement was agreed upon as part of the settlement. But you know, sometimes it’s nice to have these things spelled out in black and white.

That brings us to the May 30th hearing. Hillel Aron of Courthouse News Service – the same guy who first broke the news of a settlement in this case – was in attendance. Before we continue, those of you who actually slog through the raw PDF files I’ve posted may have noticed something I did not bother to mention last time around: As part of a “Motion to Seal”, Billy’s side asked that details from the confidential settlement not be read in open court, and/or that random attendees be asked to leave the hearing when such details are discussed. Given Hillel’s presence and his reporting of events, it seems that request was either not granted, or was not sought the day of the hearing with Mr. Aron (presumably) being the only non-party in attendance. Perhaps if I had taken a train to Los Angeles and shown up wearing a “Human Element” t-shirt with a “Not Arcade” hoodie, ol’ Boris may have felt differently about spectators? Or heck, maybe Mr. Aron is an old buddy of Ellrod’s? Who knows? At any rate, Hillel detailed some of the exchanges he observed in his reporting published later that same day:

Before I continue, with respect to Mr. Aron, I should be frank that without a court record of the hearing, I would caution anyone against taking Hillel’s scribbled notes as a verbatim account of what was said. That applies to Tash allegedly saying Billy had “avenues […] to come back into the fold”, whereas the exact language Tash used may have sounded much less specific or encouraging. And this principle applies equally to quotes attributed to Judge Chang as well. Recall that Chang herself once misquoted Tash in a previous ruling, forcing Tash to clarify that the given quote was substantially different than what he had actually said.

With that noted, if the gist of what’s being said is accurate, then Wendy Chang sorely lacks imagination, or really any familiarity with the competitive sports-style environments she’s inserting her opinions into. We’ll get into strict definitions of the word “banned” a bit later, but you absolutely can “ban” someone in a way that may not necessarily be permanent. Just search this page or this page for the word “reinstated” if you want examples. For fuck’s sake, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was banned by MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent for three years. Pete Rose remains “banned” from eligibility for baseball’s Hall of Fame, but that hasn’t stopped the perception that the ban could be overturned if circumstances change. Meanwhile, when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned Clippers owner Donald Sterling, he made a point to clarify that the ban was “for life”. (Note that some platforms use the word “suspended” instead, but the effect is the same. And even “lifetime suspensions” can be revoked.) And that’s not even getting into all other sorts of “bans” that are routinely enforced and then lifted, such as burn bans, travel bans, Twitter bans, etc.

But hey, I guess “subtle distinctions” are not Chang’s forte… you know… with her being a judge and all.

In case the intent of Chang’s position was not clear, Hillel’s reporting adds further clarity here:

There you have it – at least as long as the quote is correct. If there was ever a possibility of Billy one day being allowed to submit scores, in Wendy’s eyes, that equals Not Banned. However, in her usual half-measure way, she also didn’t want to try and enforce this perceived condition by way of a compelled retraction on the part of TG, which Anthony Ellrod (Billy’s other lawyer) originally sought. Instead, Chang “granted” Billy’s motion in a very particular way:

The Plaintiff is granted authority to publish exact words of section 1B and section 1D of the settlement agreement.

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Billy-vs-TG-California-2024-05-30-Court-2-Minute-order-enforce.pdf

Thus, in Wendy’s eyes, the alleged “damage” is reasonably undone – or at least, it would be if Billy actually bothered to publish these supposedly exonerating passages. Also, Chang granted about half of the attorney fees Team Billy requested, because of course she did lol.

Wendy Koopa may not appreciate this, but I see an important distinction in that TG was not found to have violated any material terms of the settlement – if so, there would have been a material sanction beyond just attorney fees. So it’s not that Billy was supposed to be explicitly unbanned in practice – it’s that (in Wendy’s opinion) TG’s subsequent statements may have given some people a wrong impression.

Going back to my three hypothesized causes of action from last time, there’s lots of talk about whether or not Billy is banned, so that clearly hit the mark. Meanwhile, we see no haggling over the difference between the current and archived leaderboards. The last one, regarding confidentiality, is a bit harder to diagnose. Team Billy are big mad that Jace didn’t keep his mouth shut and let Billy claim unconditional victory, but that doesn’t make Jace’s opinion about Billy’s scores a cause for action. We also don’t see any particular indication that Jace’s comments were interpreted by Chang as discussion of the settlement terms in particular, as opposed to facts that are true regardless. (To explain this another way, Jace obviously couldn’t say “The settlement stipulates such-and-such.” But he can say “Billy is banned”, because it is a fact that exists independent of the settlement, just like “The Earth is round” or “Billy has stupid hair”.) But of course, even with Hillel’s reporting, all the censorship makes it hard to say for certain what isn’t included either way.

BETWEEN THE LINES

So that’s some of what we’ve been given, peering through the brief breaks in the redactions. But there’s actually so much more that can be divined, when we put these bits and pieces together in creative ways.

To do this, I’m going to borrow an old rhetorical technique: the use of numbered premises. For those who aren’t familiar with the idea, a premise is like an argumentative foundation from which you proceed. You can’t really prove a premise, or else it would just be a known fact. Maybe the proof relies on hidden information, or maybe it would be too long a diversion, or it would be exceptionally tedious, like trying to prove two plus two equals four. Mathematicians do this stuff all the time, building valuable knowledge on the basis of theorems and conjectures which are universally believed to be true but which our finest minds haven’t adequately established as proven fact yet. Truthfully, everything you read relies on premises of one kind or another, which usually go unstated. But this time, we’re gonna have fun spelling them out. Here’s an example of what I mean:

Premise #1: Whether or not Billy is currently banned is not explicitly addressed anywhere in the settlement.

You see what I mean? I can’t prove this. I don’t have the settlement in my hands, and I can’t show it to you. But this is certainly a reasonable assumption, is it not? If the contract said “Billy is still banned”, all of Team Billy’s crocodile tears would be a complete non-starter. And if, on the other hand, the contract said “TG agrees to unban Billy”, Judge Chang would be like “WTF bro, you literally said you agree to unban him.” She would have ruled that TG breached settlement terms, Billy would have received a lot more than permission to publish two paragraphs, and TG would probably be liable for way more than half of one motion’s worth of attorney fees. Also, Jace Hall would never have signed a contract saying “Billy is now unbanned” (or similarly “Billy is free to submit scores at any time”) and then immediately turned around and told people “Naw, dude is still banned anyway.” Officially, it was left unresolved, hence why there was an argument over it in the first place.

The purpose here is not to pawn off wild guesses on you – in fact, just the opposite! I will try to justify each premise to the best of my ability, even if they can’t strictly be proven. In the process, we will make our underlying assumptions clear. Once we’ve accumulated a few of these, we can start building more elaborate premises on the foundation we’ve established. If you accept the underlying premises, then you are likely to accept the derived conclusions. And if you don’t accept the underlying premises… then I guess you’re a poop face.

Let’s do another easy one:

Premise #2: The question of whether Billy would be unbanned was specifically addressed in settlement negotiations.

To be clear, I’m referring to the negotiations, and not the final settlement itself. Once again, I wasn’t there for these discussions, and they haven’t been made public, so I can’t prove this. But it would be silly to think both sides just forgot to bring it up – especially since they’re arguing so vociferously about it now. In fact, as we saw, Tash’s rebuttal referred back to those negotiations. Now, if we were to delve into the realm of personal hunches, I’m guessing Billy’s side addressed the question of unbanning first – “Hey, we want you to unban our guy as part of the settlement” – only because it seems silly for TG to lead with a non-negotiable before the other side brings it up. But for our purposes, it’s not necessary to establish who first broached the subject, and I’d prefer to steer clear of aimless speculation anyway. However, I do think it’s safe to say Billy’s stance on the matter was clear:

Premise #3: One of Billy’s settlement offers or counter-offers included an explicit unbanning.

Like I said, I can’t say who first held an olive branch out across the aisle. But I can’t imagine that Billy’s beginning posture didn’t ask for the full monty – unbanning, a formal retraction, lots of money, and a nice dinner. And over time, these opening offers get negotiated down as you feel out the priorities of the other party.

Now to be fair, if we were to use Greasy Gibbons’ initial threat letter to TG and to Guinness back in 2019 as an example, that letter did not directly acknowledge Billy’s ban status either way. However, it did demand “a reciprocal release in [Billy’s] favor” to counter TG’s public dispute conclusion, as well as the need to “restore [Billy’s] achievements and good name” (emphasis mine):

I certainly read that as “Everything you did must be undone”, which would include unbanning him. Which would mean it’s always been Billy’s goal from the beginning – not so he could submit new scores under the current community-adjudication system of course, but simply so he could claim his unbanning as vindication.

As more foundation for Premise #3, recall Tash’s section headlined “Background to settlement negotiations”, which preceded two pages of complete redaction. Obviously this ties into Premise #2 – that Billy’s ban status was specifically addressed during their negotiations. But it sheds more light on this particular point: They (both parties) obviously didn’t fail to mention it, and surely Tash’s two pages didn’t consist entirely of “We told him we wouldn’t unban him, and he said ‘Righty-o, sounds good’.” There was definitely back-and-forth on this point, which is only possible if Billy took a position TG could not immediately accept.

Premise #4: Billy Mitchell was not unbanned as part of the settlement.

Okay, I’m cheating a bit. This is derivative of Premise #1. But I did want to make this item clear on its own. If nothing else, Jace made his public statement that Billy was still banned because he genuinely believed that to be the outcome of the settlement.

So if we mix our these last three premises together, we have this:

Premise #5: Billy negotiated away the possibility of being unbanned as part of the settlement talks.

That’s what it all means, right? If you negotiate a contract, and you say “We demand you give us a pony”, and then the settlement is signed, and there’s no pony included, it means you negotiated away that pony. Maybe you’re not happy about it. Maybe you really had your heart set on that pony. But in the end, like an adult, you decided that whatever alternative concessions you did get were more valuable.

And in that context, Tash was only too happy to discuss their confidential settlement negotiations at length. So that gives us:

Premise #6: Tash retains the paper trail to prove Premise #5.

But it can’t be that simple, can it? Because then there would have been no argument, and Judge Chang theoretically would have said “Nothing in this settlement has anything to do with any unbanning, GTFO”.

And so, here’s where I’m going to step out on a limb, just a little bit:

Premise #7: One of the contested settlement statements alludes to the possibility that TG could one day accept score submissions from Billy again.

Premise #8: The contract statement from Premise #7 is one of the two passages Billy has been granted permission to publish.

This clause would be the concession Billy’s side got included in the settlement after their demand for an explicit unbanning was rejected. “Okay, okay, we’ll drop that demand, but only if you’re willing to include language conceding that his ban is not necessarily set in stone.” (Or rather, “Our client wants some language to justify his intention to lie to everyone and claim victory”.) And rather than get into the weeds of what exactly this statement means in materially enforceable terms, Judge Chang is allowing Billy to publish it so the public can decide for themselves what exactly both parties agreed to.

Where I’m stepping out on a limb is the implication that the statement must make a reference either to “the future” outright, or to changing circumstances which imply the future and not the present status quo. If the statement was simply “We agree to accept submissions from Billy”, honestly, there would be little grounds for argument. (And I’ll say this a few times, Billy would already have chosen to publish that passage if it was so favorable to him.) Even something that doesn’t openly specify a timeframe, like “We agree to engage in a process by which Billy’s scores could be accepted”, means in any reasonable interpretation “Maybe some day, but not today”. Either way, as we saw earlier, Tash is quoted in Mr. Aron’s reporting as alluding to new Billy submissions being up for consideration “at some point” rather than today:

I’ve heard it suggested that the clause in question goes even further to outline a specific path for Billy’s scores to be accepted again. While I can’t offer enough proof otherwise to make this point a numbered premise, I suspect the actual language is much more vague. If this were any other judge, I would say that the need to specify conditions for future reconciliation would effectively be acknowledgment that Billy is in fact presently banned, but, you know… distinctions. But even setting that point aside, what exactly would these conditions be? Billy still denies having cheated, so that rules out “Billy must apologize for cheating”. And yet, from the other end, wouldn’t such an apology be a requisite for reconciliation? And what exactly would the language of this hypothetical future apology be? “I’m sorry you felt that way about my totally legitimate scores”? Billy is known to be the sort of gamer who’s less interested in competing in the game itself and more interested in gaming the system. How exactly does one outline such a path to reconciliation he wouldn’t try to cheat his way around? I would suggest the “avenues” Tash allegedly invoked at the hearing refer more to general concepts, such as contrition or reparation.

Obviously, we can only speculate as to the exact language this contested clause entailed. My best guess would be something like this:

Twin Galaxies is open to the possibility of accepting submissions from Billy Mitchell again at a future date.

Not “will accept”. And not “at present” or “effective immediately”. Just “open to the possibility” “at a future date”. Or, you know, something along those lines. From TG’s perspective, this isn’t an unreasonable position. Jace Hall began his tenure at TG by unbanning everyone who had previously gotten the hammer from prior TG administrations. And even after people inevitably got the boot from Jace’s TG as well, even awful individuals like Rudy Ferretti had an avenue toward being unbanned, which they chose not to take. I’m not really aware of any competitive environment that issues lifetime bans over one mistake of cheating; if nothing else, such a policy would discourage players from coming clean and saving investigators’ time and energy. But of course, being unbanned also isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. If you are proven to have cheated, there has to be some contrition and assurance that you’re not going to abuse the community’s trust again. This would be why, using my sample template, the language would refer to something like a “possibility” and not a “guarantee”. (Again, that’s just from my example; we don’t know what the actual clause said.)

Now you could say “Hold on, your hypothetical contract clause does kinda sound like maybe Billy was being unbanned”. But from a legal perspective, that clause doesn’t exist in isolation. Per Premise #5, the interpretation that Team Billy would be arguing for was specifically negotiated away during their talks. Which brings us to our next item:

Premise #9: The statement from Premise #7 was written by Billy’s side.

Recall what Tash argued regarding ambiguity in contracts:

“The language of a contract should be interpreted most strongly against the party who caused the uncertainty to exist.”

Again, it would be insane for Tash to be pushing this position if TG was the party who authored this contested clause. This was one of our obvious inferences gleaned from a cursory reading of the filings – in other words, “Either Tash took a mid-paragraph aside to reminisce about Aunt Patty’s confidential meatloaf, or he’s saying ‘This shit is (or isn’t) in the settlement’.” We’ll get to a couple more of those easy ones in a moment, but first, let’s stay on topic.

Premise #10: Billy’s attorneys did not offer any legal standard to counter Tash’s code citations regarding contract ambiguity.

This is an important one. This is not to say such a legal counter-argument cannot exist, out there in the æther somewhere – sometimes lawyers suck, and they miss obvious shit. But it’s not really Judge Chang’s job to seek out such arguments herself, not unless she’s concerned about setting poor precedent (which, I think it’s safe to say, she is not).

Kristina and Tony failed to make any legally compelling case on their own, at least in writing. The original filing has legal arguments relating to the court’s power to enforce contracts, but there’s no redacted section corresponding to any legal foundation for a different interpretation of contract ambiguity – and such a section would have no reasonable basis for specific redaction anyway. Kristina’s “ISO” Reply (her follow-up “in support of” her motion) features a redacted one-and-a-half page section with the title “ARGUMENT” and subtitle “Negotiations of the Terms of the Settlement Agreement”. Most of those paragraphs include citations for her own declaration, probably because she’s talking about the negotiations of the terms of the settlement as advertised. She concludes that section, not by arguing that Tash is misinterpreting the law, but by asserting that Tash’s “claim of ambiguity is ludicrous” and accusing him and Jace of “negotiating in bad faith”.

As if we needed more basis for this premise, the final reporting from Courthouse News gave no indication Chang was swayed by a competing legal interpretation, but rather her concerns over the use of the word “banned”. If there was a legal argument here, we’d be seeing some indication of it somewhere, rather than Kristina’s handwave dismissal of the question, which we do see.

Let’s move on from all this ambiguity to a couple easy ones.

Premise #11: The exact text of the “Twin Galaxies statement” was agreed upon and specified in the contract.

Premise #12: The text of the “Twin Galaxies statement” was a subject of the settlement negotiations.

#11 was alluded to in Billy’s declaration, and #12 derives from that. Honestly, this is standard in all such cases, and isn’t terribly important here. But I added it to the list, just in case anyone out there mistakenly thought the “Twin Galaxies statement” as published represented Jace’s pure, unfiltered thoughts on the matter.

We also learned another obvious but acknowledgeable item from the unredacted text in TG’s opposition filing:

I don’t have to add this as a numbered premise, because it’s stated outright: The inclusion of Billy’s scores in the “historical archive” was specified in the settlement. But this is where we get into another “meatloaf” premise. Tash said that Billy’s scores were not restored to TG’s “current and active leaderboards”, and justifies this with… something confidential. Now, one could argue that the redacted sentence is something along the lines of “Nowhere in the settlement does it say Billy’s scores would be restored to the real leaderboard”. But I’m going to take this a step or two further:

Premise #13: The settlement makes clear that Billy would not be reinstated to TG’s current and active leaderboards.

Premise #14: Team Billy’s motion was not seeking an actual reinstatement to TG’s current and active leaderboards.

Obviously I’m using the same language Tash did in differentiating the real leaderboard from the archive. Perhaps the settlement itself uses different verbiage in that regard. But either way, the contract definitely makes that distinction (har har).

How can we be sure this is specified? For starters, notice how everything we can see, from the unredacted portions of the filings to the on-site reporting from Hillel Aron, points to two specific disputes between the parties. They’re arguing over whether Billy is “banned” per se, and over whether Jace’s comments violated the settlement. (Team Billy’s whinging about merch sales is just more of their usual smoke-blowing, which has no legal basis in anything.) Yes, there is some talk about the difference between the real and archived scoreboards, as seen above, but the only indication of relevance we’re given is when Tash discusses Billy’s misrepresentation of his “reinstatement”. Nowhere else is this point followed up on, in either party’s filings. Notably also, Team Billy’s motion sought permission to publish specific “language in the Settlement Agreement” and a court order for TG to “post a clarification” “that makes [something redacted] clear”, with no indication of any other request.

If the initial threat letter to TG and Guinness in September 2019 was vague about Billy being “unbanned” for future submissions, it was not at all uncertain about their demand that TG “restore” Billy’s “achievements”. The bulk of their “evidence” (if you want to call it that) was attempting to establish the veracity of Billy’s various Donkey Kong and Pac-Man scores. That was literally the whole point of all of this. And Billy did manage to secure a reinstatement from the chucklefucks at Guinness. And yet, somehow, the one most important thing Billy wanted all along – an actual reinstatement of his scores – was just forgotten about here at the end?

Also, even if TG were inclined to entertain such a real reinstatement, how would that even work? Every other score in the database can be disputed with evidence. Would these scores be given a “Can’t be disputed” label? Or would all of this bullshit start up again? Jace couldn’t unilaterally restore Billy’s scores without fundamentally altering some aspect of how the site’s community adjudication system works.

I’ve spoken about concessions Billy got from TG in public messaging and such – the flimsy use of the word “reinstate”, etc. But that negotiation street goes both ways. This would be the key concession TG got from Billy: “We can settle this nonsense, and we can all go home and do better things with our time, but you have to agree that your claim to ever getting any of these scores reinstated on our leaderboards dies here, unambiguously.”

Of course, I would be curious to see how exactly that’s spelled out. Hmmm, I don’t suppose that could be the second of those settlement passages Billy has been granted permission to publish, could it? Could that be why Billy has not yet taken Wendy up on her generous offer?

Before we wrap this up, I have a few more premises to add to the record:

Premise #15: The settlement includes a confidentiality clause pertaining to the text and elements of the contract.

This one is about as obvious as a giant elephant in a pink tutu, but it is technically an assumption, so I should list it here. As I’ve said before, I strongly suspect this was per insistence from Billy’s side, who have always been the party of secrecy over transparency, but I can’t really prove that here, and it’s not that important anyway. However, as we have a few times today, I do think we can go a bit further:

Premise #16: The settlement’s confidentiality clause does not say TG can’t discuss Billy’s current standing with the organization.

Premise #17: Jace Hall did not agree to not publicly discuss Billy’s ban status.

These are both along the same lines, but distinct enough that I felt they should be added separately. If you think these read as a stretch, I refer you back to the relevant passage from Jace’s declaration:

Let’s set aside the fact that Tash saw no need to redact most of that passage, which if Premise #s 16 and 17 were false, would definitely fall into confidential territory. First, regardless of who we’re talking about, it strains credulity to think Jace would have agreed to not comment on whether a given player is or is not banned from submitting to TG. Someone in Jace’s custodian role kinda has to be able to discuss what players are and are not allowed to submit scores, especially in a competitive environment where adjudication is left up to peer review. What would happen if another player – let’s call him “Todd” – tried to evade a previous ban by submitting new scores through a new account? And what if Jace/TG were forbidden from confirming to the site’s userbase that the individual in question is, in fact, still banned? How would anyone even vote on those submissions? Jace has given way too much thought to the functioning aspects of TGSAP to get himself stuck in some sort of Catch-22 like that.

As if that point was not compelling enough, let’s just say (again) that if Jace had somehow explicitly agreed not to discuss Billy’s ban status and his current standing with TG, there’s no way he would have then immediately violated that clause so directly. Jace gave his answers to Karl Jobst because he genuinely believed he was in the clear. The contract may not say “You definitely can discuss these things”; it just does not explicitly prohibit them.

THE CONCLUSION

Okay, so we have our foundation to work with. Again, if you disagree with any one element, that’s fine. We can identify, discuss, and possibly even isolate any such disagreements, which may or may not affect subsequent inferences. But this framework does allow us to establish more significant conclusions. For the rest of this write-up, we’ll proceed as though our seventeen premises are true.

Unfortunately, it seems Judge Wendy Chang has fouled everything up, yet again. We’ll start at the beginning, filling in the blanks as we go:

So the settlement talks open, and both sides are going back and forth on whether Billy can be unbanned. (Premise #2, #3). Unfortunately for Billy, that ends up being a non-starter, (#4) and since he surely wanted to avoid a big public trial, he eventually agrees to proceed without it. (#1, #5) But Billy still wants a concession in the form of an acknowledgment that maybe, under future conditions, he could one day be allowed to submit scores again. (#7) (#9) TG is ultimately fine with this, as long as it’s non-committal, and thus they’re under no strict obligation to fulfill it. And Billy wants this clause because, well, he fully intends to lie about it, either to the court or the public.

So they continue negotiation, over the terms of the settlement, over the text of the settlement, and the text of the public announcement (#11, #12). Billy also explicitly drops his demand for score reinstatement to the real leaderboard, (#13) (#14) accepting instead his inclusion in the historical archive. One side (probably Billy’s) pushes for a confidentiality clause on the settlement. (#15) TG agrees to confidentiality, but only with regards to the settlement itself. TG absolutely does not agree to never discuss Billy’s status at TG. (#16, #17) The parties then arrive at court the morning of January 11th, they shake hands, and they announce they have a settlement. The public statement drops a few days later, and both Billy and Jace give their follow-up remarks.

Of course, Billy is super-butthurt over how things played out, so at some point he and his lawyers got Tash on the phone and started demanding more things. (This isn’t a “Premise” because it’s literally stated so on page 8 of Kristina’s motion to enforce.) But the Mighty Mister Tash didn’t give those crooks another inch. He probably thought “We’ve got all our bases covered. That ambiguous clause about future submissions is not definitive, and thus not enforceable. Also, Billy’s side wrote it, (#9) and I know the law says any interpretation must go against the author. More importantly, we’ve got a full paper trail showing that Billy knowingly negotiated away any unbanning, (#5, #6) therefore we can adequately prove Billy understands exactly what was and was not agreed upon in the contract, regardless of what he claims to understand now.” Even better, the motion to enforce comes in, and there are no relevant legal arguments to justify Team Billy’s claims. (#10) All Billy’s side had were a bunch of salty tears over Jace’s brief answers, a Karl Jobst video, and the TG merch store.

Again, while we don’t have the exact text of the passage, every indication is it refers to either changing conditions (the future), or a process (the future), or to “the future” outright. However, Judge Chang had her own ideas. The quote we were given courtesy of Hillel Aron was:

I think it’s a fair assumption that the intention was to at least allow for the possibility for the plaintiff to submit his scores. To me, that implies that he was not banned.

So she decided, apparently all on her own, that “ban” means “permanent”, and thus “not permanent” must necessarily mean “not banned”. Billy’s lawyers couldn’t get him unbanned in negotiation, so they did a dishonest run-around, and whined to the judge to give it to him anyway. And all that carefully crafted civil code aimed at preventing bad faith actors from relitigating contracts they agreed to, that all goes out the window.

If I may, I’d like to insert a personal anecdote. The courtrooms you see on TV always look so polished and bare, but actual courtrooms I’ve seen tend to have these random shelves of old books, like in the actual courtroom area. Some are short, some are tall, some are built into the walls. Sometimes they’re behind the judge, sometimes they’re off to the side. I had naively assumed they were mostly just decorative or archival, and not really there to be used on the spot. However, years ago, I successfully contested a traffic ticket, where a dumbass cop tacked on a $200 “cracked windshield” fine out of spite. Being the investigator I am, I read the specifics of the law I was cited with, and discovered it only applies if a driver has a cracked windshield and if that crack meaningfully obstructs the driver’s vision – something which the cop’s written account on the ticket failed to clarify. So I arrived at court on the given morning, and strategically, I opened with all my least compelling counters: “Cop wrote the wrong thing here”, “That looks like a 5 instead of a 6”, etc. I could tell the judge was unimpressed, and was expecting to wait out my rebuttals before confirming my infraction. But then I got to the real item – “The officer cited me with RCW XX-dot-whatever, but he failed to establish all elements of that infraction.” And I explained what I meant. The judge thought about it a moment, and then – and I swear, I’d never seen this before, and I’ve never seen it since – he wheeled around in his chair, pulled one of those dusty-ass books right off the shelf behind him, and started flipping through it, looking for something. To this day I don’t even know what he was looking for. I was just shocked that I was witnessing one of those old moldy tomes being drafted into service, like a Tom Clancy character being called up for one last mission. But the judge did his spot research, and had to concede “Shit, I guess you’re right” (or whatever formal judicial words he used to that effect). I guess the point of this story is A) those books really are there for a reason, and B) the judge did his job, and he took my position seriously, even though I was not represented by some big firm, or any firm at all.

On the other hand, it seems Judge Chang in this case did not bother to crack even so much as a dictionary when she decided, all on her own, on behalf of everyone else who uses the word, what exactly “banned” means. If she had, she would have discovered the word actually has a very broad meaning. In my diligence for this write-up, I did seek out dictionary entries for “banned”, just in case she was operating from some other widely accepted definition that I wasn’t considering. First off was my go-to, Wiktionary:

Yup, nothing whatsoever indicating that the state of being “banned” must necessarily be permanent, or even all-encompassing. In fact, there are apparently degrees of being banned. (“More banned”, “Most banned”, etc.) Even better, Wiktionary acknowledges the Internet slang term “permabanned”. That word is not mere post-modernist irony; it’s a useful word with its own distinct meaning.

I even checked the edit histories of the relevant pages (“ban”, “banned”, etc.), just to be super-sure there were no Wiki-style shenanigans. “Permabanned” was added to the “banned” page as a derived term in early May of this year, by an account responsible for literally thousands of small alphabetically-ordered edits in the month of May alone, including four other edits within the same minute they added that “permabanned” reference. (So, obviously, that change had nothing to do with the then-upcoming court hearing in this case.) The only other recent change of note was in late June, when user Tc14Hd added this beautiful example to the page for “permaban”:

But of course, Wiktionary isn’t the only dictionary out there. Let’s check Manning & Kass’ favorite lexicon – the one they used when they tried to rake Tash for casual use of the word “diatribe”. Searching Merriam-Webster for “banned” or other related words redirects to the single page for the word “ban”. And again, the definitions offer nothing whatsoever to say a “prohibition”, “censure”, “condemnation”, or “malediction” need necessarily be permanent. In fact, it offers these examples of “banned” in a sentence:

Hmmm, the past tense used in that first example sure makes it sound like that book ban didn’t last forever.

Oh, and what’s this? I scrolled down even further and found “Recent Examples on the Web”, showing the ways in which people are currently using the word “ban”:

Whatever avenues or future scenarios may have been alluded to in the settlement, if Billy Mitchell is not allowed to submit scores at present, he’s banned. You can chose to call it other things, like “suspended”, but it’s not inaccurate to say he’s “banned”. That is, in fact, how real regular humans understand the term – as a standing prohibition that can be enforced or revoked at any time.

I know I’m beating a dead horse at this point. If Chang had an established history of well thought-out rulings and considerations in this case, I’d be more inclined to believe I was missing something key here. But no, Judge Wendy Chang pulled this out of her ass, yet again. While the on-site quote of her may be inexact, the intention to conflate present reality with future consideration is clear. And sure, the redactions and confidentiality offer some wiggle room in how this all can be interpreted. However, given our premises, what cannot be denied is that Billy knowingly negotiated away an explicit unban. She should have looked Billy in the eye and said “Sorry bro, if this was something you wanted, you shouldn’t have agreed to surrender the claim in exchange for other contract concessions.”

Throughout this ordeal, Judge Wendy Chang has been beyond disappointing. I would hope she’s not outright corrupt, which could be as simple a concept as “I’m better off currying favor with a big firm like Manning & Kass, who I could work for one day, than I am throwing any bones to tiny Tash Law Group.” Either way, she shockingly absolved Team Billy for their blatant fake plaque con. Then later, when those same crooks were caught red-handed withholding required discovery (the bank statements proving Walter Day’s secret payment to Billy), Chang pulled a semantic distinction completely out of thin air to let them off the hook once again. And now we add this whole “Well, I don’t really think that’s what ‘banned’ means” bit. (And that’s setting aside comparatively minor things, like her uncharitable misquoting of TG’s attorney.) Judge Wendy Chang never seemed to have any concern for the gravity of the fraud Billy was perpetrating on her court. I’m certainly doubtful she even bothered to read all of Tash’s filings, despite the meticulous work he put in documenting the opposition’s malfeasance. Chang just sat in her big chair, issuing whatever ruling would prolong this miscarriage of justice, sometimes without any concern for legislative law, or case law, or precedent, or practical consideration, or common sense, or apparently anything other than her own personal whim.

I guess what I’m saying is, she should expect her Supreme Court nomination any day now.

With that said, I suppose this could have been worse. Chang did order Jace to pay about $5,000 to Billy’s attorneys, so the bad guys did walk away with some cash for their trouble this time. However – and I’m speaking strictly for myself – I suspect if we could have rolled this back to January, Jace would have been happy to pay for the privilege of confirming, on the record, to the world, that Billy is still banned, and that TG’s opinion of his bogus tapes has not changed. And while Chang’s minute order does not indicate any prohibition on further comments from either TG or Billy, Hillel’s reporting suggests such a moratorium was granted at Ellrod’s request. And so, the most we may hear on this case going forward are Billy’s continued lies that he was vaguely “satisfied” with the “resolution”. In a way, this is a fittingly stupid conclusion to a long, stupid saga.

I alluded to this earlier, but these circumstances make it as clear as ever that Billy planned all along to lie about whatever outcome he secured. Him proposing vague language about his status, and then arguing that the ambiguity means whatever he can assert it means, is further testament to that. He only sought out whatever concessions he could get to provide the thinnest justifications for the lies he always intended to tell. These are the sorts of card houses he’s been building his entire life. There isn’t a sincere bone in that guy’s body.

While some will see this as an indictment of TG’s decision not to keep pushing for a jury verdict, I see it the opposite way. Given Billy’s propensity for court delays, we would still be awaiting a trial in October, and his attorneys would have been spending these last several months continuing to invent new cockamamie horseshit to bury the court with. Tash would still be burning the candle, wondering if this judge will finally admonish Billy for his blatant lies, and Jace would still be footing the bill, holding off on new projects until this annoying mulleted cyst finds something better to do than waste everyone’s time. And heaven forbid Billy’s side doesn’t take the case to appeals, and drag it out another few years! A jury of randos wouldn’t necessarily be any more immune to Billy’s manipulation than this literal professional judge was. Billy Mitchell will declare victory no matter what happens, and if he strictly can’t, he’ll continue being a shit until he can. All you can really do with people like that is secure an outcome where all reasonable people see the truth, which is what Jace Hall has done. Billy’s future consists of endless exposés, such as this great recent video from YouTube channel Fallen Stars:

This case is actually for realsies done now. As long as Jace says no more about the case, Billy has no legal avenues left. And the funny thing about that is, Jace has never been particularly interested in discussing Billy. Having been released from the spectre of this litigation, Twin Galaxies was finally able to launch their merch store they clearly had waiting in the wings, and to open new ventures, such as their recent bounty partnership with Thece and Miracle-Gro. Regardless of how baseless Billy’s lawsuit was, just the threat of a multi-million dollar judgment was likely scaring off these sorts of corporate partnerships, which TG is now free to engage in again. As the saying goes, Jace Hall’s revenge will be living his best life. Meanwhile, Billy’s stuck playing Pac-Man at Funspot again, for the same score again, once again hoping people think a maxout in 2024 can make up for him withholding evidence from 1999. (Check out David Race’s recent comment on Billy’s Guinness page for more on that.) No matter what Billy says, his continued actions demonstrate his dissatisfaction with the settlement outcome, and his frothing jealousy of Jace Hall in particular. Billy has always needed that external validation, whereas Jace Hall discarded Billy without a second thought.

As for the contested settlement passages themselves, it’s safe to say at this point that Billy has no intention of sharing them publicly. We can still only guess what the second of those entails. I suppose it’s possible that if we ever see the actual text, we could feel like Jace gave the game away. However, as I’ve said, if these clauses really humiliated Billy’s critics, we would have seen them by now. By comparison, if Billy had gotten the retraction he actually wanted, he would have broadcast that to the moon and back. As always, Billy’s stuck playing to the suckers who don’t care about the evidence, and who don’t expect him to prove anything.

While this should be the final update in the Billy Mitchell / Twin Galaxies legal conflict, there are of course other battles being waged. Aside from Billy’s phone recording lawsuit against David Race in Florida, which is still awaiting a state Supreme Court ruling, the remaining loose thread here is Billy’s defamation lawsuit against Karl Jobst in Australia. As reported in a recent video, Billy’s been telling the court in the land down undah that Twin Galaxies never banned him for cheating, lmaoooo.

Bold strategy, Cotton. This may have played a part in Jace’s decision to be so forthright in the unredacted portions of his declaration. “Billy is banned.” “The original ban was [for] cheating.” However the clause from Premise #7 may be worded, Billy will surely employ it in an attempt to befuddle the Brisbane judge over the distinction between “banned” and “banned, but for longer”. But now Karl has the testimony, at least, to counter that narrative.

Some may even take this theorycrafting a step further, and suggest that it was Billy’s plan all along to secure an ambiguous contract clause to justify an “I’m not banned” narrative in Australian court. But the key problem with that hypothetical is that the settlement wasn’t offered to be quotable. (And again, it was probably Billy himself who insisted it be slapped with a confidentiality clause in the first place.) So he would have had to know he could provoke some statement or response from Jace which he could then use to justify pestering the court with another request of “We want you to order TG to issue a retraction, but we’ll settle for allowing Billy to publish Section 1B and 1D”. And honestly, that just sounds way too clever for him. I know Billy wants everyone to think of him as the guy who “always has a plan”, but usually his harebrained schemes amount to little more than “Keep secrets, surprise everyone, then lie about what happened”. My belief is, Billy thought he was smarter than everybody else, and expected to pull one over on everyone – the same way he always expects to – and got all bent out of shape when it didn’t work. (It would be especially hilarious if Billy genuinely thought he had achieved a reconciliation with Jace, only to become enraged when he saw the merch store lolololololol. But of course he would never admit to that.)

Regardless, we may yet see one or both of these contested clauses, in a future Karl Jobst video, when Karl wraps up his own courtroom journey. In the meantime, there are once again actual games to play. I’d like to get back to playing the Final Fantasy 5 “Four Job Fiesta” myself. Good luck, everyone! As always, thank you for reading. And… siiigh… I guess we’ll see you here again next time.