3) If you donated to Vic’s legal fund, I hate to tell you this: You got scammed. I was suspicious immediately when that Reiketa guy and Ty Beard made that GoFund me page; I know lawyers are an expensive ordeal, but I would think an attorney and his client could work something out if money was an issue, and I personally think that Vic could have afforded this on his own.
This isn’t fair. I think you underestimate just how expensive they can get. Second, even if you had it, you don’t save money, so you can burn it on legal services. What is spent here is not spent on something else. From his perspective, why should he puts his savings at risk for other people ruining his reputation and costing him job. He is no longer employed as a VA, so I dunno if he has any income coming in.
I am not offering an opinion on the validity of his claim, but I can imagine that is how he might see. The result is uncertain and there is always the possibility that he cannot recoup attorneys fees from the other party and/or ends up with a judgment that’s effectively unenforceable. I doubt the other parties were what attorney’s call “judgment proof,” but if he won and got say $1,000,000 and they didn’t have the assets to cover it, he’s not going to see it all.
I don’t think there is anything untoward about it.
But I never would have suspected the case would have went THIS bad. I read about what happened, and Ty Beard made Lionel Hutz seem competent by comparison. More specifically, the whole thing with the affidavits. He forged Vic’s signature, didn’t get it notarized (yes, you NEED a notary to see you make the signature).
I think you mean Miguel Sanchez. And yeah, that’s the whole point of a notary. I know I am personally very insistent on that the notorary witness the actual signing, not just notorize it after I’ve signed it. You’d be surprised how lazy people, including the notaries themselves, can be about this. The notary is there as a witness to the person signing the document.
Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t bad judges out there, because there are. I don’t know enough about Chup’s history to make a conclusion either way, but I’d imagine he knew Texas law well enough to inform his decisions. Chances are he’s never heard of Vic, and I doubt he’s watched any anime to have some fanboy opinion. I admit I’m no lawyer, but I imagine many lawyers have to go through some prep in assuming judges would be very strict with them.
He might be, but you cannot assume it. All Texas judges are elected and come from a variety of backgrounds. He likely is there because he won an election, nothing more. There are judge-based CLE that all new judges must go through, but that doesn’t automatically prepare you for everything. I’ve been in front of newly elected judges before. You don’t assume that role automatically prepared. Thus, you cannot automatically up assume to speed on all types of cases that could come before him. You would want to know things like how long he had been judge, prior legal work etc. District court judges handle both civil and criminal work, he could be from one background and had to learn the other as he went. I’m not making any assertions about this particular judge, but just saying you shouldn’t make those kind of assumptions without looking into it.
On top of that, other lawyers outside of the case have been saying for a while now that a defamation was going to be very hard for Vic to win while Nick was saying it would be a slam dunk (apparently not). And what does ISWV do? Claim they are not real lawyers who know nothing. I think you should be at least a little bit suspicious when people outside the case are vehemently claiming the odds are stacked against Vic.
The first amendment makes defamation cases notoriously hard to win. I’m not sure there is a civil cause of action that is more difficult to make. New York Times v. Sullivan lays out all the various types of standards. My understanding is that Vic was deemed a limited-use/purpose public figure, which would have made success very difficult.
6) The lawsuit has only made things WORSE for Vic. Now more mainstream media outlets know about his allegations and now the worst of the trolls are associated with him by default. The sad thing is, if Vic just went away and kept quiet for a bit, he could have made a comeback with some other company. Just enacting the lawsuit alone is going to guarantee no other major company is going to hire him to avoid being sued themselves. If anything it seems Vic’s worst enemies are his own fans.
I’m doubtful he could have done that as easily as you say. Every time word got out that he’d gotten work, the KickVic would almost certainly have mobilized to get him fire. Seen it way too many times, and social media makes it easy to do. Whoever had employed would have to have the stones to ignore them, something I doubt they’d have.
7) The behavior of the other VAs are not relevant.
Yes, maybe you’ve shown that Schemmel and Sabat and several others are not people I want to hang out with. The difference between them and Mignoga are that they seem to conduct themselves appropriately at conventions and with fans. If they’re kitten people, at least they’re smart enough to do their kitten behind closed doors where it only affects them. Vic didn’t; he’s apparently pissed off enough people outside of work to warrant his scrutiny
C’mon man. You admit earlier in the post you disbelieve Chuck Huber based on what you’d heard about him. That’s relevance. To say, it is irrelevant is to overstate it. You are right to the extent, that the ultimate question is whether Vic was defamed and thus, whether what was said about his was true. That Sabat may be bad doesn’t mean Vic was defamed, but its going to be looked at determining whether anyone should believe him.
I think when people complain about it, its more about perceived fairness or justice, i.e. “These turds who are tossing him under the bus suck too, why is he only punished, it must be because.....[insert theory here]”