A dish best served cold (and Salty)

In case you haven't seen it yet, here at last is Part 1 of what is intended to be a three-parter by Jason Jones, aka Salty Droid, one of my co-defendants in a failed defamation lawsuit brought against us and a few other real and imaginary defendants in January of this year by the comically but disturbingly daft Not-Doctor Leonard Coldwell. [Case number 15-CVS-2791, filed in the General Court of Justice, Superior Court Division, Guilford County, North Carolina]

The suit was dismissed nearly four months ago, but Jason was busy with other Matters of Consequence and is only now able to turn his attention to doing justice to this story of a most unjust lawsuit. And it appears to me that it was well worth the wait.

As many of you may recall, I wrote about this dumb lawsuit from my own perspective in May of this year, just after the case was voluntarily dismissed by the Plaintiff, but I told only a very small part of the story. For several reasons Jason has many more insights and much more hilarity to offer, and in the process he is accomplishing something I was not fully equipped to do: giving the lawyers who handled this utter sham of a case, William Franklin May and K.E. Krispen Culbertson of Greensboro, North Carolina, the smackdown they so richly deserve.

I feel that these lawyers deserve sanctions and that I deserve an apology from them, but for now Jason's efforts are providing more than a small measure of satisfaction for me. It almost makes up for the disappointment I felt when a mainstream-ish media outlet, after months of back-and-forth, killed this story, supposedly because the case had been dismissed and was no longer "a thing." Almost certainly it was not because the media outlet (which is constantly getting lawsuit threats about stories but runs with them anyway) had been intimidated by either the Plaintiff or his attorneys, whose lunatic accusations and threats against the reporter would have made for a richly humorous story. But that's water under the bridge. In the end, hobby bloggers, who lack both the safety net of dedicated legal teams and the promise of monetary compensation for their efforts, are the ones left to tell the stories from which other media, for various reasons, still shy.

Apart from his own knowledge of the law, Jason is able to flesh out this narrative in ways I could not because he engaged in extensive private communications with the lawyers. One topic of conversation among them was that they never properly served him, supposedly because they couldn't find his address, which is on the public record. This contrived logistical glitch gave rise to some more totally loony lies from Coldwell about how Jason was in hiding from service -- kind of a deja vu of the big and little fibs Lenny told during his last failed lawsuit against Jason, which was filed in February 2014 and dismissed by the judge in April 2014 "for want of prosecution."

In a February 2015 post Jason wrote a comical tale of May and Culbertson's attempts to pretend to serve him with the most recent suit, and he very briefly quoted some of their communications with him. But what he quoted there was just the tip of the iceberg... or should I say the tip of the pile of guano, because clearly, the Plaintiff in this case wasn't the only one who was displaying signs of being bat-crap crazy.

Jason also uploaded and provided links to most of the documents in this case, so you can see clear evidence of how I tried to respond and how the lawyers ignored my response and continued to try to intimidate me. On my own post I had only uploaded the original complaint and the notice of dismissal. So there's a lot of information about the case on Jason's post that hasn't been on this blog.

Questions without answers?
In this first installment of his new series Jason raised some interesting questions about issues that had both him and me (not to mention the North Carolina court, apparently) puzzled about the lawyers' true intentions. It appeared, even to my unschooled eye, that they were not proceeding in anything like a conventional and certainly not a very professional manner in response to the motions we filed, and particularly in regard to the process of discovery.

Jason also hints in his post about the ludicrous efforts by the lawyers to build a criminal case against him for helping me with my responses to the lawsuit. Jason -- who as of this writing is not licensed to practice law and, despite Coldwell's hysterical attempts at "exposing" him, has not pretended to be so licensed -- was simply a defendant acting as a friend to another defendant who had tried repeatedly but failed to get legal representation. He never claimed to be representing me in this case in any way. He never offered me legal advice and I never asked for it. But apparently the lawyers' and Lenny's little panties were in a wad because I responded in a timely manner to the complaint, and my response looked an awful lot like Jason's.

It appears that as a result of my response, that ace team went back to their crummy little office space in the shadow of the mighty Guilford County Courthouse, and spent some time and brain cells trying to cobble together a new pleading that included criminal charges against Jason for practicing law without a license. That wouldn't have gone anywhere either, as they had no grounds for a criminal case. But the total absurdity of suggestions of criminality did not stop their loose-cannon client from crowing about it prematurely to Jason in April, and, the month before that, bragging on Facebook about "criminal charges" and "arrest warrants."

In truth, no criminal charges were filed and no arrest warrants issued in this now-dismissed CIVIL case. So Coldwell lied... yet again. (I know I went on a bit about that in my May post, but it deserves a revisit.)

Were the discovery irregularities and the threats of a criminal case the results of incompetence on the lawyers' part, or were they simply trying to intimidate me and, as Jason wrote, to scare him away from helping me in order to "further isolate and terrify" me? After all, I seemed to be the main target of this joke of a multi-defendant pleading. And lawsuits can be terrifying or at the very least very stressful to us novices. I won't lie: it did stress me out at times, even though I knew I was not in the wrong and I had no intention of removing my blog posts. But many times unrepresented defendants, not knowing any better, are intimidated into responding to a suit in a way that does not serve their best interests. And it seems that Loony and his legals were banking on that happening with me. Fortunately I did not cave.

At any rate, judging from the attorneys' actions, including the original lawsuit, my guess is that incompetence and (sleazy but clumsy) intimidation strategies were both factors in this travesty.

There were so many flaws in the lawsuit beyond the obvious lack of jurisdiction. Although I was properly named in the original complaint, the web site address for Jason's blog was not properly named, nor was that of another co-defendant, RationalWiki. There was also further evidence of the attorneys' web ignorance as well, which Jason pokes fun of. And in case you haven't seen this one yet, here is another humorous jab at the stupidity of Culbertson & Associate's lawsuit on behalf of Leonard Coldwell, written by the same guy who, as it happens, also wrote the RationalWiki article on Coldwell.

Moreover the lawsuit got it all wrong regarding Jason's writings about Coldwell. The complaint against Jason focused on a September 2012 post he had written about a 2007 Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina police report on Coldwell [case number 2007-04652]. The claim on the lawsuit was that Jason had published the police report and other commentary "which falsely accuse Plaintiff of having forced a person or persons to have sex" -- but Jason never wrote such a thing. He didn't even publish the police report, only a very, very small portion of it. He captured the essence of the allegations of multiple complainants by combining their stories and scrambling details that might identify them. Essentially what he wrote was that the police report indicated that Coldwell had manipulated numerous women into having sex, under false pretenses. In other words, Jason never actually claimed that Leonard Coldwell is a rapist.


And I won't even get into all of the inaccuracies in the claims against me. Yes, they got my name and county and state correct. But that's about the extent of the accuracy. No specific blog posts were cited; words and concepts were simply lifted, seemingly at random, from various posts about Coldwell. Most of the allegations regarding specific things I had written about him were either paraphrases, quotations taken out of context or in a couple of cases were words that I had actually written about someone else (e.g., Kevin Trudeau) rather than Coldwell. Regarding other things I'd written about Coldwell that the complaint listed as false or obscene or abusive, I provided plenty of screen shots and links to source material to back up my writing.

The complaint also falsely said I was making money from writing about Coldwell and that because the things I had written were false (according to the complaint) I was engaging in deceptive advertising and fraud. And the complaint inaccurately claimed I had been asked and demanded previously to remove content about Coldwell from my blog. That is not the case. Until this January 2015 lawsuit I had never been asked or demanded to remove any content about Coldwell. In fact the complaint demanded a temporary and then permanent injunction to make me remove the content, but that was a pleading to the court, not an attempt to communicate directly with me.
 
Jason's post also raises another question: to what extent was Coldwell playing his lawyers and to what extent were they playing him? It appears to me that neither the Plaintiff nor his attorneys were being completely honest with each other. Dismissing the case was the only right thing to do, but a "righter" thing to do would have been for the lawyers to vet the client at the outset, and never to have taken the case in the first place. Let's hope that any future prospective attorneys will do their homework and discover that
Leonard Coldwell is a serial frivolous litigator.

And this man who claims to be such a brave hero and fighter is doing the very thing he has often accused Jason/Salty of doing: hiding. But there is nowhere left for him to hide, and now his stupidity has brought two more lawyers into the harsh and ugly glare of the spotlight that has been on Leonard Coldwell for years. And, contrary to what Culbertson & Associate might have once claimed about their now ex-client, this is not a false light, but the truest one there is.

I look forward to enjoying the next course in the Salty banquet. Meanwhile, here's that link to Part 1 again.

Whirled suits, hustling from Camp Cupcake, and dates to remember

First of all, Dear Ones, following my customary apology for my laxity in blogging (I'm sorry!), I must also apologize for my April 1 fake-out. Though I embedded a link to a graphic indicating that it was an April Fool's joke, a few people were April-fooled, if but momentarily, and some were quite upset by the prospect of me hanging up my Cosmic blogging hat. I was touched by the responses. Rest assured that I am not going to willingly give up blogging any time soon. Now let's catch up on things.

Cosmic Connie and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad lawsuit
I do want to let you know about something that is going on in the background that I've only hinted at on a few blog posts over the past couple of months (including in my April Fool's graphic), though I'm not yet ready to write about it in detail. On January 28, 2015 I was served with a lawsuit for defamation. (By sheer coincidence this was also the birthday of the Plaintiff (I would make a joke about his "birthday suit," but fear it would bring up egregiously unpleasant visuals). Also by sheer coincidence it was the one-year anniversary of the day that this article was published on the Jewish Journal site.)

By "served," I mean I that in response to a certified mail notice in my rural mailbox, I went to the post office (or, more accurately, sent my husband to the post office) to pick up the actual lawsuit. The thing was filed in a North Carolina court by --- I bet you've already guessed -- one Not-Doctor Leonard Coldwell, ex-b.f.f. of and former "personal physician in Europe" to now-imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (aka K.T., aka Katie). [Case number 15 CVS 2791, filed in the General Court of Justice, Superior Court Division, Guilford County, North Carolina]

Yes. The very man who, over the past few years, has publicly, repeatedly, and without any evidence whatsoever called me, among other things...

• an AIDS-infected ex-prostitute who gave STDs to her customers
• a Big Pharma/medical profession shill being paid to defame, hurt and ruin Coldwell under "more than 70 fake names" and on dozens of "fake web sites"
• a criminal conspirator who recruited "two proven child molesters in foreign countries" and a "crazy criminal wannabe lawyer" Stateside to defame "Dr." C and hack into his web sites and radio show
• a druggie
• a seriously mentally ill (and/or mentally retarded) person who is "a danger to herself and others"
• a sexual harasser who has been pursuing him for years and has told his own brother on the phone that she wants to "suck Dr. C. dry like the Sahara"
• a dog-killer

...all of which are bald-faced lies... yes, that person has sued ME for defamation. The suit is rife with misrepresentations and outright lies as well as more fundamental flaws, but it is a real "thing" and I am fighting it the best way I can. I do not yet have a lawyer because -- and I am not embarrassed to admit this -- I simply cannot afford one. The sad truth is that many people can't afford lawyers, at least not good lawyers, a reality that inconveniently clashes with the litigation fever that has been burning up our society for many years. And there seems to be a dearth of lawyers willing to help a small-time blogger fight a bat-crap crazy lawsuit pro bono.

Sometimes lawsuits are necessary to get justice for those who have been wronged. But all too often, they're simply the first and last resort of whiners and scoundrels. For some people, litigation is a sport. For people like Coldwell who often find themselves cornered by the barking (or snarking) dogs of truth, abusing the legal system is a desperate attempt to silence the barking and snarking. Witness last year's sham lawsuit, when Coldwell sued Jason Jones, aka Salty Droid (in the wrong jurisdiction, no less), for blog posts written by Omri Shabat at Glancingweb.

And then there's the present action, where we have the man who has described himself as "the greatest therapist of our times," "a great humanitarian," and "the world's most highly paid motivational coach on earth" -- you know, the guy who has cured more than 35,000 cancer patients with a 92.3% or better cure rate -- beating up on a little hobby blogger who has no money.

Writing abusive, profane, obscene and offensive lies about me for more than two years on his and some of his buddies' public social media pages did not work to shut me up. Trying to incite his readers and fans to take violent action against me by falsely accusing me of killing his dog (and publicly posting my home address and private cell phone number while openly encouraging his fans to "get in touch with me") did not work, or hasn't worked yet (we remain on high alert here, and I have not really felt safe in my own home since last summer). When telling vicious lies about me and trying to sic his craziest fans on me didn't work, Coldwell resorted to abusing the very legal system for which he has often expressed contempt (e.g., he has preached that most laws on the books are irrelevant to "sovereign citizens" such as he, and that most lawyers are "dirt" and a waste of oxygen). Despite his contempt for the U.S. legal system, the courts serve just fine as a bullying tool when it suits him.

Way to fight the good fight, Lenny.

Coldwell has apparently taken great umbrage at numerous things I have written about him (though no specific blog posts have been cited), but in the complaint, the top-named offense is that I have accused him of hating Jewish people. Yes, of all the thousands of words I have written about him, my relatively few mentions of his apparent anti-Semitism seem to have gotten his little goat the most. Make of that what you will. He also doesn't like the fact that I have shared, in passing, much-repeated eyewitness accounts regarding his ungentlemanly-like behavior at GIN (Kevin Trudeau's Global Information Network) events. He doesn't like the fact that I've insinuated he is a scammer, and he falsely states that I have called him a cult leader. And he is really, really riled because I (and another co-defendant) wrote or insinuated that he has been sued. (Actually there is a record of a civil suit in South Carolina where he is listed as a defendant, but whatever.) And so on. There is a whole laundry list of petty whines in that complaint.

The lawsuit, for which a jury trial is demanded, asks for tens of thousands of dollars in "damages" from each of the defendants (yes, there are more than one; see below), as well as permanent injunctions to make us take down our writings about Coldwell and agree not to cause any of the content to ever be republished anywhere, and, presumably, to refrain from ever writing anything about Coldwell ever again. Way to champion free speech, Lenny.

"But, Cosmic Connie," almost none of you may be saying, "You should have thought of this before you started writing those posts! If you couldn't afford to be sued, then you should never have gone after this man who has done so much good for so many sick people, and who is driven only by a promise he made to God when he was a very little boy with a very sick mommy. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the blogging game."

To which I can only say, "Some considerations are more important than money and whether or not one can 'afford' to tell the truth." Although at this point, some money would be helpful.

If you've not done so already, you can read some more bits and pieces about this judicial travesty on Salty Droid (here and here), since Jason is also named in the lawsuit.

The other main defendant is the person who is the admin for the Rational Wiki site, the offending piece being a single article about Coldwell that appears on the site and was originally published in May 2014. The complaint and subsequent documents betray a confusion on the part of Coldwell's mighty legal team about just who is responsible for this article, which was apparently not written by any of the people named in the complaint. (Any of you Rational Wiki contributors who might be reading this: you can take this news back to the "Talk" page: there really is a lawsuit against Rational Wiki for this piece. I tried to join in the "Talk" and 'splain as much, but frankly, I don't understand how the Rational Wiki "Talk" system works, so I can only communicate through this blog.)

And in a blatantly obvious attempt to cast as wide a net as possible, the list of "defendants" is rounded out by several irrelevant web sites and domain registry companies.

NOT on the list of defendants, despite a short-lived post on Lenny's main Facebook profile that featured the blogger's beaten-up mug (a picture Coldwell stole from the blogger's Facebook page and made up an outrageous and libelous fake story about) is Bernie O'Mahony in Japan (GINtruth). Omri Shabat at Glancingweb isn't named either. Just in case you were wondering. (Here is Bernie's post from February regarding Coldwell's early hype about the lawsuit. Coldwell has been pretty silent about it recently, though.)

Though there is more than one defendant, I am clearly the main target of this suit and the one who, for some reason, Coldwell views as the greatest threat. He apparently finds my little blog threatening despite its almost embarrassingly small readership, and notwithstanding his own greatness and the fact that he is beloved by millions, and has zillions of dollars, and his business just keeps growing and growing and growing, according to the stories he tells outside of the lawsuit. Why, on his Thanksgiving Day message on Facebook this past November, he wrote that 2014 was his best year ever, and that he will just keep getting better and better. But... better destroy that pesky little blogger, all the same. It's for the cancer sufferers, Champions!

Anyway, I will give you more deets when I can. And by the way, if you're surprised that Lenny is apparently hanging his hat in North Carolina these days instead of South Carolina, as had been commonly accepted wisdom on this Whirled and elsewhere, you're not the only one.

UPDATE:
The above case ended, not with a bang but a whimper, on May 19, 2015, when the Plaintiff's attorney filed a notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice of all claims against all defendants. Read more here.

You can view the original Complaint and the Notice of Voluntary Dismissal here.

Selling GIN from the clink
But let's get to more interesting and relevant topics, such as all-time Whirled favorite Kevin Trudeau, without whom I and most of the rest of the world would never have even heard of the above-mentioned whiny little plaintiff. Earlier this year I caught you up on some of Katie's shenanigans, including the promos for his new "Nuggets of Gold" e-newsletter, and various continuing scams such as the Baccarat scam and his Infomercial Secrets info-frauduct. In the latter post I also provided the court updates, such as they were, and links to some of the appeals briefs. And I shared commentary and insights from a recent Business Insider in-prison interview with Trudeau.

Well, here it is a few months later, and Katie continues to spread his New-Wage/McSpirituality wisdumb from the confines of Camp Cupcake, aka FPC (Federal Prison Camp) Montgomery, Alabama. He's still apparently pooping those Nuggets of Gold out on a regular basis, along with something he calls the "Science of Personal Mastery Course," which he emphasizes is not to replace the famous Success Mastery Course (which you buy into when you join the Global Information Network (GIN)), but only to supplement it. Rest assured that via his Facebook fan page, a page which I am allowed to read but on which I am not allowed to comment, Katie is still very much pushing the club that his close buddies took over last year. But one of his main agendas, particularly with the Nuggets of Gold poop machine, is to raise money for his legal defense fund to help defray his enormous legal expenses as well as, of course, to fight for "Free Speech and Civil Liberties for all." You know Katie, the First Amendment Stuporhero. Well, Katie, if you're so enamored of free speech, why am I not allowed to write on your Facebook fan page?

The posts appear fairly frequently on Katie's Facebook page, some of them just some standard New-Wage nonsense about the Law of Attraction and so forth, and there was even a brief announcement of an estate sale that was held earlier this month to clear out his Oakbrook, Illinois McMansion (they had the Ojai, California McMansion rummage sale last year). He still generally gets hundreds of "likes" for every one of these possibly dictated-by-Katie but proxy-written posts, along with numerous fawning comments. So, even as Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, Katie still has quite the enthusiastic fan base, and if anyone can keep a good scam going from the clink, he can. If he can get around those pesky Feds when he gets out of the clink, he'll be ready to hit the ground scamming.

But whether or not he'll get out any time soon remains an unanswered question. His appeal (re his ten-year prison sentence for criminal contempt related to infomercials for his weight-loss book) was heard on February 24, 2015, and so far no decision has been made. When I popped on to PACER the other day I saw no new documents in the appeals case.

I did see one measly little document in the original criminal case. Whenever someone sends an email or other communication to the court, pro- or anti-Trudeau, it is added to the documents in the case. The letter I saw the other day, which out of mercy for the writer I have redacted, was not pro-Trudeau, but the writer seemed a bit confused as to which Trudeau he was really slamming.



Apparently the "Southron" boy thought he had a real scoop with that discovery that Katie's infomercials are still running on TV. So scoopworthy did he deem it that he cc'd some major media, a few Congressfolk, and even selected Feds. Obviously he didn't read my explanation last year (April 28, 2014) about why Katie is still on TV. Here's that link; see under "Katie is still on TV, and here's why." Spoiler alert, Southron [sic] Boy: It can be summed up in two words: Nick Esayian. And it can much more truthfully be summed up in seven words: No neat and tidy endings in Scamworld.

Not that Southron Boy asks such a dumb question, mind you. He makes quite a valid point. But don't count on the complicit media being hauled off to Camp Cupcake any time soon just for running infomercials about frauducts and flopportunities. Not as long as there's money to be made from Katie's scampire.

While on PACER, I poked around on the civil case docs too, because that 12-year-old case (with origins even older than that) hasn't been closed yet. That's the case that generated the huge, yet-to-be-paid $37 million-plus fine to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). What I found in the new-ish docs was Trudeau's motion to compel the court-appointed receiver (Robb Evans, originally ordered by the court to assume control of the Trudeau entities on August 7, 2013), to file tax returns and file a status report. This motion and exhibits were filed April 1, 2015 and a hearing held on April 7. Response is due by April 28; a reply to that is due by May 12, and a status hearing is set for May 21, 2015.

Katie is whining that he can't file his income tax returns because he doesn't have access to all of the necessary information, and besides, he adds, it's Robb Evans' job to do that because after all, they took over his whole universe in 2013. He also demands that they file another status report, because it's been a while. For their part Robb Evans argue that they are indeed filing the proper papers for the businesses, and that Kevin and his lovely estranged Ukrainian bride Nataliya Babenko's personal income taxes are the Trudeau couple's responsibility. They also say that they will file another status report soon, when they're good and ready, so there. But here, let me let you read it for yourself.

Here is the link to the latest documents in the Kevin Trudeau civil case.

So that's it courtside for now. I'll keep you posted about responses and hearings and so on. And by the way, the much-ballyhooed CNBC American Greed episode about Kevin Trudeau (and GIN) is currently scheduled to air on July 9, according to one of the producers. I'll post more about that when the time approaches.

Dates to remember
Before I close I'll bring this post back full circle, in a way, subject-wise. Today, besides being International Weed Day, is the birthday of Adolf Hitler. The latter date is marginally and somewhat hilariously relevant to the frivolous lawsuit I wrote about at the beginning of this post. Most of that connection is not really my story to tell, so I won't, but suffice to say that it does appear that a much-touted Holocaust-denial propaganda film called Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told is a favorite viewing choice of one of the parties to this lawsuit. (Hint: not me and not Jason and not any of the other defendants.)
It dismays me to see the "Hitler was right" or "Hitler wasn't such a bad guy" contingent at work in various ways on the Interwebz. It floors me that, 70 years after the "work camps" were finally liberated -- far too late for millions upon millions of innocent souls -- the type of hatred that built and maintained those camps still exists all around the world.

But there is a powerful counter-force at work too. Over this past weekend, April 18 and 19, marches and other events were held across the country as a "Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance -- 70 Years After the End of World War II." The Houston area was no exception; here's a trailer advertising one of the Houston marches:



I didn't participate in any marches, but Ron and I watched a haunting documentary that re-aired on PBS on April 19, Memory of the Camps. I could not watch it dry-eyed. I was incredibly sad, of course, but mostly I was angry that there are so many people who continue to deny that these atrocities ever occurred. As Holocaust denial becomes more of a force -- becoming ever more sophisticated and widespread through vile instruments such as Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told -- and as actual Holocaust survivors and liberators and other eyewitnesses continue to die off, it will, I suspect, become ever more of a challenge to foster historical accuracy.

I am not suggesting for a moment that the Holocaust deniers or even the rabid haters be censored. Censor them, ban them, and they will simply become martyrs to the cause of free expression. Moreover, I believe that the fundamental rights of freedom of expression belong to haters as well as to the rest of us -- unless, that is, they are specifically inciting and inviting violence to individuals, and doing things such as publishing those individuals' home addresses and other personal information, or otherwise blatantly attempting to endanger them. Hate speech perpetrators in those cases should be censored, as well as punished to the full extent of the law. (Coldwell should have been but wasn't punished for endangering me, for that matter, and I am not going to let this issue slide.)

Nor am I suggesting that every person who tries to give a fair listen to some of the deniers is a hater himself or herself. It is never hateful to ask questions, to question the history we were taught. But I am saying that people who cling to Holocaust denial after all of the evidence is presented to them seem to have their own agendas, and those agendas are not exactly what you would call friendly to Jewish people or to any other group who has ever suffered at the hands of haters. That's the nicest way I can say it.

Truth-seeking and accurate historical perspective become particularly challenging when you have some Holocaust deniers who seem to have a clear anti-Semitic agenda, and proudly promote it, and then sue or otherwise try to intimidate people who point out that apparent agenda. Just saying. But I also know that lawsuits are nothing compared to the suffering of millions of people who were herded into concentration camps and subjected to profound horrors from which the majority of people walking the Earth today have the luxury of time and distance. We can't let that luxury blind us.

Never forget.