Chronicles of Twatrick: "Administrative loopholes" edition.

I don't have any significant new developments regarding the dumpster fire of a life of Lloydminster's Patrick Ross, other than the most mind-bogglingly stupid public utterance in the history of Twatrickdom, which I would like to say somehow surprises me, but it doesn't for reasons I will get to.

By now, regular voyeurs^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hreaders will be aware of Patrick's monumentally idiotic million dollar lawsuit against Peter "Rogue Nerd One" Skinner, for which Peter has publicly explained he will be filing a motion to dismiss, based on at least two indisputable grounds: that Patrick never served Peter with a proper and adequate Notice of Libel, and also that, as an undischarged bankrupt without a trustee, Patrick has no standing to launch a legal action in his own name.

Either of these two reasons alone should be enough to kick Patrick's legal stupidity to the curb, but it's how Patrick reacted to Peter's legal strategy that is so mind-bendingly astonishing, so you might want to brace yourself. Are you braced? Behold:

Now, take a minute to appreciate what Patrick is suggesting here, because it might take a few seconds (or minutes) for it to sink in.

What Patrick is seriously suggesting is that, in some way, Peter's plan to file a motion to dismiss is -- I don't know -- weaselly and sneaky, and that if Peter had the stones, he'd have the courage to go to court instead.

That is the level of stupid we're talking about here.

Rather than plan for the eventuality of an almost guaranteed-to-win motion to dismiss from Peter, Patrick has decided that the proper strategy is to ... taunt and goad Peter into thinking that real men don't hide behind technicalities like motions to dismiss, but instead are willing to meet Patrick on the field of battle in a courtroom, because that's what real men do.

The level of stupid here is absolutely breathtaking, but it in no way surprises me, because Patrick once tried the same thing with me.

Readers with long memories may recall that I filed my defamation action against Patrick in early 2010, whereupon Patrick legally had 40 days to respond with a Statement of Defence; otherwise, we could file to have him declared in default and proceed to court without him.

It should surprise no one that a month went by, then two, then three, then four, and after five months, I finally lost patience, instructed my then-lawyer to file to have Patrick declared in default, the judge agreed, we proceeded to trial (without Patrick), whereupon my lawyer argued my case unopposed, and the rest is history:

And here's where the fun starts. Given that the judgment I won was a "default" judgment, there was no option for Patrick to appeal, because that's not how default judgments work. Since my lawyer argued my case unopposed, even though this happened in a courtroom, it was not a real "trial," and once I won my default judgment, Patrick's only option to salvage the situation was to file to overturn that default judgment. What this means is that Patrick would not be arguing about the merits of the ruling; rather, all he would be pleading for was for the judgment to be overturned to let him back in the game so that he could file his Statement of Defence after all and we could  proceed to trial.

Make sure you understand the above -- once I won my judgment, Patrick's only option to recover from his arrogant negligence was to file to overturn, but there was little chance of that succeeding, and here's why.

In order to convince a court to overturn a recently-granted default judgment and let a case proceed to trial, you need to convince the court that 1) you had a good reason for blowing that deadline, 2) you filed your motion to overturn as soon as possible after you learned of the judgment, and 3) that your defense has sufficient merit that it deserves to be heard:

I will make a long story short and assure you that Patrick would have failed spectacularly on all three criteria; in other words, Patrick was screwed and my default judgment, once I received it, was never in any danger.

Rather than do the only thing open to him -- file to overturn as quickly as possible and hope for the best -- you'll never guess what Patrick did. Go on, guess. You'll never guess. OK, I'll tell you.

He taunted me about hiding behind a "default" judgment, and suggested that if I was so confident about my case, I'd be willing to forego that judgment and proceed to trial, because that's what a real man would do.

I am not kidding. On a number of occasions after I won the above judgment, Patrick openly challenged me to voluntarily reject my legal victory, renounce the default judgment and offer to proceed to trial, because if I was so confident about my case, then I should be prepared to engage in a lengthy and expensive trial, because only bitch boys and haters hide behind "administrative loopholes" like default judgments.

I am not making this up.

So there you have it -- the dizzying intellect of Patrick Ross has, once again, come up with the cunning plan that, short of any actual strategy, the best approach is to try to goad his opponent into doing something indescribably stupid by questioning their courage and manhood.

Beyond this, I actually have no words.

BONUS TRACK: Pursuant to nothing really, but this is a prime example of Patrick either not understanding, or simply misrepresenting:

Unsurprisingly, I've been following that thread, and Peter's description of it is perfectly accurate -- he was strongly encouraging Patrick to just drop the action; predictably, Patrick misrepresents Peter's position as offering to settle the case. I can assure you, those are two entirely different things, and Peter's description is correct, and Patrick's is not.

Is anyone here surprised?

I CAN'T EVEN ... Patrick Ross, a 40-year-old who still lives at home, and has a YouTube channel devoted to opining on MMA, UFC, Edmonton Oilers and Marvel comic books, and whose most recent claim to notoriety was to get the crap beat out of him in a street fight, will now lecture others on "maturity":

How do you even mock this anymore?