Last week, I took advantage of a free half-hour consult with an Alberta lawyer regarding getting Patrick Ross' spectacularly meritless 2022 defamation lawsuit against me kicked to the curb; that is, having it dismissed for any number of reasons, one being his utter lack of progress in moving it along.
After hearing my summary of the history of that idiocy and of Patrick's total lack of effort in moving forward with it, said lawyer gave me some delightfully simple advice: "Ignore it."
His rationale was obvious -- unless there's some downside to having that lawsuit sitting there gathering dust, there's really no reason for me to waste any time or brain cells on it, so that's what I'm going to do, at least for the foreseeable future. I do have other plans for Patrick, but I'm going to take this legal advice and stop caring in the least about that silliness.
If Patrick ever decides to try to start it up again, he knows where he can serve me. And he knows that any further progress on this will eventually require him to show up in court. In person. Which is, the last time I looked, the last thing he wants to do given how many people will be waiting for him.
7 comments:
When future litigation (inevitably) goes your way, will your additional legal fees be added to Twatsy's already gargantuan $130,000+ debt?
It is up to the court what they assign in costs, but I will of course be asking for full indemnity based on Patrick's years of arrogant non-compliance and refusing to obey court orders.
Are you going to tell us what "other plans" you have in mind for Patrick?
Anon @ 6:20 AM: Not this time; this time, I absolutely do not want Patrick to have any idea what's coming. I will reveal all when the time is right, but not before.
Is there some amount of time after which a lawsuit is simply dropped from the legal system? And is Patrick's stupid lawsuit getting close to that deadline?
There are time limits on launching a lawsuit. There are no "automatic" limits on pursuing a lawsuit (perhaps for the reason that more complex cases can take a long time to process the evidence?).
However, the courts do have the discretionary power to declare a case "abandoned" if they deem that the plaintiff has not been "diligent" in pursuing the matter. *Note that the notion of "diligence" is open to considerable interpretation.
MgS is correct: There is no *technical* deadline for proceeding with an action you've filed, but if you let it go too long, the other party can file to have it dismissed as abandoned due to both "inordinate" and "inexcusable" delay. This is exactly what happened when Patrick filed a ridiculous appeal of his 2014 bankruptcy judgment, then refused to move it along for over three years. I eventually lost patience and filed exactly that motion, and the judge agreed that Patrick's delay was both inordinate (ridiculously long) and inexcusable (he had no excuse for why he did not proceed with it). At some point, the same will happen here.
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