"Clock Boy" Lawsuit Dismissed With Prejudice

As you may remember, there was a case in Texas of a boy who built a "clock" in a briefcase and brought it to school. A teacher thought it looked like a bomb and called the police. The student was Muslim, a huge mess was made by his father about the incident, and President Obama invited the kid to the White House.

A minor offshoot of this event was that our friend Uncle Jimbo of BLACKFIVE fame was interviewed about the case on television in his capacity as a former Special Forces NCO. He said, on the air, that the so-called clock was the detonation side of a suitcase bomb -- and that he ought to know, having been taught to build the things by the Army. He was later also interviewed on the Glenn Beck program, wherein he pointed out that all this attention and legal action suggested that the whole thing was a setup designed to get publicity. As a result of this, Jim was one of the many people who got wrapped up in the overarching lawsuit filed by the family against anyone who said anything other than that this was a clear-cut case of an innocent youth mistreated by prejudice.

That lawsuit was just dismissed.
During the lengthy hearing, Judge Moore pressed Mohamed’s lawyer, Fort Worth attorney Susan Hutchison, to provide any facts that would suggest that Hanson and the other defendants had said anything false or defamatory about Mohamed or his son during the television broadcasts. After spending a painfully embarrassing 15 minutes flipping through reams of paper, Mohamed’s lawyer was unable to provide any such evidence.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Moore took the matter under advisement but informed the parties that she would rule by the end of the day. Today, the Court published Judge Moore’s ruling dismissing the lawsuit against Hanson and CSP with prejudice.

8 comments:

Bird of Paradise said...

Make him and his father pay the costs to the defendents in the whole matter

Grim said...

I gather that they expect to get attorney's fees, yes.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Will anyone ask Obama what he thinks of this?

Gringo said...

My HOA was the defendant in a frivolous lawsuit. The morning of the trial, the plaintiff decided that he would withdraw the lawsuit with prejudice. I found out that "with prejudice" means that the plaintiff may not file a similar lawsuit.

However, the plaintiff did not want to pay our attorney's fees. As we already had a trial scheduled, we proceeded with jury selection and had a jury trial over payment of attorney's fees. Both the plaintiff's attorney and the HOA's attorney were called as witnesses. The jury decided in 15 minutes,in a 11-1 vote, to award all we had asked for attorney fees, some $50,000. The plaintiff dragged his heels in paying, which was not because he lacked the funds.

Texan99 said...

It's not easy to get attorney's fees under the "American Rule," in which each side typically pays its own fees no matter what, but it can be done in an egregious case. Like, maybe, one in which you file a suit for defamation but, when the judge asks you if you have any facts to point to that would qualify as defamatory, you shuffle through your papers for 15 minutes and finally announce, "Your Honor, I got nothin'." Was she hoping the defamation evidence would drift in later? Was it going to be enough that the family had defamed-ish feelz?

MikeD said...



I have always wondered about stuff like this. Another example was the lawyers who took the case for the Aurora theater shooting victims' families in suing gun manufacturers for criminal negligence (in the face of federal law preventing such clearly ridiculous lawfare). At some point, I think the proper remedy is for the judges to bring the lawyers up with malpractice investigations before the bar association. Because literally, if you are taking a clients money for a case you KNOW you can never win, and further subjecting your client to a clear SLAPP penalty, I can't see how a lawyer can ethically do that.

I mean, I am no lawtalker, so I don't know what the actual rules are, but that strikes me as super unethical.

Texan99 said...

I'm more familiar with federal practice, which is controlled by a rule (FRCP 11) permitting sanctions against the lawyers for signing a groundless pleading, including the occasional denial of attorney's fees or the awarding of fees to the other side at the expense of the lawyers rather than (as is more usual) the client. It turns out Texas has adopted something similar, a Rule 13. I don't know anything about how it's been applied in practice.

Under Federal Rule 11, the standard is not so much that you are subjectively aware you can never win as that you know there is no legal or factual basis for your claim. If the court thinks it's a long shot, but there is at least some law backing you up, perhaps a minority position or an analogy to existing law, you'll probably skate. Things are a little hazier in the evidentiary context, but you're really supposed to have more than the hope that you'll get to turn up something dirty after a lot of expensive and inconvenient discovery. In my experience, Rule 11 sanctions were quite rare; they would cause quite a stir in the legal community.

Ymar Sakar said...

Attorneys win again, by pitting human dogs to fight each other. No matter what the outcome, the bar gets their fees. Even though there is no bar or fee anymore in France.