Malicious Prosecution lawsuit
Gregerson v. Smith, Parker, et. al.
This section of my web site is about a lawsuit for malicious prosecution and abuse of process I filed May 28th, 2009, against a corporation and it's attorneys, Morgan Smith and Boris Parker, who sued me for defamation (and six other counts) from 2005-2008. I prevailed on all counts, and am now suing based on the original litigation being brought with no genuine basis, with a forged sales agreement, and for an improper purpose (to suppress free speech truthfully criticizing their client). The attorney's firms, Smith & Raver, Saliterman & Siefferman, and Bassford Remele, are also named as defendants.
In 2005, a Twin Cities corporation used a photo taken from this web site in a full-page phone book ad, but refused to pay the licensing fee. I wrote about their conduct on a web page here, and they responded by suing me for defamation in Minnesota state court in October, 2005. They relied upon a sales agreement for the photos, which turned out to be fabricated (signed by a non-existent person, "Michael Zubitskiy"). After a trial in November, 2007, federal judge Ann D. Montgomery ruled the corporation had showed a "flagrant disregard" for my rights as a copyright holder, and they had identified nothing on my web page that was false. A complete chronology of that dispute and the litigation is still on this website. The case is published as Gregerson v. [redacted], 446 F. Supp. 2d 1053 (D. Minn. 2006). It was also discussed in an article on Slashdot about the case.
Note: on July 14th, 2009, I settled with the original Plaintiff (the corporation and it's owner), on the malicious prosecution action. As a result, they are no longer identified on this website by name, and the legal briefs posted here have been redacted. The remaining defendants to the Complaint are:
In order to understand this lawsuit, I recommend first reading the account of the original litigation that occurred from 2005 to 2008. Then you can read the 20-page Complaint. The rest of the docket is also online, and will be kept current during the course of this litigation. A section related to discovery will comment on discovery in the case.
Malicious prosecution is legally defined in Minnesota as follows:
See Stead-Bowers v. Langley, 636 N.W.2d 334, 338 (Minn. App. 2001), review denied (Minn.Feb. 19, 2002).
Abuse of process is using the legal process to try to obtain a result that's beyond the scope of the process.
"The essential elements for a cause of action for abuse of process are the existence of an ulterior purpose and the act of using the process to accomplish a result not within the scope of the proceedings in which it was issued, whether such a result might otherwise be lawfully obtained or not."
See Kellar v. VonHoltum, 568 N.W.2d 186, 192 (Minn. App. 1997), review denied (Minn. Oct. 31, 1997). "The test is whether the process was used...to compel a party to do a collateral act which he is not legally required to do." See Kittler & Hedelson v. Sheehan Props., Inc., 295 Minn. 232, 239, 203 N.W.2d 835, 840 (1973).
This applies to the multiple legal claims brought against me; the corporation and it's lawyers sued me in an effort to compel me to remove my web page, but the legal claims (even if valid), would not require me to remove the web page (only make minor changes to it, like remove a word, change the URL or keywords, or removing a photo they objected to).
This site includes a docket for the case, which I will use to publish all the legal briefs I file and orders of the court (from the Complaint on). All filings by the defendants will be summarized. Each significant filing or hearing will have a web page with my comments where visitors can post feedback.