Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne Loses 'Deep Capture' Libel Suit
http://garyweiss.blogspot.com/2016/05/overstockcom-ceo-patrick-byrne-loses.html
Saturday, May 07, 2016
Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne Loses 'Deep Capture' Libel Suit
 | | Ex-CJR editor Mark Mitchell tried to blackmail libel plaintiff |
No libel suit victory is worth celebrating, not even the famous suits against the anti-Semite Henry Ford and the red-baiter Westbrook Pegler. The same goes for the $1.2 million (Canadian dollars) libel judgment just awarded against Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, after lengthy legal proceedings that demonstrated how Byrne and his minions conspired to crush a Vancouver businessman.
While occasionally used to advance the cause of truth, as they were against Ford, Pegler and Byrne, more frequently libel suits are used to punish and harass reputable journalists. This is one of those rare cases when a libel suit was used against a corporate astrotufing site dedicating to spreading kooky conspiracy theories and Trumpesque smears.
In a scathing decision released on May 6, a Vancouver court found Byrne and his "Deep Capture" faux-journalism venture had fabricated lurid accusations of criminal conduct against a Vancouver businessman named Aly Nazerali. The damage award consists mainly of punitive and aggravated damages, and the judge found that the conduct of Byrne and his minions was so egregious that he slapped a permanent junction on the defendants.
 | | Judd Bagley after his arrest for forgery |
I've written about Byrne quite a bit in the past because he was the very worst of Corporate America, from his bizarre stock-market conspiracy theories to his well-documented accounting games, which he countered by vicious personal attacks on critics and the media. He is a kind of small-bore Donald Trump, a "born on third base who thinks he hit a triple" kind of guy, noted for a rich fantasy life. Byrne lies so frequently and with such gusto that it's hard to say if he can distinguish fact from fiction. He is on indefinite leave from Overstock because of a Hepatitis C infection, a disease ordinarily caused by intravenous drug use—or, if you believe him, a wound sewn up by "barefoot doctor in China."
Byrne's main vehicle to attack his critics was his Deep Capture website, which was created for him by his PR man, a convicted forger and drug addict named Judd Bagley, and the ex-journalist Mark Mitchell, who was fired several years ago from his former job at Columbia Journalism Review. (Bagley went back on the Overstock payroll before the Nazerali articles were published. He was dismissed from the case, as was Overstock itself.)
The decision, which I've embedded at the bottom of this blog item, is worth reading for anyone who has followed the erratic career of this CEO, who lately has reinvented himself as a Bitcoin advocate. Long before this suit was filed, Byrne was noted for his rich fantasy life. Once he recounted how a gangster straight out of a film noir once sat down next to him at a cafe and made threats out of the side of his mouth. He fancied himself as "Wall Street's worst enemy," and he expended considerable effort finding journalists dumb enough to believe him (his only success outside Utah was Cade Metz of Wired).
The libel decision is harsh. In justifying the award of punitive damages, the judge pointed to the extreme malice shown by the defendants, "the overt animosity, even hatred of the plaintiff, expressed by Mr. Byrne," their "reckless indifference for the truth," their "reckless disregard for the reputation of non-parties," and Mitchell's creepy attempt to blackmail Nazerali, contained in an email published in the decision.
Among the "highlights" of the decision, if you can call it that:
• "Mitchell did not attempt to contact the plaintiff before posting the Articles;" and blew off Nazerali's effort to get him to remove his lies. "No effort of consequence was made after Mr. Nazerali contacted Mr. Mitchell to review the Articles to determine if they were false. On the contrary, Mr. Nazerali’s approach to Mr. Mitchell was treated with scorn."
• Byrne said to Nazerali during a deposition, in the presence of the court reporter and parties: "I know your kind, you are not the kind that does the dirty work themselves. You employ others to do your dirty work. I hate your kind of people."
• Mitchell emailed Byrne “this is going to be fun” and said, "I am open to changing the story if he can provide other verifiable information that would be valuable” and “I might even suggest that I will be willing to remove his name from the story altogether if he were to provide me with, say, trading records" on a "global terrorist."
• Mitchell added: “if Nazerali agrees, nothing lost, after he gives me the information I will just put him back in the story. Sleazy, but, well it is what it is”;
Sleazy is putting it mildly. The decision concluded:
Mitchell, Byrne and Deep Capture LLC engaged in a calculated and ruthless campaign to inflict as much damage on Mr. Nazerali's reputation as they could achieve. It is clear on the evidence that their intention was to conduct a vendetta in which the truth about Mr. Nazerali himself was of no consequence. Their mission was to expose what they conceive to be corrupt business practices damaging to the global economy. Mr. Nazerali became a convenient means to that end, even when he himself could not be demonstrated to be corrupt.The judge went on to blast the plaintiffs for abusing the discovery process. Though Nazerali was the subject of an aggressive and protracted pretrial examination by Byrne's lawyers, they didn't produce a shred of evidence at trial. "The reasonable inference to draw is that they knew from the beginning of the trial that they could not justify the Articles’ false and extravagant language. Their approach to the defence of the action was an attempt to intimidate the plaintiff and to humiliate him into abandoning his lawsuit."
"The tortious misconduct of Mitchell, Byrne and Deep Capture LLC demonstrates an indecent and pitiless desire to wound," the decision continued.
The decision goes on to impose a permanent injunction on Mitchell, Byrne and Deep Capture, as well as Google, given the likelihood that they will seek to evade payment of the judgment, as well as their "apparent intention to inflict as much damage on the plaintiff." The judgment also provides for imposition of costs, which means that Nazerali can petition the court to award him his legal fees. The verdict, while not in the megabucks frequently awarded against U.S. defendants, is is large, perhaps even a record, by Vancouver standards. At the current rate of exchange it comes to about $925,000 (U.S.), which is well within Byrne's inherited wealth.
Like I said, no libel verdict is worth celebrating, not even this one, brought by the victim of faux journalism written by a faux journalist in the pay of a deranged CEO. I hope that this one doesn't become weaponized against real journalists who have written real articles about bad people. If that happens, it will once again be a situation in which Byrne, described a decade ago s a "menace" by Joe Nocera of the New York Times, has stuck it to the press.
Altaf Nazerali vs Mark Mitchell Et Al - Reasons for Judgment by Sam E. Antar
© 2016 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.
Labels: Aly Nazerali, astroturfing, bitcoin, Cade Metz, Deep Capture, Deepcapture.com, defamation, Judd Bagley, Judson Bagley, libel, Mark Mitchell, Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne
posted by Gary Weiss @ 11:49 AM | <!-- Trackback autodiscovery code --> links to this post |
