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the tyee
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Feb
23
Kinsella settles with Bourrie
February 23, 2006 |
I was busy yesterday and missed the news that Kinsella has settled with Mark Bourrie. The settlement is that Mark published a clarification of the word “he” so that it clearly referred to Guite rather than Kinsella - something which Mark had already done.
Wise of Mark to get rid of the tick by agreeing to do what he had already done. Life is too short.
Interestingly, Steve Janke aludes to having some inside information, “Maybe I know more than you think, Double-D. If you put money in, and I know you did, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for an accounting.”
Now, why Steve Janke appears to be carrying water for Mr. K on this beats me; but I was moved to comment (or at least try…Steve’s server kept rejecting it):
Steve, I donated and encouraged others to donate to Mark on three principles: a) Kinsella is an ashhat who was behaving like an idiot, b) bloggers should stand up when one of us is threatened with or actually hit with what amounts to a slap suit, c) the price at this stage of the legal game is a lawyer bigger than the other guy’s lawyer.
I cannot imagine that Mark paid a nickle in “costs” to Kinsella. But if he did, so what? He was able to settle the matter without filing so much as a Statement of Defence (which a cynic might suggest indicates Kinsella was more than a little eager to get out from under the idiocy of filing this piece of garbage in the first place) without altering the substance of his post or thought one iota.
Of course, and I speak entirely hypothetically, as Mark raised about $1000.00 and had the advice of counsel, if Mark did pay Kinsella to piss off we now have an idea of what Kinsella values his reputation at: rather less than a thousand bucks.
angry in the great white north
Comments
6 Comments so far
Here’s your strange bedfellow, scratching his head about Janke as well. It’s impolite to ascribe motives, but I can’t help noticing the approving quote from Kinsella up on the top left of his site (along with a few others, from such people as Lord Black of Crossharbour and, ahem, yours truly).
I knew a union leader once who would simply preen when he was invited to chat by the top management dog, and get talked to on what seemed to him to be amiable, equal terms. I wonder if this kind of psychology is at work here: I mean, perhaps being noticed by Kinsella is a positive for him. I can’t imagine why, because Steve is a mighty fellow in his own right, and Kinsella’s dwarf star faded quite a while ago except in his own mind, but I have no other theories.
In any case, I would love to know what Steve’s mysterious words mean. If he has inside knowledge, that sounds like the settlement terms might have been breached. But we’ll likely never know. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.
Dawg - depending on the nature of the settlement terms, any “inside knowledge” held by Janke might not represent a breach. The most likely case is if he and Bourrie were discussing the case prior to the settlement; obviously Mark cannot “undisclose” what he has already spoken of to someone. In any event, I am also puzzled by Steve’s comments, and glad to see that the issue was settled, much as I looked forward to seeing Kinsella paying up for abuse of process.
Sorry about the rejection of your comment. Frankly, the filters are driving me mad. Every day it seems like I get two or three emails from people complaining that their innoccuous comments were rejected.
As an example, “socialist” contains the string “cialis”, so the filter assumed you were posting spam for ED medicine. Took a week to figure that one out.
I don’t set up the filters myself, by the way.
As for the issue at hand — I don’t know any details. As I said in a follow-up comment, there had to be an initial pseudo-friendly contact to clean up the problem, a request that was spurned, before it went to the lawyers and a suit filing. When that happens, there is no way a settlement was going to happen without some sort of financial component.
That’s just the way these things go. The window on making this go away without paying out some bucks closed firmly some time ago.
I’m as close to certain on this as anyone can be.
Given that Kinsella got what he wanted, you get one guess at which way the money went.
Is Warren Kinsella my bud? I’ve never met the man. But I do know he’s a lawyer, a family man (4 kids like me), and devoted to his parents (not unlike me as well). I also know that you never make an allegation about illegal or pseudo-illegal activities by a lawyer without something to back it up. A lawyer can lose his means of making a living far faster than any of us on the strength of an unchallenged allegation like that.
Frankly, if Bourrie had asked me to link to his “donation box”, I would have told him in no uncertain terms that he was making a big mistake, compounding his earlier one, and that the longer he let this go, the worse it was going to get. And that he could not win because, frankly, he was mostly in the wrong on this.
If he had followed this sort of advice earlier, it would have cost him less. What it cost him, I don’t know. That it cost him something, I’m certain.
“Now, why Steve Janke appears to be carrying water for Mr. K on this beats me…”
Because they’re both media whores?
Gee, Sean, ya think?
Steve, Kinsella got what he already had: a minor clarification of a pronoun. In my experience, when a lawsuit settles this quick - before there is even a Statement of Defence filed, the plaintiff is usually well aware that he needs to take what he can get and kill the suit. On no better evidence than yours I would say that the bully pulled simply because he knew his suit was garbage.
In those circumstances it is most unlikely that there would have been any cash changing hands. Why would there be? Realistically, I rather doubt the bully was looking at Bourrie as his retirement fund. This was a lawsuit designed to intimidate and when Bourrie refused to back down Kinsella cut and ran clinging to the bragging right of a clarification which had already been published.
Not that more evidence was needed but this pretty much establishes Mr. K as net slime and a tick Mark is well rid of.