FactChecking recent OJ Posts on the Settlement Offer and Lawsuit

I had some high hopes that when Vern Nelson took over as editor of the Orange Juice blog he’d make an effort to make sure that some of the posts had a measure of accuracy.  And I also hoped to win the $266 million lottery Tuesday, and I didn’t so I’m not surprised by multiple errors and misrepresentations in three recent OJ posts about our pending lawsuit against Art Pedroza and the Orange Juice Blog.

The week began with an email from Art asking to meet today over lunch (his treat) to discuss a settlement. Since my food taster is busy today, our lawyer stepped in and made the arrangements for a noon meeting.  Then came posts starting with this one which kind of took the whole settlement notion downhill fast.  In his last email, Art suggested I’d never see a red cent from him.  Todd reported back that Art never showed, so he now faces a May 26 deadline for  discovery.

Starting with this post, I’d like to correct the record on a number of items they got wrong, misrepresented or just don’t understand:

• I did not conspire with Janet Nguyen to acquire www.artpedroza.com from Ryan Trabuco.  I have never met Janet Nguyen. I have never spoken with her.  She is a friend of mine on Facebook, and so is Bill Hunt (no I will not attend your fundraisers) and Van Tran (just for laughs; keep your friends close and your enemies closer).  Acquiring the domain name from Ryan Trabuco was entirely my idea, born from a conversation nearly a year ago at a Drinking Liberally event in late May 2009 before Memorial Day when we shook on it.  I got Ryan his check in mid-June as I don’t attend DL regularly.
• We didn’t plan on how Art would react; all Art had to do was write me a check for what I paid for “his
   domain and it would have been his – at about 10 times the cost of what he could have paid for it if he did it to begin with in the first place.  But he went all “venganza” on us instead.  Again, no conspiracy.
• Art’s claim of a straight trade of URLs is false.  He demanded between $1,000 and $2,000 per domain and we had to give him “his” domain for free “or else.”  Art also continued to insist on a package of his domain and those of Sean Mill’s which Trabuco also owns; I can’t give Art something I don’t own.  Art’s “peace offering” trade request still required us to pay more than twice the price of the domains and give him “his” name back for free.  He viewed this as a good faith offer.  It’s not.  But not agreeing to Art’s demands in the first place, the OJ post has an error of omission by neglecting to mention Art routed some of the domains he bought to NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association which advocates sex between adults and young boys, as well as a Gay Porn site and links on the OJ blog.  To this day, Art cannot explain why he bought Claudio Gallego’s name (Art bragged “he owned Claudio’s ass”) as Claudio had nothing to do with the sale of Art’s domain.  The demands for a straight trade always included Sean Mill’s domains.  I don’t own them and am in no position to surrender to Art something I do not own.
• Cybersquatting is a term that means you bought a domain with the intent to sell at a profit.  We wrote a post that outed Art as the owner of all the domains in question (with time, many of the hotlinks no longer reflect the accuracy of the day the post was written).  He has since returned the domains to GoDaddy, but you cannot un-rob a bank and make no mistake, Art has a track record of breaking any agreement you reach with him.  It is because of this, we choose to go the lawsuit route to compel Art to take responsibility for his actions.
• Art suggested Ryan Trabuco was fired by Janet Nguyen.  Janet’s office actually offered Ryan a full time position which he declined in order to accept a job in the private sector several weeks ago.  My purchase of www.artpedroza.com from Ryan came before he accepted a position with Janet Nguyen’s office last summer and before Noah Krom’s passing in early June.  Despite Art’s insistence there is some sort of massive conspiracy, really, it was a casual conseervation between friends on a warm Spring evening.
• Art insists this all about silencing him and it’s about free speech.  No it’s not.  Art suggested in an email he sent to his email list of friends and summarized in this post that his only assets are his blogs (seriously?) and that we are somehow after those properties or that we want to ban him from the OC blogsphere for a period of time — “perhaps forever.”  We’re not interested in his blogs.  We’re not concerned with banning him from the blogsphere. That’s a notion from Art’s brain that doesn’t represent what we’re looking for here. 
• In his email, he also stated that Todd Gallinger is representing us for free.  He is not.  And in the link to our filed lawsuit in the first post on OJ this week, that detail is on the first page of the letter Todd sent Art.  And this is the reason the settlement offer increased from $5,000 to $15,000.  Lawyers cost money.  And while Todd is a friend, if he needs PR help, he knows my rate.  In Art’s email appeal for a lawyer to represent him for free, he  used a lie that we’re being represented for free to garner pity and sympathy for himself – someone who had no trouble trying to connect our names to NAMBLA and gay porn.  Art is not a victim here no matter how much he thinks he is.  My settlement offer is simply an attempt to recover what we’ve spent on the case so far.  But it appears Art would rather gamble on the potential $100K fine per domain instead. 
• My favorite part of the posts were email links to my email address, Chris Prevatt’s email address and Todd Gallinger’s email address asking readers of the most influential and successful political blog in all of California to ask us to drop our suit.  Guess what happened?  Crickets for Chris and I.  Not a single email asking either of us to drop the lawsuit; not even in the SPAM folder.  Todd got two emails — both suggested he should nail Art to the wall with everything the justice system can throw at him.

And in this post from Sean Mill, these mistakes. 

• Sean questions why the Madison Alexander PR ad was pulled.  Simple, Todd’s advertising on the site and that’s the spot he got.  I haven’t had the chance to develop a smaller ad which will go up once I get it done.  I am not trying to hide my association with the blog. My experience as a blogger is actualy helpful to clients exploring social media campaigns.  And contrary to Sean’s statement, I don’t claim moral or intellectual superiority to anyone. But nice of him to think of me that way.
• Sean claims my lawyer is a “terrorist loving slimeball.”  Nope. Todd is a stand up guy and a newlywed.  He’s also devout and decent.  But way to demonstrate “good faith” for Art in the lawsuit Sean.
• The lawsuit is not ridiculous; it was necessary.
• Sean suggests I am cybersquatting on ArtPedroza.com; nope. It’s not for sale.  But by Sean’s logic, isn’t Tony Bushala cybersquatting on TomDalySupervisor or PamKellarFullerton?  And sources tell me Sean himself may be a cybersquatter too, unless he too surrendered a name related to Dennis DeSnoo’s consulting business and demanded $5,000 for it.  But perhaps he gave it back to GoDaddy like Art did.
• As far as Juice friend Hugh Nguyen goes, yes I called Hugh out for lying to my face when I asked about his OJ ad at an event Feb 2 at Senator Lou Correra’s office; Hugh told Chris Prevatt and I he had attenpted to have an ad Art was running for him for free on the OJ blog removed.  When we mentioned his once Tom Daly jumped back in the race, Sean suggested Hugh’s campaign did no such thing.  When we called Hugh Nguyen back, he changed his story to say he and his campaign manager decided to leave it up but emphasized that they never asked for the ad.  That, my friends, is call a lie to one’s face.  And we called Hugh Nguyen out on it. 
• I have not contacted anyone at Sean’s employer.  I have had conservations with his employer’s PR firm to ask if Sean used his title company’s access for public records to obtain deed information and bankrupcy filings of political enemies of OJ. When I asked Sean directly, his response was “they are public records” and that is true, but that statement isn’t a denial.  But it’s untrue that I spoke with anyone at his employer directly.  And I have done nothing different that Sean himself hasn’t done and I sent him the email this morning to prove his hyprocrisy.  My source tells me he’s reacting badly.

So there you have it.  We’re in discovery now and Art faces a May 26 deadline to turn over a significant number of records to us.