Cyrus Sanai: Frivolous or Not? The man behind the Full Tilt bot case
Just looking into the lawyer pressing the RICO Bot-suit against Full Tilt … Cyrus Sanai … from the best I can tell, he’s quite the loose-aggressive legal player … perhaps a self-appointed Gus Hansen of the courtroom?
Back in the day he wrote for Slate.com, about issues such as assisted suicide and school violence … and seemed to dig the journalism thing during his days at Harvard. (That’s where he went for undergrad. Law School at UCLA.)
His most recent case of note came last year, when he engaged in an ongoing battle against an LA judge … where Sanai found the judge’s personal blog, complete with humorous/bizarre porn images, and outed his NSFW fetish proclivities while was adjudicating a big obscenity case against a pornographer:
The question is how someone who has frequently engaged in frivolous litigation still remains a member of the California bar without any disciplinary record. It will be appalling if Kozinski faces judicial discipline in this dispute before Sanai faces attorney discipline.
More on what the LA legal community has to say about him below:
… from Popehat:
Sanai may be the living embodiment of the worst stereotypes of California lawyers, an arguably vexatious litigant who arguably abuses process and files frivolous motions to cause disruption to opponents. He has been smacked down as such by Judge Kozinski. But whatever Sanai is or isn’t, the matter raises a serious question about Judge Kozinski’s own judgment.
And from a Patterico commenter:
It amazes me that Cyrus Sanai still has his law license after publicly admitting that his campaign to bring down several federal judges is just “part of his litigation strategy” to win a divorce case. He’s already been called one of the most abusive litigants that the district court has ever seen.
And yet, in 19 years of California practice, he has no official scratches on his legal record.
Cyrus Sanai says:
October 6th, 2009 at 9:43 am
1. The quotation from Popehat was actually not commenting on me–it was pointing out that irrespective of what I “may” be, Judge Kozinski had displayed extremely poor judgment, something he later admitted. This was a response to the horde of judicial sycophants who attacked me for pointing out public judicial wrongdoing.
2. Anonymous “commentators” on a blog are not authorities on anything and cannot be called members of the LA legal “community”. I received lots of support from actual community of real lawyers, as opposed to those who play them on Internet blogs.
3. I’ve been a paid, part-time member of the MSM for decades.
4. I’m also an English solicitor, with no “official scratches” there either.
5. This case is not about me, it is about what happened to Lary Kennedy. It is a fight the principals of FTP brought on themselves; I spent months trying to resolve this matter informally, including holding an unsuccessful mediation, before filing the lawsuit.
DanM says:
October 6th, 2009 at 10:09 am
1. Cool, thanks for the info.
2. I agree they may not be “authorities” … but whether we like it or not, commentors are part of the community. You clearly have some haters out there and they apparently have better SEO than your biggest public fans.
3. I have no idea what MSM is. Mainstream Media maybe?
4. Ahh, those Brits …
5. Fair enough, and indeed this jibes with what I’ve heard about other Full Tilt cases. If you have a plausibly legitimate beef and seek, say, $3mm, they will counter with something like $75k.
Cyrus Sanai says:
October 6th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
3. You got it.
5. Yes, those offer to claim proportions sound right to me! I’m interested in learning about FTP’s practices in other similar cases. It seems pretty clear that my client was in no way treated atypically, except in that she is willing to fight the wrongdoing.
stepheng says:
October 26th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Regarding Mr. Sanai’s assertion that “This case is not about me”, that is, of course correct, unless his poor clients wind up in a widening universe of courts wherein their attorney has been sanctioned, has personally attacked judges, engaged in conduct regarded by most lawyers and judges alike as beyond the pale and/or in which their attorney has poisoned the well–including but not limited to any federal court within the 9th Circuit.
Mr. Sanai is a bright and talented lawyer who comes with a lot of political baggage.
Cyrus Sanai says:
October 26th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Commentator “stepheng” is a sterling example of the attitude which allows corruption and injustice to fester. Ultimately it is based on the view that most judges do not decide cases before them based on the facts and law, but whether they personally like the lawyer or client. It’s a view that is sadly true in some jurisdictions, but not Los Angeles County Superior Court, the Second Appellate District of the Court of Appeal, or the California Supreme Court.
There’s nothing wrong with personally attacking judges who have committed misconduct; indeed I hold the record in California state court for removing the largest number of judges for misconduct in a single case.
Obviously, the FTP case is in state court, not federal court, so speculating on the Ninth Circuit’s attitudes since my exposure of Circuit Judge Kozinski is pretty irrelevant. The reality in the federal system, as seen by recent disciplinary cases involving federal Judges Kent (sexual assault and perjury), Porteous (bribery and perjury), and Nottingham (perjury and solicitation of perjury) is that there is a substantial amount of criminal misconduct by federal judges that is only being fitfully addressed. Ethical judges know this, and do not hold it against me or my clients.
Indeed, stepheng’s comments are quite extraordinarily insulting to Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Minning, to whom the FTP case has been assigned. The comments presume that the case will be decided not by the facts and law presented to Judge Minning in court, but rather by Judge Minning’s ex parte consideration of events in other unrelated cases, which would of course be judicial misconduct. I have no reason at this time to believe that Judge Minning will do anything other than adjudicate the case based on the facts and law presented to him in court.
Stepheng’s assertion that I have committed “conduct regarded by most lawyers and judges alike as beyond the pale” is nonsense, and pointing to anonymous comments from a blog whose commentators are largely ACORN-obsessed, Obama-despising, judicial misconduct-defending conspiracy theorists does not support the point. Disclosing a federal Judge’s distribution of porn is only “beyond the pale” to people who were receiving or wished they were receiving such stuff themselves.
Thelenite says:
November 12th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
And to think that what pushed you over the edge was a $2,500 rent dispute. Cy, you need to get a grip. On a positive note, I’m glad to see that you’re no longer sporting the all-black Johnny Cash look.
Cyrus Sanai says:
November 12th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
“Thelenite”? While there were plenty of excellent lawyers at that firm when I was there, I can’t say I would ever want to associate myself with that management fiasco. I still bring up the BSC acquisition as the stupidest thing I ever saw a law firm do.
And for your information, this case has nothing to do with rent. It involves poker. I’ll be happy to send you a copy of the complaint, Thelenite, if you post an email address for your firm (assuming you were one of the lucky ones who found a job when it went under).