For critics who fear Scientology initiating some kind of "racketeering" law suit against critics who speak out, here is a case that shows how futile this would be. This is the cross-complaint suit by Hulda Clark and her minions that I was named as one of 30 defendants on utterly ridiculous, bogus charges. It was thrown out with all court costs having to be paid. Note especially the quote from Tim Bolen. Does this remind anyone here of anything?

See the details on this case in the report from Stephen Barrett at the Quackwatch site:

http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/bolen.html

Here's an excerpt:

*********begin quote from Barrett's report:

The "Racketeering" Suits In July 2001, New Century Press, represented by Attorney Negrete, filed a cross-complaint charging the four of us and about 30 other defendants with committing at least 12 types of crimes and about 20 other civil wrongs. The defendants include Quackwatch; the National Council Against Health Fraud; several Web site operators who have (justifiably) criticized Hulda Clark's theories and methods; the Internet Service Provider who hosts the healthfraud discussion list;

several people who have posted messages to news groups; the woman and her husband who sued Clark for fraud; three people who had filed expert declarations in a case in which the Federal Trade Commission obtained an injunction against a company marketing devices and herbs with claims based on Clark's theories; and "Roes 1-500." Several of the defendants are not legal entities, and at least one does not exist. A few months later, Negrete filed a second nearly identical cross-complaint against me in connection with an unrelated consumer-protection suit in Los Angeles in which I am an expert witness against a company accused of false advertising.

After the first cross-complaint was filed, Bolen and his allies immediately distributed messages headlined "Stephen Barrett Charged with Racketeering, and Civil Rights Violations, in California." The World Chiropractic Alliance, for example published an news article called "Quack Buster Busted," accompanied with my picture overprinted with the words "Stephen Barrett, who now faces a lawsuit for 'racketeering.'" [12] Normally, an article of this type would be sufficient to enable the poster to be sued into oblivion. But since the filing of the suit was a "news event," its contents can be reported as "news" without risk to the reporter.

A few days later, Bolen issued another message that suggests why the suit was filed:

The lawsuit . . . is going to be VERY EXPENSIVE for them -- all of a sudden. I'm not an attorney, but still I'm going to estimate that their case will cost them somewhere around $750,000 to $2,000.000 in legal fees. Even the small defendants are going to have to cough up $100,000 in fees, apiece [2].

Perhaps some day Bolen will explain how he calculated these numbers.

The two cross-complaints are remarkable in that they do not allege a single fact that supports any of the charges. Although every defendant is accused of committing every one of the alleged wrongs, the documents do not identify a single specific act that was improper.

Without this information, courts normally dismiss a suit for failing to state a cause of action or order the attorney to make some actual allegations. In both cases, we filed motions to dismiss and award attorneys fees. In the Oakland case (the suit against Clark), Negrete responded by dropping all but two of the charges against me, but the judge said that he could conduct discovery proceedings related to these two. The Federal Trade Commission also filed a motion to dismiss its former expert witnesses. Negrete responded by dropping them from the case. In June 2002, faced with a motion to compel disclosure of the nonexistent basis of the Oakland cross-complaint, Negrete withdrew it. In Los Angeles, the judge dismissed the cross-complaint and awarded $3,000 in attorneys fees. Negrete is appealing the dismissal but doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of prevailing. When the dust settles, I expect to sue Negrete for malicious prosecution.

*********end quote

So there you have it!

Monica

From: pignotti@worldnet.att.net (Monica Pignotti)
Subject: Bogus "Anti-quackbuster" Suit Withdrawan
Date: 17 Jun 2002 14:39:36 -0700
Message-ID: <53183a73.0206171339.218a55b2@posting.google.com>

More good news about the lawsuit against Hulda Clark critics. Justice and freedom of speech prevail. The whole thing has gotten tossed.

So much for trying to abuse the legal system to intimidate critics!

The following is from http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/negrete.html

******** Bogus "Anti-Quackbuster" Suit Withdrawn Stephen Barrett, M.D.

A fraudulent lawsuit intended to harass and intimidate critics of Hulda Clark has been withdrawn. The suit, filed by Attorney Carlos Negrete in July 2001, charged me, my wife, the National Council Against Health Fraud, and about 30 other defendants with committing at least 20 civil wrongs and 12 crimes, including racketeering. The was filed as a cross-complaint in response to a libel suit [1] I filed against Clark, her publishing company (New Century Press), her "publicist" ("Tim" Bolen), and several of her associates.

Clark is an unlicensed naturopath with a mail-order "degree" who claims to cure cancer with a low-voltage electrical device [2]. Bolen appears to have been hired by her or her family to libel her critics [333]

The defendants included Quackwatch; the National Council Against Health Fraud; several Web site operators who have (justifiably) criticized Hulda Clark's theories and methods; the Internet Service Provider who hosts the healthfraud discussion list; several people who have posted messages to news groups; the woman and her husband who sued Clark for fraud; three people who had filed expert declarations in a case in which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) obtained an injunction against a company marketing devices and herbs with claims based on Clark's theories; and "Roes 1-500." The suit was remarkable because:

None of the accusations were true.

The complaint did not identify a single alleged fact that would support any of the suit's allegations.

Several defendants were not legal entities and at least one did not exist.

A few months later, Negrete filed a second nearly identical cross-complaint against me in connection with an unrelated consumer-protection suit [4] in Los Angeles in which I am an expert witness against a company accused of false advertising.

Negrete, whose office is in San Juan Capistrano, California, also does business under the name Health Freedom Legal Defense Council. Although California law requires that fictitious names be registered, my search of the Orange County fictitious name database located no listing.

Defamation Packaged as News After the first cross-complaint was filed, Tim Bolen distributed a message headlined "Stephen Barrett Charged with Racketeering, and Civil Rights Violations, in California." The World Chiropractic Alliance (WCA) then published a news article called "Quack Buster Busted," accompanied with my picture overprinted with the words "Stephen Barrett, who now faces a lawsuit for 'racketeering.'" [5] In addition, an article about the suit with my picture was published on the front page of The Chiropractic Journal, a newspaper published by WCA president Terry Rondberg, D.C. Accusations of this type would normally be sufficient to enable the poster to be sued into oblivion.

But since the filing of the suit was a "news event," its contents can be reported as "news" without risk to the reporter.

A few days later, Bolen issued another message that suggests why the suit was filed:

The lawsuit . . . is going to be VERY EXPENSIVE for them -- all of a sudden. I'm not an attorney, but still I'm going to estimate that their case will cost them somewhere around $750,000 to $2,000.000 in legal fees. Even the small defendants are going to have to cough up $100,000 in fees, apiece [6].

A few weeks later, word of the suit was widely distributed through the e-mail newsletter of Tedd Koren, D.C., a chiropractic publisher whom the FTC had investigated [7]. Koren, who had mistakenly assumed that I had been involved in the investigation, mentioned that an attorney who had defended him belonged to the Health Freedom Legal Defense Council and that he (Koren) had been told about the lawsuit about a year before it was filed [8].

The two cross-complaints were remarkable in that they did not allege a single fact that supports any of the charges. Although every defendant was accused of committing every one of the alleged wrongs, the documents do not identify a single specific act that was improper.

Without this information, courts normally dismiss a suit for failing to state a cause of action or order the attorney to make some actual allegations. In both cases, we filed motions to dismiss and award attorneys fees. In the suit against Clark, Negrete responded by dropping all but two of the charges against me, but the judge said that he could conduct discovery proceedings related to these two. In the MediaPower case, the judge dismissed the cross-complaint and awarded $3,000 in attorneys fees. Negrete is appealing the dismissal but doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of prevailing. The FTC also filed a motion to dismiss its former expert witnesses. Negrete responded by dropping them from the case.

The suit against my wife (a family physician) was done purely for harassment purposes. She is not a member of Quackwatch, and her only involvement in antiquackery activity is to answer medical questions when I need help and to provide me with journal articles she thinks might interest me. She was not involved in any way in my criticism of Hulda Clark. Even though she submitted an affidavit stating these facts, Negrete would not drop her from the suit and even tried (unsuccessfully) to force both of us to travel to California for depositions. In May 2002, we filed discovery requests which demanded that Negrete reveal precisely what alleged facts could support the charges he made in the cross-complaints. When he refused, we filed motions to compel him to do so. In June, rather than face the judge and admit that the suit was bogus, he withdrew it. The lawyers who defended us were Christopher Grell and Ian Dillon of San Francisco and Morsé Mehrban of Los Angeles, both of whom did an excellent job.

Negrete did three other things to attack my reputation. One was to post the cross-complaint to his Web site. The second was to link to Bolen's Web site, which is filled with false and defamatory statements about me. The third was to refer to me in the body of the suit as "a de-licensed psychiatrist" with a small-print footnote stating "Dr.

Barrett is no longer licensed. He voluntarily abandoned his license in the early 1990s." In everyday language -- and under California law [9] -- delicensing refers to having one's license taken away for misconduct. Negrete is well aware of the fact that I retired in good standing and merely inactivated my license. It is no more proper to refer to me as "de-licensed" than to refer to an attorney who retired as "disbarred." The primary and most persistent libel spread by Bolen and his allies has been the statement that I am delicensed, which causes some people to conclude that I lost my license for misconduct.

Negrete reinforced this idea by using the word in the body of the cross-complaint. Not surprisingly, several reports on the suit repeated the word without the footnote.

At this writing, false charges from Negrete's cross-complaints are mentioned on more than 50 Web sites and in more than 100 news group messages. He has not even bothered to remove the suit paper from his Web site. In the near future, my wife and I will sue him for abuse of process and/or malicious prosecution. We also plan to ask the California Bar to discipline him.

References Barrett et al vs Clark et al. Verified complaint for damages for libel, libel per se, and conspiracy to commit libel. Superior Court of the State of California, County of Alameda. Filed Nov 3, 2000.

Barrett S. The bizarre claims of Hulda Clark. Quackwatch, revised Dec 29, 2001.

Barrett S. A response to Tim Bolen. Quackwatch, revised June 8, 2002.

Barrett S. "Enzyme deficiency." Quackwatch, Aug 31, 2001.

"Quack buster busted." Healthwatch Newsletter, Aug 6, 2001.

Bolen T. Smoking out Barrett's paymaster. July 26, 2001.

Barrett S. FTC drops chiropractic investigation, Chirobase, revised Dec 25, 2001.

Koren T. Tedd Koren's August 2001 Newsletter.

California Code of Regulation, Professional and Vocation Regulation Section 1339.5, et al.

***************

Monica

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