Popcorn futures
The bad guys are eating each other, and somehow that's a problem?
An Illinois law firm is suing a rival it says was impersonating it online in a bid to steal clients. Motta & Motta LLC said in a filing [PDF] to the Northern Illinois US District Court that rival legal firm Dolci and Weiland had set up both a website and phone line designed to redirect Mota’s criminal and family law clients to …
Nope. If the vortex generates more work, that in turn will feed more lawyers.
If it were the UK, they'd get themselves a ruling that the taxpayer should fund the extra work through one of those feed-the-beast systems like legal aid. AIUI though the system is different, the US parasite has no shortage of hosts, either.
As an IT Manager for a Solicitors practice, if this was in the UK then we wouldn't be taking this to court. Waste of time and effort.
We would either:-
1) Go to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and report this as a breach of the Solicitors Code of Conduct. (outcomes 8.1, 8.4, 8.5) which would probably be sufficient to get their firm closed down by the SRA or;
2) Point out that due to their behaviour that we have the ability to get their firm closed down, and ask if they'd like to come to a settlement that involves them paying us a large lump sum and transferring the website to us in exchange for us agreeing not to do a report which would probably result in their firm being closed down.
The main reason for point 2 is that you can never be sure what regulators or courts are going to do. While they might get closed down, they might not and would certainly be willing to go to quite some length to avoid the possibility.
Happened to a (our) realtor here, rival bought up all the other domains available & redirected them to her website, even stating that she was a senior partner\colleague.
When taken to task by the local real Estate Board made claim it was just a joke, which was not accepted as a humorous act by the board.