Legal

After Milo Yiannopoulos’s attorneys at Meister Seelig & Fein withdrew from representing him in his breach of contract lawsuit against Simon & Schuster, Milo announced on Monday he will represent himself. He claimed in a statement on Facebook that the “source of disagreement” with his lawyers was over “Simon & Schuster’s discovery tactics,” in which they received permission from the court to make substantial portions of the case’s discovery confidential, limited to “attorney’s eyes only.” Milo says that means “I am not allowed even to see what has been said about me and my book in my own lawsuit…. Therefore, I […]

As promised, attorney Elizabeth McNamara at Davis Wright Tremaine replied Monday afternoon on behalf of Macmillan to President Trump’s attorney, Charles Harder, regarding the cease and desist letter sent last Thursday in an attempt to block publication of Michael Wolff’s FIRE AND FURY. “My clients do not intend to cease publication, no such retraction will occur, and no apology is warranted.” McNamara notes that Harder’s letter “tellingly….stops short of identify a single statement in the book that is factually false or defamatory. Instead, the letter appears to be designed to silence legitimate criticism. This is the antithesis of an actionable […]

Attorneys at Meister Seelig & Fein [MSF] representing Milo Yiannopoulos in his lawsuit against Simon & Schuster asked Judge Barry Ostrager to allow them to step down from the case. They cite “a breakdown in the relationship betwen Meister Seelig & Fein and [Yianoppolous], rendering continued and effective representation impossible.” Attorney Jeffrey Weingart says in a filing, “Plaintiff has insisted on pursuing actions with which MSF has a fundamental disagreement; Plaintiff’s lack of cooperation in this regard has rendered MSF’s representation of Plaintiff unreasonably difficult to carry out effectively.” As the same time, “in compliance with MSF’s duty of confidentiality…and in […]

Like most Americans, publishing people are trying to understand the implications of the complicated new tax law. For many that will be a long and complicated process, and since the new law applies to tax from 2018 on, there is no rush for answers. But a few items jump out immediately. One is a false concern, crystallized in a NYT column from earlier in the week that noted, “Another deduction that is disappearing is one for fees paid to agents, other outside managers or headhunters, who take a commission on salary directly from an individual.” The key word here is […]

One story from 2017 that looks like it will continue on well into 2018 (or even beyond) is Milo Yiannopoulos’s legal challenge of Simon & Schuster’s cancellation of his publishing contract. Having lost their effort to shut the case down by arguing that Yiannopoulos had actually agreed to the cancellation, the publisher responded on Thursday in extensive filings to Yiannopoulos’s own motion for summary judgment — now moving on more to the heart of the matter. Casual readers may be interested in some of the small details — there is official confirmation that Allum Bokhari was Yiannopoulos’s ghost writer (BuzzFeed had said he was paid […]