I’m afraid to say that this saga isn’t quite over just yet. Jeff Merkey decided to continue his barratry tonight (5th August 2005). You can read more here
Several kind people brought my attention to an article on Jeff Merkey’s site yesterday evening. In it, Jeff (or someone claiming to be Jeff) files notice to collect $100,000 (~57,000 UK Pounds) due to my publishing an article on this blog that mentioned him by name and gave a very short, fact-based overview of my extremely limited dealings with him. As of today, 16th July 2005, I have yet to receive any official notification from Merkey himself or his representatives regarding this case. No effort of his part has been made to contact me despite numerous channels being available
To quote from Merkey’s notice:
Notice is given of intent to seek $100,000 in liquidated damages against former Novell employee Pete Connolly in the United Kingdom pursuant to the Novell/Merkey Settlement.
First off, just why should he be seeking $100,000? Have I libelled him? If he thinks that my article is libellous, From Wikipedia’s article on libel:
Almost all legal systems, including those of the United States, Scotland, and England and Wales, require in some situations that the subject of the communication prove, in a civil court, that the defendant made the statement with “malice”, meaning either believing it was false or with “reckless disregard” for whether it was false. This is known as “qualified privilege”; a typical example is a complaint of professional misconduct.
Nowhere in the entry do I make a statement that I believe false.
Mr. Connolly is currently in breach of the Novell/Merkey settlement agreement which prohibits employees of Novell and their agents from posting public comments relative to the Novell litigation.
If I recall correctly, the settlement agreement was secret, so by definition I cannot possibly know that ‘Novell and their agents’ cannot post any public comment regarding Merkey.
“It is unfortunate that a former Novell employee who was and is bound under their employment agreements with Novell to respect Novell’s confidential information has chosen to breach these obligations for clearly self serving interests. Novell’s employees and former employees are barred from public comment in this matter. It is unfortunate that Mr. Connolly has chosen to make public statements relative to a 9 year old litigation for self promotion which harm Novell. His comments not only are distressing to me, but also are causing significant harm to Novell publicly.
”
Quite what confidential information was published I can’t quite see. I linked through to the Novell press release that outlined the settlement between Merkey, Angus and Major. If it’s confidential, maybe he should ask Novell to pull the press release from their site.
As for the harm to Novell, mentioning that Jeff Merkey has filed a complaint against Groklaw, Bruce Perens, Pamela Jones, Slashdot and several others has absolutely nothing to do with Novell.
It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out. There are probably three ways it can go.
1) Nothing happens.
2) Merkey tries to get me into the UK High Court for libel. He can’t afford this, and neither can I.
3) Merkey and I converse like grown adults and find a resolution to this. In my article there are four paragraphs and a cut and paste of Merkey’s charges. All points in the four paragraphs that were written by myself are factually correct (IMHO). Again, quoting from Wikipedia:
In many, though not all, legal systems, factual statements must be false to be defamatory. Proving statements to be true is often the best defense against a prosecution for libel. Statements of opinion which cannot be proven true or false will likely need to apply some other kind of defense.
I will be emailing the URL to this article, together with the full text, to Merkey at his public email address, simply as a courtesy. Maybe it’s something that Merkey try in the future before running to the courts. He’s quite free to comment on this blog, since I allow comments for all articles – something that he can’t seem to being himself to do on merkeylaw.com
Pete
