Quixtar goes after Youtube.com video posters and bloggers

I read the suit and the first thing that stands out is that the ground for the suit is not the supposed violation of a court order as the Alticor media blog contends, but for damages related to tortious interference with business relationships.   

The Quixtar court order or, preliminary injunction, enjoins two diamond distributors and their wives from:

If the true reason for the search is to verify if the two diamond distributors are violating a court action, why then do they make a suit on grounds of tortious interference of business relationships and not possibly contempt of court for the two diamond couples?

The second thing I noticed is that they filed in a new court (Ottawa county) and not the court (Kent County), in which the preliminary injunction was issued.    It is my guess that this new "fishing expedition" by Quixtar's lawyers to find out the names of the Bloggers and Youtube posters, would probably not please the Honorable Paul J. Sullivan in Kent County, so they filed in a neighboring county.  If they have a valid suspicion that any of the two diamonds are behind the postings, why not got to Judge Sullivan and say that the plaintiffs are violating the preliminary injunctions and we want subpoenas to investigate it?  I bet the reason is they are pretty sure the plaintiffs have better things to do than to make funny satirical videos about Quixtar and post blogs highlighting Quixtar's high prices, and possibly judge Sullivan would not be overly happy to continue this pissing match in his court.

My suspicion is they want to identify the supposed bloggers and go on a fishing expedition by slapping them with subpoenas on their hard drives.   If you read the new suit, you find our old friends at Warner Norcross and Judd are again players in this game.   Warner Norcross and Judd was the same hired guns that sent out subpoenas in the Sidney Schwartz case.    If you are one of the anonymous bloggers it would be good to wipe your hard drive clean before they send Electronic Evidence Discovery to your door to mirror your hard drive.  Don't forget you can bill Quixtar for you time when complying with the subpoena!

The suit reads more like a classic SLAPP lawsuit trying to use the legal system to squash free speech.  I'm not an attorney, but why doesn't the complaint mention relief related to the court order, instead of reading like a SLAPP to go after people expressing their opinion about Quixtar?

No doubt the timing of the "Freetheibo" website is coincidentally too close to the filing of the class action suit, and I suspect that site has some traceable connection to the plaintiffs in the class action suit, but the other bloggers and video posters are most likely members or former members of Quixtar, and not the the distributors enjoined in the court order.  For those current anonymous Quixtar distributors posting on blogs, you can surely await a search of your hard drives and possibly a lawsuit through arbitration when Quixtar finds out who you are.  I can well imagine that Quixtar would never want an active Quixtar distributor to publicly speak bad about the business.

Quixtar/Amway/Alticor have a history of trying to silence former high level distributors.  One of the worst public relation problems for the business is when high level distributors start to talk about the "dark side" of the Amway / Quixtar business.   As the plaintiffs in this class action case are already enjoined from speaking about the business,  EDC Trevor Chatham was ordered by an Australian court not to say: "The chances of a person making substantial income from an Amway business are very remote".   The diamond couples in this case are also enjoined by the court in Kent County from making similar statements, even if they are true and factual. 

If you have a video on youtube.com and don't want Quixtar censorship to take it down, send me a copy.