Biggest Advocate for Tort Reform Rushes to Court
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has aggressively pursued an anti-civil litigation campaign for decades, with statements such as: America's Out-of-Control Civil Lawsuit System Hurts Businesses, Employees, and Families, and Frivolous lawsuits are crippling our legal system and sucking the vitality out of American businesses.
Yet when a group of pranksters called the "Yes Men" poked fun at the Chamber by conducting a bogus press conference, the business group, calling the prank "commercial identity theft masquerading as social activism" rushed to file a lawsuit against the Yes Men. It's a little bit of a disconnect for ferocious opponent of "lawsuit abuse".
The Yes Men, which recently released a movie, is a self-described ensemble of actors "best known for posing as corporate executives in order to reveal how corporate greed negatively influences public policy." It also developed a dummy Web page that mirrored the Chamber's online presence, announcing the startling news that the Chamber had made a dramatic "about face on climate policy" and now favored "a stiff carbon tax and correspondingly strong incentives for industries."
The climax of the hoax was a staged news conference at the National Press Club. A member of the Yes Men troupe, posing as a U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokesman named "Hingo Sembra," fielded reporters' questions, achieving with perfect pitch the grim gentility that characterizes Chamber communications. Before long, an agitated Chamber employee came on the scene, confronted the Yes Men and informed the puzzled assembly that they had been had.
A video recording of the proceedings, in all their wince-inducing detail, has been posted on YouTube, where it's been viewed more than 200,000 times and received a boatload of media attention.
The Chamber announced Monday that it had filed suit against the Yes Men gang, casting the suit as a garden-variety action to protect the organization's intellectual property -- specifically, two registered trademarks. The organization's chief in-house lawyer called the suit "a customary response by any organization faced with this type of misconduct by the defendants."
But that's simply not the case. Far from a narrowly cast trademark protection lawsuit, this is blunderbuss, seven-count complaint filed by a major Washington, D.C., firm in U.S. District Court, with the Chamber asking for an injunction (including removal of YouTube videos), a jury trial, damages, attorneys' fees and "such other relief as may be appropriate."
The chamber is suing the Yes Men for trademark infringement, unfair competition and false advertising, according to the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog. The suit (PDF posted by the Washington Wire) was filed late Monday in federal court in Washington, D.C.