Social media company Twitter has failed in its attempt to get a lawsuit by Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe ensconced in federal court in New York, from which it easily could be moved to a like federal court in its backyard in California.
O’Keefe sued the massive corporation a few months ago after his personal account, which was followed by just under a million people, was canceled over alleged “fake” profiles.
But a federal judge ordered that the case be returned to New York state courts, which do not, according to O’Keefe, have the same propensity for dismissing such cases as those courts in tech-reliant California.
The key factor, argued by the Twitter lawyer, was that rules required that such cases be in federal courts if the plaintiff is seeking more than $75,000 in damages.
O’Keefe’s lawyer stunned Twitter’s legal counsel, however, with the statement that the monetary damages were not significant.
“For me, and Project Veritas, this case is about one thing: About justice,” O’Keefe explains.
“They never saw this coming. In court, they were thrown for a loop,” he explained.
Now, he charged, the company “cannot rely on dismissal-prone judges.”
RedState explained it was Twitter lawyer Amer Ahmed who made the unfounded claim that O’Keefe would seek over $75,000 in damages to “punish” Twitter.
“Ahmed was convinced that this would guarantee the case transfer to a California federal court,” the report said. However, “The Twitter attorney quickly learned that O’Keefe does not prioritize monetary gain over the pursuit of justice, thereby undermining the basis to move the lawsuit to federal court.”
O’Keefe priority is conducting discovery on Twitter, taking depositions, and discovering the responsible parties within the company involved in the ‘decision to suspend his account and issue the defamatory reasoning for doing so,'” the report said.
RedState explained, “Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and other executives may be deposed in this case and forced to answer for the defamation perpetrated against O’Keefe. In other words, O’Keefe has his sites set a bit higher than money. He wants to drag Twitter executives into the light and make them answer for their actions in front of cameras.”
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