Lewis Perdue
Investigative reporter Seth Mnookin (Newsweek, Vanity Fair) was one of the very few people who looked beyond Random House’s spin doctors and high-priced lawyers and into the facts of my verified plagiarism action against Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code.
As Mnookin’s Vanity Fair article points out, the plagiarism was clear and seen by people from across the globe. The piece also shows how Random House “won” their legal case in New York only by exploiting a technicality that excluded the the smoking gun evidence that proved the plagiarism. One more victory for those who can afford to buy a court decision with big-money lawyers.
But a small measure of justice was done when a Federal magistrate — charged with determining whether I should pay them $300,000+ in legal fees they spent to sue me — said no, that my case was proper and well-founded.
In a great example of how courts are all-too-often institutions of the personal whims of the judge instead of the law itself, the magistrate went on at length about how plagiarism seemed to have been present. Indeed, a jury trial — which I requested and was denied in NY — would have been mandatory if I had sued Random House here in California.
We are not a nation of laws. We are a nation of judicial whims which vary widely from one jurisdiction to another. While justice often does come from a court, only a fool should expect it.
