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Jury Finds Spam Victim Liable for $2.5 M for Calling Senders of LUCE 'Spammers' |
Oklahoma City, OK (PRWEB) June 27, 2007 -- In a mind numbing decision two months ago today in case no. 05-CV-122 in the U.S. District Court's Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ruled that Mark W. Mumma's statement that Plaintiffs, Cruise.com, Omega World Travel and Gloria Bohan "are spammers" is "untrue" in spite of the fact that Cruise.com witnesses confirmed, under oath, that they never ask a recipient's permission prior to sending them e-mail offers. The reason given by Cruise.com CEO Anthony Hamawy regarding why they don't verify an e-mail recipient's desire to receive their offers was, 'No, we have not, primarily because our competitors don't.'
"I have been battling spam for more than a decade and was very pleased when laws were passed defining stiff penalties for those who send spam," Mumma stated. "I tried to recover relief through the courts for the wasted time and loss of productivity I've suffered because of spam, but after incurring $70,000 in legal fees and seeing a $2.5 Million jury award leveled against me, I think I've had about all the 'relief' I can stand."
A little more than three years ago, Mumma set up a web site to 'out' spammers called, SUEaSpammer.com. He warned senders of Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE) that he would expose anyone who sends him any such unwanted e-mail messages. He warned spammers that he would record their telephone calls and post them on the Internet. He also warned that he would post photos of the people ultimately responsible for spam messages, as well as the spam e-mails themselves. He wasn't kidding. Yet it is Mumma that has had to pay the ultimate price for spam when Cruise.com's parent company, Omega World Travel, sued him for defamation for 'calling them spammers'.
"I have tried opting out, but no matter how legitimate a company seems, virtually every time I opt out of an e-mailing that I didn't opt into to begin with, I just end up with more spam, not less," says Mumma. "Maybe if there was a significant cost involved in sending unsolicited commercial e-mail, companies would stop."
Throughout the case, Cruise.com attorneys accused Mumma of signing up for the offers in spite of Cruise.com's own evidence to the contrary. At least one of Cruise.com's attorneys has vowed to foreclose on Mumma's home in order to satisfy their judgment against him. Another has vowed to sue him when he releases, SLAPP SUIT, the documentary Mumma is self-producing about this lawsuit. Mumma's plight was featured in TIME Magazine, this past January.
"During the trial, Omega's lead attorney stressed that this case was about 'Cruise.com's good name.' Ironically, the most important time for Cruise.com to utilize their 'good name' would have been to identify their e-mail server as a 'cruise.com server' when connecting to recipient mail servers," Mumma explained. "Instead, Cruise.com failed to use its real name, announcing itself as 'FL-Broadcast.net', a domain they have never owned. A complete fabrication."
In spite of the fact that Cruise.com witnesses testified during discovery that they did not own the domain name... To read the press release in full goto http://prweb.com/releases/2007/6/prweb535529.htm
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