Roanoke Times suing former Va Tech beat writer for access to Twitter account

It's actually pretty easy to prove if the V-P doesn't claim ownership. If the V-P says the account went with Roanoke and Bitter to BH Media, then it was part of the sale since he worked for both papers under the Landmark umbrella. He could try to make a case that it wasn't part of the sale, but then he'd be saying it's the property of the V-P, not his property. Not sure if that would work out much better for him in the long run.

 

The V-P didn't sell anything to Roanoke.

 

It didn't have to. They were both owned by the same company, the company he worked for. It could be transferred without being sold. And if he was on the books in Roanoke, by allowing him to assume the Twitter handle, it could be assumed the V-P was transferring rights for it from one subsidiary of the company to another.

And, again, if he tried this route legally, he'd be admitting the account doesn't belong to him.

 

Not in America. Pay your own way is the default position. There has to be a law or a contractual provision that awards fees and costs to a winning party. A separate question is whether the lawyers are working on an hourly or contingent basis.

 

Property transfers between two completely separate subsidiaries don't work like that. I highly doubt that when accounting decided to move the budget line for the Virginia Tech beat reporter from Norfolk to Roanoke that they bothered to have legal draw up a transfer of the tangible and intellectual property associated with the position from Viriginian Pilot Media, LLC to Times-World, LLC.

BH will have to prove ownership. It will be interesting to see if they can.

 

You might be right to a degree, but the point you seem to be avoiding is that for this argument to work, Bitter has to admit he doesn't own the rights to the Twitter account either.

 

I'm saying that the paper will attempt to have their fees covered if they win. That's standard. You don't typically sue someone for $150,000 and then hand over whatever damages you're awarded to your attorney. What would be the point?

 

The lawsuit specifically mentions incurring costs for time spent researching it and for lawyer fees. The $150,000 they asked for is just the value they put on the account and followers, if I remember right. They could be awarded more for the other damages they mention.

 

You cannot label legal fees as damages in order to avoid the bar to recovering them. That's not the rule. Requests for legal fees are put in all complaints, whether there is a right to them or not.

 

If you are going hourly, you pay for the time the attorney put in. It can happen that a party gets a lot less than the damages awarded when the hourly fess and costs are taken out. A contingency would be 1/3 plus costs, but I don't think this is a case that would be taken on a contingency.

 

Do you have to mention a specific amount, though, or do you just mention legal fees associated with the case, which they did? I would think it would be hard to have a specific fee since the case isn't done. Not a lawyer, so I'm not sure what the requirements are. Also, I'm fairly certain the company has a firm on retainer, but honestly don't know how that works.