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Litigation Against This Site |
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ColumbusConsumer
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" Ricartautoripoffs.com is taking street justice onto the Internet in a uniquely and time-honored American tradition. This car dealer should remove the plug from his exhaust pipe, go home, clean up his car selling act, and let this young muckraking webmaster do his job." Michael Sweig, Editor and Publisher of E-Commerce Law Source
"who speaks up for the enthusiasts and little folks on the web who have their domain names stolen from them by powerful $$ corporations?" Should they try to copy a SPECIFIC business, the TM law is already in place. Most big companies are mainly worried about customers legitimately complaining about poor products and services, which should be your right (as wipo.org.uk is doing). They stopped 'Ricart Auto Rip Off .com' and countless 'sucks' others. By The World Intellectual Piracy Organization. Ricart spends $100,000 trying to get this page down. Ricart loses injunction! Fred Ricart hides from deposition requests in Florida. Threatened with the prospect of contempt of court Ricart dismisses lawsuit! Coward! Since the story of the litigation hit the news there has been interest from across the country. I have received calls and e-mails from lawyers, law students, and victims of Ricart interested in viewing the original page. Legally, this web page is among other consumer advocacy pages that are exploring new ground with the Internet. Interest among the legal community is high, and for that reason, my Attorney Eric Willison and I, will make available a PDF/Adobe Acrobat system of the filings, motions, depositions and summary for this case in the near future. In addition, audio-visual recordings of the deposition will be available on the "Ricart Depositions" page.
Why do a page about Ricart? After being a victim myself, I filed an AG complaint with little success, and was run around by AutoCap. In my mind there was no difference between Ricart ripping me off $35,000+ in a car deal, and them stealing $35,000+ of my personal belongings by sneaking through my window. I called the manager of Ricart Ford to complain about being ripped off, his reply was, "thats how we make our money" and hung up on me. I spoke to a lawyer who informed me that on order to attempt a legal remedy I would need a hefty retainer, no guarantees, and count on a long struggle as Ricart maintains their own in-house legal dept., as well as numerous arrangements with local attorneys. The in-house lawyer setup deters many would be litigants, despite that Ohio Consumer Law dictates that damages in fraud cases is 3 times the amount of the fraud. I had basically figured I learned a valuable lesson about car buying and Ricart, and decided to let it go. Two years later I discovered I had been scammed again by Ricart. They refused to give the proceeds of a canceled phony warranty. It turned out that basically I paid $1,500 for 3 oil changes to be performed by Ricart mechanics. The warranty company informed me of the scam 2 years after getting my vehicle and that the proceeds were sent to Ricart, not the bank. This warranty was marketed by Ricart as taking my total coverage an additional 75,000 miles. In essence Ricart pocketed $3,000 for 3 oil changes never used on a phony "Warranty" that was canceled in the first month. I decided to personally visit the AG's office this time. I called Rhett Ricart 6 times about the warranty fraud with never a call back, I also contacted the media with no interest from them. Thanks Dispatch & Channel 6 Troubleshooter. The AG's Office While at the Attorney General's (AG's) office I decided to review some other people's complaints against Ricart. I was amazed at the floor to ceiling stack. I had the AG's office make copies, and personally read every complaint. I was amazed and stunned at the type of improprieties. The AG had them organized by date, however, I could see patterns emerge. Certain complaints indicate the same salesman for one type of scam and another sales person for another. The stories and words spoke by the salespeople were also the same in the different complaints. I discovered one salesman may specialize in Theft Gard scams, and another may have a specialty in lease fraud. As a professional with over 15-years dedicated to serving my fellow human and those less fortunate, I felt nauseous. I've worked with the homeless, those with disabilities, children, and the indigent as a profession and as an advocate politically. I read those complaints through the eyes of someone attuned to human suffering. I was stunned at the devastation that occurred to many who filed complaints. One thing that is conveyed in the complaints on a regular basis is a sense of desperation. Single parent families out of divorce and rebuilding-scammed, minorities who have been victimized by one system or another-scammed, those who scraped and saved to by a first vehicle-scammed, retirees on fixed incomes-scammed, woman braving the car buying process alone-scammed, working class stiffs trying to improve their lives-scammed. And yes, the top management knew and backed the salesman as customers frequently took their complaints to the top. I had also spoke with ex-Ricart employees who gave me inside info on the scams. One stated "I quit because I couldn't sleep at night." My Legal Story The original web page was launched in the fall of 1999. The ricatauto domain name was obtained in the summer of 1999. The site was listed in Consumerama, a database of consumer advocacy gripe sites. It flew in cyber space like a rocket. I was receiving hits galore with one ten day period receiving over 1500 visitors. I had also sent a link to my page via joke emails as well as sending to it other car dealers. In January I started receiving threatening letters from Ricart's attorney. My Internet server had also received threat letters as well. I switched the web page to ricartautoripoffs as a means of appeasing everyone, I also liked it better. The threats continued with promises of decimation by lawsuit. I offered to give Ricart some editorial powers as I was willing to change a few things here or there, however, the complaints would stay. This was unacceptable. They wanted the site off completely. I continued to receive threatening letters delivered by courier, US Mail and email. Ricart in his litigation has alleged I was engaged in cyberpiracy; buying a domain name that is a trademark and offering it for sale to the company. This is totally false. Cyberpiracy became a new law in November of 1999, as many people were making a business out of registering domain names and offering them for sale. What appears to be happening is that this new law is also being unsuccessfully used by companies as a tool to silent consumer critics online. The law basically says you can't offer to sell a domain name that has trademark back to the original owner. For example, you can't register Sears.com and call Sears and say you want to buy this domain name? They own the Sears trademark and it would be like extortion to try and sell them back something they already own. I purchased the domain names ricartauto & ricartautoripoffs and used them for a consumer advocacy page never offering them for sale. This is legal. You can use a trademark of a company in a domain name for parody, consumer criticism, and numerous other uses. Its called "Fair Use" and free speech. How can you complain about someone without using their name? Can you imagine a protester against the Klan not being able to identify who he is protesting against on his sign because The "Klan", and "KKK," may be trademarked? That is the absurdity of their argument. Really it has more to do with the content of my page they want quiet. The power of the internet has made companies more vulnerable to consumer critics and they in turn have sued to silence them because they don't like the content. Numerous other companies live with consumer criticism web pages like Walmart, Nike, Microsoft, Terminix, and even other car dealers. Why can't Ricart? Ricart also made offers for settlement at the same time of threatening me with litigation if this wasn't resolved soon. They offered to pay for the fraud they committed, the web page, disk space as well as other expenses associated with the page. Mr. Ricart personally asked via through the lawyers to meet with and see what he could do to "bring me back in the Ricart fold", I laughed and thought, how about moving to another state? But in reality I told them to "stick it." In turning them down, the threats of litigation heated up from Ricart and so did their requests for settlement discussion. Keep in mind this all happened within a 10 day period. In one day alone we received 2 more threats of pending lawsuit and 5 more request for settlement discussion via e-mail, fax and phone. After some consultation, I agreed to the meeting for discussion of the issues. During this meeting, which I didn't attend, and they traveled to my lawyers office, nothing was agreed upon nor any terms settled with the other side. They offered to pay for the fraud and miscellaneous expenses but the page had to come down. A fruitless endeavor. The next day we received a formal lawsuit claiming copyright infringement, trademark infringement, cyberpiracy as well as numerous other accusation. Ricart claimed I was competing with them by selling cars over the net (that is plain crazy) as well as make money on books that sold on my web page (there were none). I laughed at the cyberpiracy allegation. Ricart repeatedly sought settlement discussions, repeatedly threatened legal action if not granted, made repeated offers to pay for expenses of the page, research, and the vehicle, and engaged in a settlement meeting where nothing was ever agreed upon. They self-manufactured their case and allegations. This was done so they would have something to base their case on. It was all premeditated, which explains their intensity and persistence. Even the meeting and allegations were all premeditated. No cyberpiracy, or trademark infringement, no car sales, no book sales, no advertisers, just all Ricart scams. How else would a crooked car dealer handle himself? One only needs to look in the "Ricart Legal History" section of this web site to learn that Fred was busted by a judge for altering legal documents in a previous court case. In essence, and ironically, Ricart and their attorneys attempted a bait & switch. You can sue anybody for anything and don't need a case. They are using the law as a means to harass and maliciously prevent this info about Ricart from getting out in a web page; an obstruction of my free speech. I thought to myself, if you're going to chase a rat into a sewer, you can't complain if you get a little sewage on ya. In addition, a federal judge called my lawyer to say I was under a FEDERAL GAG order. I wasn't suppose to tell anyone about the litigation or web page including my family or face jail. I thought, this is crazy....are they accusing me of selling military secrets to the Chinese or maybe being a mafia hitman? A few days later Ricart's attorney managed to get a busy Federal Court judge to clear his whole day just for Fast Freddie Ricart, so as to meet with me and my attorneys. Now the average Joe through his Columbus lawyer would never be able to get that standard of justice. I do plan to sue when this case is over. Interestingly, Ricart is not claiming slander or libel about the numerous allegations I have presented? They also have paid about $100,000 in legal fees trying to get this page of. Hmmm does that say anything? Ricart then asks to dismiss the lawsuit! We had spent a month trying to schedule Fred & Rhett Ricart's deposition. It was a constant game of hide and seek. At one point Fred wanted us to fly to Florida to depose him. My lawyers informed Fred that since he lives here on Ohio, and filed in Ohio, the deposition needs to happen here as well. We then threatened them with contempt of court as they constantly flubbed discovery requests and deposition dates. That is when they raised their white flags of surrender. Currently, I am locally represented by Eric Willison, Consumer Law, and Alvin Borromeo, Trademark and Intellectual property, who are doing a kick butt job! As a former cynic of the legal system they have changed my outlook. Watching good lawyers work passionately for something they believe in is very refreshing and a real gift. I am also represented by a Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen Litigation Group of Washington, D.C. which is the brain-child organization of Ralph Nader. They choose and select few cases to represent nationwide out of thousand for citizens who act out in the best interests of the public and get legally harassed for it. I am fortunate to be one of those few cases.
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