Chuck C. Johnson and his lawyer John Burns actually met their final deadline to respond to Gawker in the defamation suit they filed, and this time they managed to produce some documents that aren’t quite as obviously terrible as their first attempt.

For the record, here they are, uploaded to Scribd by @AdamSteinbaugh. I’m posting links to the docs instead of embedding them because three embedded PDFs is a bit much:

Chuck Johnson v. Gawker: Opposition to Motion to Dismiss (Do-Over)
Chuck C. Johnson v. Gawker: Opposition to anti-SLAPP (do-over)
Chuck C. Johnson v. Gawker: Proposed First Amended Complaint

The illusion that these filings aren’t as horrible as their first attempt vanishes, though, when you start to actually read some of the arguments. For example:

COUNT VI- 42 U.S.C. § 1983 - Conspiracy to Interfere with Civil Rights Under the Fourteenth Amendment

[…]

Defendants have conspired for the purpose of depriving Plaintiffs their right to file a defamation lawsuit under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

And:

271. Defendants are state actors by virtue of their use of CDA § 230, in that they use that statute as a shield to enable them to take otherwise illegal and unconstitutional actions.

272. When a state actor inserts itself between an individual and the individual’s realization of his rights, such is Constitutionally impermissible.

U.S.C. §1983 is a federal statute that is intended to protect private citizens when the government violates their civil rights, and section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects publishers from being liable for the comments of their readers, or for any other content submitted by users of a publisher’s website. But this is clearly not what Chuck Johnson wants, because he’s trying to sue Gawker, in part, for comments posted at their site. So in this argument, they’re actually trying to argue that Gawker is a “state actor,” i.e. part of the government, and not a private entity at all! No, I have no idea how they think they can get away with this weird claim.

There’s more ridiculous stuff in here if you start digging; here’s a good one:

Plaintiffs also stipulate they have alleged that Defendants committed torts against Plaintiffs in the state of Missouri.

Yes, they’re “stipulating” that Gawker defamed Chuck Johnson in Missouri. In other words, they’re agreeing with themselves.

Chuck and his lawyer also spend considerable time in their amended complaint on the awful Gawker article about David Geithner (which was widely condemned), apparently for no other reason than to argue that “Gawker is horrible so please give us millions of dollars, judge.” But in that section we find this laughable claim and footnote:

Reports surfaced that the article might have been based on false accusations, a hoax even.²⁷

[…]

²⁷ Charles Johnson, “Is The Gawker Story An Elaborate Hoax? Sure Looks That Way,” GotNews​.com July 17, 2015

Yes, to support the claim that Gawker’s article was a “hoax,” Chuck Johnson’s lawyer is citing… Chuck Johnson.

They’re also repeating their arguments that the state of Missouri is the proper venue for this case, not because that’s where Chuck’s lawyer is licensed to practice, oh no, that’s not it; it’s because Gawker serves advertisements targeted to readers and if a reader is in Missouri they’ll see ads specific to Missouri. And Gawker has published articles about the St. Louis Cardinals.

And now we await the judge’s ruling on this mess.