Chuck C. Johnson Fails to Show Up in CA for Suit Against Gawker, Is Ordered to Show Cause
As we noted back in December, discredited far right blogger Chuck C. Johnson (who is NOT ME) filed an amazingly ill-advised defamation lawsuit against Gawker in the Fresno Superior Court, submitting an almost exact copy of the document he filed in Missouri (for a case that was thrown out of court) without changing anything.
Today we checked the Fresno Superior Court website to see where things stood, and Chuck failed to appear for the hearing scheduled on April 11, and also apparently failed to serve Gawker’s representatives.
They waited on him until 2:13 pm for a 1:30 case management conference, then scheduled an Order to Show Cause hearing for him to explain why he shouldn’t be sanctioned.
No doubt, Johnson will claim this was all part of his master plan (as he always does), but it looks like he may have gotten himself into hot water by just blowing this whole thing off and wasting the court’s time. We can only hope.
Here’s the Order to Show Cause document; he’s ordered to appear in person on June 16 to explain why he shouldn’t be sanctioned.
Notice that the court is also asking Johnson to explain why “Got News LLC is in pro per” — in other words, why Johnson is representing himself without an attorney. In California an LLC cannot represent itself and must have legal counsel. So he’s also potentially looking at sanctions for violating this statute.
