The Tortious Interference Arbitration claim against Patreon

Patreon burn Podcast Art.jpg

See the update below... this claim might not be so strong after all.

This legal claim is now in the public domain so I'm reproducing it here. Patreon put this legal document in the public domain because they included it as Exhibit E in their filing to the court in order to get the injunction they sought to stop 72 arbitration actions against them.

You can find the entire PDF by digging around in the court filings behind this link. Back at the start of the filings is a document entitled:

NOTICE OF MOTION AND APPLICATION FOR ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE RE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION, POINTS AND AUTHORITIES, DECLARATION FILED BY PLAINTIFF PATREON, INC. HEARING SET FOR JUN-30-2020 AT 09:30 AM IN DEPT 302

I've put the full PDF on Mega Upload here. The section with just the arbitration claim is here.

Within that document is the complete text of one of the sample arbitration demands sent out by Owen Benjamin's fans.

As I suspected yesterday in my video and the post the day before, the arbitration claim being fought by Patreon is anything BUT frivolous. The reason they changed their terms and conditions in a panic and went to court is not because they thought these 72 arbitration claims are without merit, but because they know they could lose every one.

Not only that, the arbitration claims have all been made stronger as they've been amended to include the fact that Patreon broke their agreements with each claimant by going outside the arbitration system and forcing the claimants to defend themselves in a court! That is specifically an expense they shouldn't have had to bear within the arbitration system.

And worse: if the side which is not paying for the arbitration wants the arbitration to drag on... it will drag on and cost a fortune.

Here's the Tortious Interference claim. The only people in a position to judge the full merits of this claim would have much more knowledge of the case law than I do. But my sense is this is a long way from frivolous.

As I suspected, that's going to be hard to answer, 72 times over for Patreon!

And it gets worse, while Sargon of Akkad is neither encouraging nor discouraging his phalanx of followers from taking action, Lauren Southern, who was one of the earliest and highest profile creators to be kicked off Patreon, is not so reticent:

I've been corrected: Apparently Patreon's TOS are in direct violation of CA law & The cause for action applies to ALL
past Patreon users.

If you were a patron of mine but don't fall into these categories label your email "Patron Arbitration Group 2" https://t.co/GSLFxPzLCl
— Lauren Southern (@Lauren_Southern) August 1, 2020

She's clearly going to help her followers take action.

Vox Day's blog has an update which another creator received by email from Patreon which has a bit of a Hitler bunker scene feel to it, I'm sure those memes can't be far away now.

I've put the entire arbitration claim below my signature.

Update: digging around I found that Milo Yiannopoulos has already tried the tortious interference case in arbitration and lost. He wasn't able to prove a contract between himself and his Patrons. The new claims here with Owen Benjamin, however, include some deceptive practices and illegal contract claims stemming from Patreon's changes after they announced their plan to go to arbitration.

I love looking at other people's law suits!