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Debonneville v. Pierce CaptionCourt minutes (.pdf) from May 5 indicate that Brock Pierce has now paid Alan Debonneville whatever amount of money they agreed he’d pay in order to settle their bitter, often personal, lawsuit.

Though they parties had reached a confidential agreement over a month ago, problems with the settlement (which appeared to boil down to Pierce not paying Debonneville what he’d promised) along with a ridiculous level of apparent animosity between both the litigants and the lawyers involved kept the case alive. This step, however, likely does really end the dispute.

From the court’s minutes:

The Court takes judicial notice of the fact that defendant has now made the payment required by the settlement agreement and the Order to Show Cause is taken off calendar as moot. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the previously issued Temporary Restraining Order and Writs of Attachment are dissolved and vacated.

There is still a motion for sanctions (.pdf) against Brock Pierce pending for allegedly not showing up for a scheduled deposition, and the judge could, theoretically, still rule on that — though there’s a reasonable chance it will be withdrawn now that Pierce has paid. There’s also a response to the motion (.pdf), of course. The motion and response are fairly standard posturing, but for people who would like a glimpse into the ugly world of high-stakes litigation, the exhibits to the motion (.pdf) and exhibits to the response (.pdf) include a bunch of emails back and forth between the lawyers for both sides of this case that are fairly hostile (particularly as demonstrated in the exhibits to the response) and that shed some minimal light on the settlement, though the emails were redacted before filing.

The motion for sanctions is sort of a fitting end to the whole mess. As entertaining as it’s been at times, this suit consumed more posts here than it had any business consuming given its tangential relationship to any issues that actually matter in a big picture sense. The sliver of a possibility that we’d get a ruling that accidentally said something meaningful about virtual property kept me interested, but I can’t say I’m unhappy to see this in the rear view mirror.

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One Response to “Debonneville v. Pierce Settles… This Time for Real!”

  1. on 12 May 2008 at 4:04 pmlarryr

    what was the actual case about again?
    virtual what?
    lol

    larryr
    http://www.mediaverse.ning.com

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