CrunchNotes

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Many of you know all about Sam Sethi, the former TechCrunch writer who left after a disagreement and then went on to create BlogNation. Two days ago Sethi filed a lawsuit against us for libel and other issues. As we always do, we’re posting the litigation threats and will continue to fight the litigation publicly. See our previous posts involving YouTube , Marvel , Rivals , Mediascrape EarthComber and Richard Figueroa . I don’t need to go into much additional background here. My post from late 2007 gives the complete history of this guy and what he has done. Our response letter, posted below, goes into a lot more detail to back up statements we’ve made. There are also recent developments not covered in the old posts or these letters below. First, Sethi has been sued by former employee Oliver Starr for unpaid wages, and that case is ongoing. Second, Sethi has admitted that in November 2006 he was barred from being a director or manager of of any company for eight years following the order. He was subject to criminal prosecution and would be personally responsible for debts of a company if he contravened the order. Sethi now says he had the order overturned, which may or may not be true. We’re trying to track down the facts that led to the order – whatever they are, they can’t be pretty. Needless to say, we think these claims have no merit, otherwise we would not have written the posts in the first place, or would have retracted. The letter exchange is below. Updates coming soon. Initial Threat Letter Before Action Private & Confidential (Not For Publication) Dear Mr. Arrington, Our client: Mr. Sam Sethi Re: Proposed Libel Action v Yourself & TechCrunch We act for Mr. Sam Sethi in relation to a series of libelous postings in your TechCrunch site containing numerous highly damaging allegations, the most serious of which, are that our client is a criminal, namely that he is a fraudster, and has threatened to kill Mr. Lee Wilkins, a former business associate. Your links to Oliver Starr’s blog “StarTrek” also makes you jointly responsible for the allegations that our client was directly responsible for the onset of Marc Orchant’s heart attack resulting in his death on 9th December 2007. The above therefore are extremely serious libels. You have also published other very hurtful allegations against our client and we reserve our right to sue in respect of them unless you make prompt amends to apologise, remove, and offer appropriate damages (all of which will be paid over to a suitable third party such as a charity and/or the Marc Orchant fund and/or other unpaid editors at Blognation), and also pay our client’s legal costs. As you can see our client seeks no personal gain from this claim. The purpose of this letter is therefore to give you the opportunity of resolving our client’s claim against you without the necessity of court proceedings. However please be under no illusion that our instructions are clearly to issue legal proceedings should you ignore this letter, or fail to co-operate by providing the remedies sought towards full vindication of our client’s reputation.

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