The plaintiff, John Deep, is proceeding in this court without a lawyer. He filed the first of these two lawsuits, 05-cv-118, as an adversary proceeding in Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of New York in 2004. Compl., In re Deep, Adv. Proc. No. 04-90037 (Bankr. N.D.N.Y Feb. 11, 2004). District Judge Kahn withdrew the bankruptcy reference, Deep v. Recording Indus. Ass’n of America, No. 04-mc-055 (N.D.N.Y. Feb. 7, 2005). Deep then amended his complaint. The MDL Panel transferred the lawsuit here on June 21, 2005. Deep v. Recording Indus. Ass’n of America, No. 05-cv-205 (N.D.N.Y. Jun. 21, 2005). Deep then amended his complaint once again, adding new parties. Second Am. Compl., No. 05-cv-118 (Docket Item 34).
In his Second Amended Complaint, Deep covers a number of newsworthy topics of the past few years, including Attorney David Boies’s representation of Vice President Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, Compl. ¶ 2; the Napster litigation, id.; investigations of Tyco, Adelphia and accounting firm Deloitte & Touche, id. ¶¶ 19, 26; kickbacks and payola in the music industry extending to “a major chain of radio stations,” Clear Channel, id. ¶ 112; investigations by New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, id. ¶¶ 113-14; congressional testimony of singer Sheryl Crow before the late Congressman Sonny Bono, id. ¶ 135; bootlegging of CDs and DVDs, id. ¶¶ 107-09; proper accounting rules for the recording industry, id. ¶¶ 121-31; and the controversy over an arrangement by which Attorney David Boies and his related law firms allegedly steered client business to a litigation support company, Amici LLC, without disclosing his or his family’s ownership of Amici, id. ¶¶ 11-20.
Deep describes an alleged conspiracy by which “Labels and Studios” schemed to inflate their revenue and profits by paying kickbacks to Trans World, a distributor. The conspiracy allegedly involved bribes, slush funds, fraudulent accounting practices, bid-rigging, kickbacks, and other devices, id. ¶¶ 93-96 ff.; phantom credits and other practices by which the “Labels and Studios” defrauded artists of their rightful royalties, id. ¶¶ 132-40; and a variety of other apparently sordid dealings (for example, “a massive fraud in which consumers, investors and artists are deceived,” id. ¶ 104). Deep claims the following relationship to the events he describes. He says that he invented a method of determining the price a consumer is willing to pay for an item online, a method that Deep says can be used successfully for “targeted marketing of discounted prices,” id. ¶ 31; in another part of the complaint, the invention becomes one for downloading video-on-demand, id. ¶ 396; and he also refers to it as “sharing with buddies,” id. ¶ 78. At the time, Deep called his invention Aimster. Deep shopped the invention to Trans World and in September 2000 obtained a meeting with Trans World. Attending were Trans World CEO Robert Higgins, Trans World CFO John Sullivan, and Boies-Schiller lawyer Michael Endler. Id. ¶ 78. During the meeting, Higgins introduced Deep to a person named Bill Duker. Id. ¶ 79. After the meeting, “in a private discussion,” Higgins told Deep that he would ask Bill Duker to represent Higgins in purchasing an interest in Deep’s invention. Id. ¶ 80. Duker and Deep met later accordingly, and discussed how Deep’s invention could be used and the structure for benefiting Higgins. “Bill Duker then advised [Deep] that [Deep] engage Boies-Schiller as [Deep’s] lawyers.” Id. ¶ 88. Duker agreed to contact attorney David Boies on Deep’s behalf. Id. “[A]s a result of Bill Duker’s promise to [Deep] in September 2000 . . . David Boies sent his letter to [Deep] dated November 15, 2000,” thereby allegedly agreeing to represent Deep. Id. ¶ 89. Deep now claims that David Boies and related law firms had an undisclosed conflict of interest because they were representing Trans World at the same time in the In re Compact Disc Litigation in this court. Compl. ¶ 163.
According to Deep, that undisclosed conflict infected all that followed, including how Deep paid Boies (allegedly in part through an ownership option in Aimster that ended up in a company controlled by Boies’s family); the structuring of Deep’s deal with Trans World; concealed payments by Boies to Duker, who then allegedly used the money to buy Deep’s assets on behalf of Trans World and the Labels and Studios, Compl. ¶ 3, or according to later allegations, on behalf of all these entities and Boies as well, id. ¶¶ 5, 10; the use of these and other payments in creating Amici, id. ¶ 11, which Boies or Boies’s family allegedly controlled; Amici’s unauthorized use of Deep’s Aimster technology to conduct Amici’s business of litigation support services, id. ¶¶ 12- 13 (which, without the benefit of Deep’s involvement, was defective, id. ¶ 19); all resulting in a conspiracy “to manipulate the market for digital music and movies by fraudulently financing and controlling [Deep’s] business using undisclosed kickbacks and earn outs,” id. ¶ 22. The scheme or conspiracy allegedly continued into Deep’s bankruptcy proceedings. Id. ¶ 23. According to Deep, the named lawyers/law firms conspired with other lawyers and with one of Deep’s accountants, as a result of which these others received excessive and undisclosed compensation, id. ¶ 24; and they concealed litigation from Deep (here Deep refers to the notorious Tyco and Adelphia disputes, matters of national media interest), and in particular the settlement of In re Compact Disc Litigation in this District, id. ¶ 26.
Deep claims to have lost and seeks to recover over $1 billion because of the settlement of the In re Compact Disc Litigation in this District; over $10 million in an undescribed controversy with AOL; over $1.02 billion in the In re Aimster Copyright Litigation in the Northern District of Illinois; $10 million paid by Tyco and Adelphia to Amici; $40 million paid by other Boies-Schiller clients to Amici; and unknown other amounts. Id. ¶ 30.
The nub of Deep’s allegations appears to be his claim that his invention, Aimster, was worth a lot of money; but that the Lawyers, Trans World, Duker, and the “Labels and Studios” all stole it from him or prevented its success (for varying reasons), and were wrongly enriched at his expense. He makes claims of fraud on this court in the In re Compact Disc Litigation settlement and on other courts in other cases; claims under federal antitrust laws, Sarbanes- Oxley, federal RICO, and federal bankruptcy law (automatic stay and fraudulent transfer); claims under New York antitrust and consumer protection law and New York common law involving breach of fiduciary duty, aiding and abetting the fiduciary breach, breach of contract, negligence, conspiracy, tortious interference with business relations, piercing the corporate veil, declaratory and injunctive relief, and constructive trust for unjust enrichment.
