Phoenix, AZ -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/11/2016 -- The price of Richard Goren's abusive, groundless lawsuit against consumer advocacy website ripoffreport.com owner Xcentric Ventures. Federal Court orders Goren to post $30,000 bond if appealed. The Federal District Court ordered Massachusetts attorney Richard A. Goren to pay the price of his overreaching  attempt to sue the consumer advocacy website Ripoff Report's owner, Xcentric Ventures. The court ordered Goren to pay Xcentric more than $123,000 to cover attorney's fees that Xcentric spent over two years of litigation fending off his attempted copyright hijacking. Goren claimed two post on the Ripoff Report defamed him.  He sued Xcentric instead of pursuing the person who posted the reports. The a Communications Decency Act makes third-party intermediaries like Xcentric immune from such suits.  Goren thought he had a loophole  way around the statute: he attempted to use a state court default judgment against the poster to assign himself the posts' copyrights, then sued Xcentric for copyright infringement. The Copyright Act bars that end-run around the CDA, and the court decisively rejected it in a summary judgment order in March.

The other shoe dropped on December 31, 2015. The Copyright Act allows courts to award costs including attorney's fees to the prevailing party, and the court ruled that "by any objective view of the record Xcentric was the prevailing party" and Goren must pay more than $123,000 in attorney fees.   The court also ordered attorney Goren to post a $30,000 bond for fees and costs Xcentric may incur in defending against Goren's  appeal of the Court's summary judgment ruling. 

These decisions vindicate Xcentric's vigorous defense against objectively unreasonable nuisance lawsuits. Xcentric has been sued more than 100 times and never lost against those suits, including on appeal.  Ed Magedson founder of Ripoff Report celebrates the Court's  decision as a victory for principles of consumers' first amendment rights, and use of the internet as a public forum for free speech.

Xcentric's defense team was led by Maria Crimi Speth of Jaburg Wilk in Phoenix, Arizona and Dan Booth of Booth Sweet LLP in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Here is a link to Judge Casper's orders: http://boothsweet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/12-31-15-orders.pdf

About Ripoff Report
Ripoff Report was brought to life in 1997 and since that time Ripoff Report has continued its' mission to help consumers. Beyond hosting our public interactive forum where consumers can warn other consumers about frauds, scams and rip-offs, Ripoff Report helps warn the general public of questionable situations by responding to media inquiries who are looking for news stories and providing them with information.