I’ve written a lot about the legal thuggery perpetrated against autism blogger Kathleen Seidel by an unethical lawyer named Clifford Shoemaker, who issued a subpoena against her based on dubious conspiratorial thinking about her supposedly being a shill for big pharma. Shoemaker, in case you didn’t know, is a lawyer who represents litigants suing vaccine manufacturers for “vaccine injury.” In this case, he represented Reverend Lisa Sykes and her husband as they sued Bayer for alleged vaccine injury, and Kathleen Seidel had done a long post about Shoemaker’s activities shortly before he issued the subpoena, which was clearly retaliation against Seidel. The subpoena itself was intrusive in the extreme and asked for all sorts of personal financial information; in other words, it was an obvious fishing expection. So egregious was Shoemaker’s action that even David Kirby and Dan Olmsted couldn’t stomach it.
Fortunately, Seidel’s self-drafted motion to quash was successful, and Shoemaker was ordered by the judge to justify his subpoena. Now, Shoemaker has finally responded, and it would be utterly hilarious were it not a legal action that’s deadly serious. It’s well worth reading yourself for its tidbits of paranoia. (The bit about how Kathleen Seidel’s husband David somehow has seized control of Wikipedia is especially precious.) Fortunately, Kathleen Seidel makes it hilarious by marking the text up with more than a little judicious linking to both useful and humorous sources and retorts.
Personally, I hope the court gives Clifford Shoemaker exactly what he deserves for his legal thuggery based on the “pharma shill” gambit.
