Lawsuit: Adjourned BaconDonut Enterprises v. BoiBot’s Skins [2020] DCR 15

[Pig_Girl]

IN THE COURT OF DEMOCRACYCRAFT
CIVIL ACTION

BaconDonut Enterprises
Plaintiff

v.


BoiBot’s Skins
Defendant

COMPLAINT
The Plaintiff complains against the Defendant as follows:
The defendant made an add that violates rules and laws code: 15.16 aka Slander.

WRITTEN STATEMENT FROM THE PLAINTIFF

I. PARTIES
1. Maxterpiece (president and co-owner of BaconDonut Enterprises
2. Queen_Cats (Vice President and co-owner of BaconDonut Enterprises
3. BoiBotPlayz (owner of BoiBot’s Skins)

II. FACTS
1. An ad was posted in the Democracycraft discord server for the defendant. (Credit to Maxterpiece for screenshot, this was posted in original lawsuit, as link, but it appears this screenshot was overlooked as it was posted as word "Evidence" that you could click on that took you to screenshot).

2. In it, it states “You may know of Skin Palace. Their prices are ridiculous”
3. This violates rule and law 15.16 Slander

Rescinded - Slander Act

A BILL To Punish Slander The people of Democracy Craft, through their elected Representatives in the Congress and the force of law ordained to that Congress by the people through the constitution, do hereby enact the following provisions into law: 1 - Short Title and Enactment (1) This Act...

democracycraft.net

4. Skin Palace is a subsidiary of BaconDonut Enterprises
...

III. CLAIMS FOR RELIEF
1. The claims for relief are explained above
...

IV. PRAYER FOR RELIEF
The Plaintiff seeks the following from the Defendant:
1. All I want is the ad not to be posted (and never posted again), and $300.00 compensation, for loss of our sales
...

Thank you for reading, and hope you have nice day.

 

[Nacho]

The Defendant is ordered to appear before the court as the defendant in the case BaconDonut Enterprises v. BoiBot’s Skins. The defendant will be given twenty-four hours to respond or a default judgment will be made.

 

[Davinho]

IN THE COURT OF DEMOCRACYCRAFT
ANSWER TO COMPLAINT

BaconDonut Enterprises
Plaintiff

v.

BoiBot’s Skins (Barrister David Cyrus representing)
Defendant

Case no: 28-12-2020

I ANSWER TO COMPLAINT​

1. The defendant would firstly like to thank the plaintiff for raising her concerns and would like to explain the actions that have been taken.

2. The evidence brought before the court is not a slanderous statement at all. The defendant has simply used his opinion through anecdotal experience in his advertisement. The statement was not made as a fact, but an opinion.

II DEFENSES
1. As the ad explains the defendant, sells his goods for a substantially lower price than the plaintiff. In his opinion, he has expressed that the plaintiff's prices are "ridiculous". Said opinion can be interpreted and understood very well, due to the price gaping between the plaintiff and the defendant as seen in the evidence attached.

2. Prior to the expressed opinion that the plaintiff has raised an issue with, my client has invited people to familiarize themselves with the said company.

3. As seen in the attached evidence, Skin Palace charges 15$ non-refundable deposit. In addition, to a rate of 15$ per 5 minutes that the designer works on the skin. This is a considerable difference between the companies considering the defendant sells the skin as a total amount of 15$ which is equal to the deposit that the plaintiff charges alone.

4. The plaintiff has also cited a slander law that has been repealed by the Defamation Act of October 2020. Said act requires the plaintiff to prove that the defendant has intentionally damaged the plaintiff's reputation. However, the plaintiff has not submitted any evidence that would prove the intention of the defendant.​

 

[Nacho]

Both parties may now call upon any witnesses and provide any additional evidence in this case. If either party wishes to call upon a witness, they must respond to this case with a list of witnesses they choose to question, and the set of questions that they would like to ask each witness. If either party does not have any witnesses or additional evidence to share, they may reply noting that they do not have anything else to share.

Each party is asked to please respond within 24 hours or the court will continue without reviewing any additional evidence or witnesses.

 

[Davinho]

Your honor,

At this time, we do not have any additional evidence or witnesses to present to the court.

Thank you.

 

[Pig_Girl]

Your honor, I would like to point several things out.

First of all, the ad is effectively broken into 3 parts: the hook, the slander, and the ad. The hook is the part where it states "Hello everyone, do you have a skin that you downloaded years ago. Maybe it's time for a change. Maybe you want it to be more unique. Well, I can do that for you." this part is simply there to grab attention. The slander is where the ad states "You may know of the Skin Palace. their prices are ridiculous." which is there to intentionally put out a bad reputation for Skin Palace, and to also make the costumers think it’s a bad company. The last part, the ad, is there to tell customers, that there is a “better” option. Problem with this form of advertisement is that the defendant is using the name of a Bacon Donut Enterprises subsidiary (Skin Palace) to try and gain profits, by attempting to manipulate potential consumers into thinking that Skin Palace is inferior to BoiBot's Skins on the basis of price, without allowing potential consumers a chance to consider other properties of each company. It doesn't matter what the intentions are of the defendant, but this does not eliminate the damage the defendant has done to the reputation of Skin Palace. Below is a definition of the term "slander."

As you can see, the second definition of the term is "a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report" and even states underneath said definition that a use for the term is "a slander against his good name." When the defendant stated "You may know of the Skin Palace. their prices are ridiculous." they made a defamatory statement (regarding our prices) with the intention of making profit (which is malicious). Now if we turn to the fact that the definition includes "statement or report" which means that an opinion can be considered slander. Finally, we have the part where it states that it's "false." Below are screenshots where clients have either complained that our prices are too "cheap" or the client willingly paid more for the skin than the actual cost of the skin in question (a few things to note are that I've censored all the names of the clients, and I went by "Pig_Girl2003" up until very recently last thing to note is that in one of the later screenshots, the $25 that's being referred to is the initial deposit, which has since been lowered to only $15).

Your honor, thank you for looking through these screenshots, I would also like to call in witness xEndeavour as he was one of our clients that not only stated that our prices are "cheap" but has also given a very generous tip when purchasing a skin from our services.

 

[Davinho]

Objection your honor,

The reason why the witness is being called has no relevance to the case. The pricing of SkinPalace might be seen as cheap or expensive depending on the individual's balance. The reason stated why this witness is being called is because " he was one of our clients that not only stated that our prices are "cheap" but has also given a very generous tip when purchasing a skin from our services." The said statement implies an ex gratia payment. The customer had no obligation to pay more and he did it out of free will which implies he could be considered wealthier than the average player. The defendant was just giving off his opinion on what he thought was expensive. The plaintiff's witness has a more substantial amount of money and assets compared to the defendant, the price of goods and services would differ from person to person on what is expensive or not. Therefore I object to the witness due to the fact that the witness has not actually been a part of the "incident" but is rather being called to back the plaintiff's statement and to give off their opinion. An opinion which differs from the defendant's opinion on the prices of SkinPalace which my defendant has stated in the advertisement as already mentioned above. Furthermore, the plaintiff uses the definition of the IRL meaning of slander completely ignoring the fact that the plaintiff has cited the wrong law and even implied that it doesn't matter what the intention of the defendant was even though the defamation act legally requires the plaintiff to prove the intention.

Thank you.

 

[Pig_Girl]

Your honor, I would also like to point something out, the defendant's attorney has stated "The plaintiff has also cited a slander law that has been repealed by the Defamation Act of October 2020. Said act requires the plaintiff to prove that the defendant has intentionally damaged the plaintiff's reputation. However, the plaintiff has not submitted any evidence that would prove the intention of the defendant." If this is honestly the case, then why is the slander law still published under the "Miscellaneous Laws" section of the rules and laws?

I would also like to show how their statement has impacted our sales. Below is sale that was lost as result of recent slander (name censored for privacy reasons).

Please note that the client shown in the ticket above and in this list are the same person. I am willing to dm the judge the uncensored screenshots if necessary.

 

[Davinho]

Your honor,

The Rules & Laws page seems to be a bit outdated regarding this matter. If you click on the link I have sent in the answer to the complaint (Defamation Act of October 2020) you will see in Article I (3) "The Slander Act will be made nulled/removed." as well as President Westray's ratification. Furthermore, the plaintiff still fails to recognize their obligation to prove the intention of the defendant in this case. Patiently, I will now await your honor's decision regarding my objection.

EoS

Thank you.

 

[Pig_Girl]

Your honor, I would like to thank defendant for bringing up valuable points in their most recent statement.

First of all, I would like to address the outdated rules and laws page to include the slander act, rather than the defamation act that nullifies the slander act. While it does alter my original argument, the offense in question remains unchanged. The utilization of Skin Palace's name in the defendant's original ad would still fall under the slander category of the defamation act. This section of the act is as follows:

In this case, the slander in question is defaming a company, but the concept remains the same. If we could go back to my second post in this thread, you will notice a significant amount of evidence proving that the defendant's original statement of "You may know of the Skin Palace. their prices are ridiculous." is false on multiple accounts. If we go back to the screenshot in my opening statement, you will notice that the defendant's original ad was posted in "#business-adverts" on the main DC Discord. I bring this fact up for two different reasons. First reason is that if we all turn our attention to the second part of the definition of slander as established on DC, it says that it must be "in the form of spoken communication" which includes Discord chat. This section of the main Discord would fall under the category of Discord chat. Another reason I bring this up is because this particular channel in the DC Discord is dedicated specifically to business advertisements (hence the channel name). There is a cool down of 6 hours in this channel, so therefore it would be impractical to use this channel for any messages other than it's intended purpose of business advertisements. With that being said, it would be clear that the intention of the defendant's initial message that lead to this lawsuit was to promote their company "BoiBot’s Skins." This would therefore mean that the defendant had mentioned Skin Palace with the intention of defaming the company, so as to encourage consumers to leave Skin Palace in favor of BoiBot's Skins. This concept is further explained in my second post on this thread.

Final point that I would like to make is that since the time of the initial lawsuit, the defendant had posted another advertisement of similar nature in the same channel on the main DC Discord that further defames the company Skin Palace.

This shows that the defendant was persistent with their attempt to further defame Skin Palace, in spite of the fact that they were already being sued for sander.

 

[Nacho]

I will have order in the court room! Both parties will refrain from speaking when not recognized by the chair, simply going back and forth will not solve any disputes. The court herby denies the request of the plaintiff calling their witness to the stand the court does not see the relevance of the witness.

The Court will now call upon the plaintiff to present their closing remarks for the court. Please make it known that no new information can be presented at this time.​

 

[Pig_Girl]

Your honor, I would like to point out what I have stated earlier. Given the text channel that the message in question was originally posted in, the defendant clearly meant for it to be an ad for their skin company. Part of said ad is demoting Skin Palace to try and defame the company, so that consumers would then choose BoiBot's Skins instead as a "better" option. That being said, we at Bacon Donut Enterprises (and by extension Skin Palace) don't care that the defendant had made a competing skin company. We mainly wish for the defendant to stop making ads that defame the reputation of Skin Palace. After all, we're on this server to have fun, but when the defendant unnecessarily creates ads to destroy our reputation, it kills part of the fun.

That is my closing statement your honor.

 

[Nacho]

The Court will now call upon the defendant to present their closing remarks for the court. Please make it known that no new information can be presented at this time.

 

[Davinho]

Your honor,

Throughout this entire case, we have seen the plaintiff fails to prove the intention of the defendant. Furthermore, the plaintiff has stated that she does not think it matters what the intention was even though she was legally required to prove it. Even then, the plaintiff simply just stated his opinion in his advertisement as already explained in my answer to the complaint. The citizens of DemocracyCraft are very diverse some are richer than the others. The defendant has simply stated his opinion based on his wealth. I don't see any reason why the defendant should be punished by simply stating his opinion. Every citizen has the right to express their own opinion in DemocracyCraft. The plaintiff has also tried to back up her invalid points by presenting a "witness" to the court that wasn't even a part of the "incident". Considering these mentioned points including my previous responses I am certain this case is very clear and that the defendant is NOT guilty.

End of Statement.

Thank you.

 

[Nacho]

Thank you both for submitting your closing remarks in a very timely manner, As I am short on time with the impending holiday of the new years.
The court moves into recess for a minimum of 14 hours and will resume on 12/31/2020 at 1 PM EST​

 

[Nacho]

Verdict

Case No. 28-12-2020

I. PLAINTIFF’S POSITION
1. The Plaintiff, BaconDonut Enterprises claims that BoiBot's Skins made slanderous remarks in an advertisement post within the DC Discord.
2. Wish for the advertisement to be removed and never posted again as well as a 300$ compensation for loss of sales.

II. DEFENDANTS POSITION
1. The Defendant, BoiBot’s Skins, represented by David Cyrus claims the ad released by BoiBot Skins is opinionated and a mere marketing scheme.
2. The Price that BoiBot's Skin charges by nature are lower.

III. THE COURT OPINION
1. The advertisement published by Defendant was not meant to discredit or purposely harm the reputation of Plaintiff.
2. The Plaintiff has failed to provide any sufficient evidence of the loss of sales, rather than someone making a choice not to do business with the Plaintiff.

IV. DECISION
The Court hereby adjourns this case in favor of the Defendant. On the grounds, that Plaintiff has failed to prove that the comment made truly hurt the reputation of Plaintiff.