Jack Thompson: Permanently Disbarred

[Flagg]

Link

It's been a long time coming, but silver-haired game hater Jack Thompson has been permanently disbarred. That's right folks, in thirty days time, the man who once so proudly flaunted his lawyer credentials in peoples' faces will soon have to go from being "Jack Thompson, Attorney" to just plain ol' John Bruce Thompson, Nobody.

The Court approves the corrected referee's report and John Bruce Thompson is permanently disbarred, effective thirty days from the date of this order so that respondent can close out his practice and protect the interests of existing clients. If respondent notifies the Court in writing that he is no longer practicing and does not need the thirty days to protect existing clients, this Court will enter an order making the permanent disbarment effective immediately. Respondent shall accept no new business from the date this order is filed.

Judgment is entered for The Florida Bar, 651 East Jefferson Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2300, for recovery of costs from John Bruce Thompson in the amount of $43,675.35, for which sum let execution issue.

Not final until time expires to file motion for rehearing, and if filed, determined. The filing of a motion for rehearing shall not alter the effective date of this permanent disbarment. Consistent with this Court's sanction order, no motion for rehearing will be considered unless signed by a member in good standing of The Florida Bar other than respondent.

Jack Thompson will no longer be able to practice law thanks to a string of misconduct allegations that included lying, making a nuisance of himself to professionals, and generally being both ignorant and disrespectful of his peers. Jack Thompson behaved with nothing but contempt and immaturity in his own disbarment trial, so it's hardly surprising that this has happened. He had only himself to blame.

I doubt Thompson's crusade against videogames ends here. But until FOX hands him another paycheck to pretend to be an expert, hit the jump for an exclusive official response to the disbarment from Jack himself.

[Thanks, Radio Guy]

We contacted Jack Thompson asking if we might have an official statement on his disbarment. He answered our request swiftly, but concisely. His statement simply reads:

"Sure. Go to Hell."

I really can't understand why he's not still a lawyer.

Ding dong, the bitch is dead.

[Shinova]

"Sure. Go to hell."


Wow. Prick. Good riddance.

[DPDarkPrimus]

And the featured game to play this weekend on XBox Live is GTA IV. How appropriate.

[The Vortex Empire]

Good riddance. That guy was a nut.

And the featured game to play this weekend on XBox Live is GTA IV. How appropriate.

Very fitting.

[Davis 51]

FUCK YES!

The man was scum. He deserves this.

[Mr Bean]

Watch the spam and me-too ism.
On the other hand
Horray!
Wait for it now, he will not fade away, FOX will bring him on with the rest of their horror gallery for comment.

[Ryushikaze]

The thing I love most about the story, he filed an emergency motion to stop the disbarment and perhaps get a rehearing, but such a filing has to be filed by A: A lawyer in good standing, which he is not, and B: a different lawyer than the one up for disbarment.
Small wonder he's getting punted.

[Davis 51]

Wait for it now, he will not fade away, FOX will bring him on with the rest of their horror gallery for comment.

Well, the disbarment doesn't actually take place until 30 days from now, according to Gamepolitics.com, so he still has 30 days to make TV appearances. That being said, I'm not so sure even FOX wants a disbarred attorney.

Speaking of Gamepolitics, they posted a timeline today of all the events leading up to it.

Yesterday the Florida Supreme Court permanently disbarred Jack Thompson. Barring an unlikley reversal, the 56-year-old attorney will be stripped of his license to practice law in 30 days.

How did things get this far? GamePolitics, which has covered Thompson extensively since the site went live in 2005, has compiled a timeline of key events during that time:

November 18, 2005: Thompson is lead attorney in a $600 million dollar lawsuit against Take-Two, Rockstar, Sony, GameStop and Wal-mart which alleges that 18-year-old GTA player Devin Moore was influenced by the games when he killed two police officers and a police dispatcher in Fayette, Alabama. Following a motion by Take-Two's lawyers, Alabama Judge James Moore revokes Thompson's right to practice in Alabama, essentially throwing him off the GTA case. Moore will later file a Bar complaint against Thompson over his conduct and be a key witness at his Bar trial.

October 13, 2006: Miami Judge Ronald Friedman dismisses Thompson's bid to have Bully declared a public nuisance. Friedman will later file a Bar complaint against Thompson over his conduct and will also testify at his Bar trial.

October 22, 2006: Thompson announces he is running for Judge Friedman's seat on the bench. However, he never follows through.

January 23, 2007: Thompson calls for the impeachment of Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff after Shurtleff advises Utah legislators that the Thompson-authored video game law they are considering is unconstitutional.

March 16, 2007: Thompson is sued by Take-Two Interactive. The publisher seeks to block Thompson from damaging future sales of Manhunt 2 and GTA IV. A month later, the parties will reach a settlement.

April 10, 2007: In a harshly-worded ruling, U.S. District Court Judge James Brady declares Louisiana's video game law unconstitutional. Thompson, who wrote the legislation, has blamed Louisiana officials for its failure.

April 16, 2007: While the Virginia Tech shooting rampage is still ongoing, Thompson appears on Fox News to assert a violent video game connection. Later, a blue ribbon panel will find no evidence that the killer played violent games.

June 14, 2007: GamePolitics reveals that Thompson met secretly with Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick in Manhattan shortly after Zelnick took control of the company.

August 3, 2007: Thompson writes in a court filing that he is experiencing cardiac arrhythmia as well as chest pains due to the stress of his campaign against the Florida Bar.

August 21, 2007: Thompson claims that he underwent a psychological evaluation at his own expense and was pronounced mentally fit.

September 21, 2007: Thompson seeks to have Halo 3 declared a public nuisance in Florida

September 26, 2007: U.S. District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan reprimands Thompson for including gay porn in a court filing.

October 3, 2007: Thompson tries to add Judge Adalberto Jordan as a defendant in a case against the Florida Bar over which Jordan is presiding.

November 3, 2007: Thompson debates game developer Lorne Lanning at vgXpo in Philadelphia.

November 16, 2007: Thompson tries (and fails) to get GamePolitics & the Entertainment Consumers Association added as defedants in one of his numerous federal lawsuits against the Florida Bar.

November 26, 2007: Thompson's Florida Bar ethics trial commences in Miami with Judge Dava Tunis presiding. It will last nine days.

December 18, 2007: Thompson's $600 million New Mexico lawsuit which attempted to draw a link between GTA and a grisly triple murder is thrown out by a judge.

December 28, 2007: Trying to prove a video game connection, Thompson sues the Omaha Police Dept. for records of mall shooter Robert Hawkins.

March 7, 2008: Thompson circulates an e-mail which says that the Florida Bar will look like a bombed-out building if the Florida Supreme Court files an order against him.

March 18, 2008: GamePolitics begins serializing transcripts of testimony from Thompson's November, 2007 Bar trial.

March 19, 2008: Thompson threatens legal action against GamePolitics for publishing the Bar trial transcripts, which are a matter of public record. Despite the threats, the series continues.

March 20, 2008: Florida Supreme Court informs Thompson that, due to submitting porn and other inappropriate filings, the Court will no longer accept any filings from him unless another attorney signs off.

April 9, 2008: Thompson complains in a court filing that the FBI will no longer take his calls.

April 26, 2008: Thompson persuades officials of Miami-Dade Transit to remove GTA IV ads from bus kiosks

May 20, 2008: Judge Tunis finds Thompson guilty of 27 of 31 ethical misconduct charges

May 26, 2008: Thompson tells a Florida radio show host that he has plans to run for the Florida legislature.

May 30, 2008: Thompson swears in a federal court filing that Judge Tunis leaked documents to GamePolitics. Actually, we got the documents from the court via public records request.

June 4, 2008: The Florida Bar recommends to Judge Tunis that Thompson be disbarred for 10 years. Thompson storms out of the hearing after Tunis refuses to let him read a statement in court.

June 16, 2008: Thompson alleges that a pair of U.S. Marshals visited him at his home.

July 2, 2008: Thompson is honored as winner of "America's Freedom Award" at America's Freedom Festival in conservative Provo, Utah.

July 9, 2008: Thompson alleges that he was barred by U.S. Marshals from entering the U.S. District Court building in Miami alone. An officer escorted him to his destination. Thompson sues over the incident.

July 9, 2008: Citing both his ethical misconduct and his behavior during his Florida Bar proceedings, Judge Tunis one-ups the Florida Bar by ignoring its recommendation for 10-year disbarment and instead recommends a permanment disbarment for Thompson.

September 25, 2008: Florida Supreme Court orders Thompson permanently disbarred, effective October 30th, 2008.

[DaveJB]

Well, the disbarment doesn't actually take place until 30 days from now, according to Gamepolitics.com, so he still has 30 days to make TV appearances. That being said, I'm not so sure even FOX wants a disbarred attorney.

"Introducing Jack Thompson, the man whose badge they took away for exposing the truth about how those awful games are corrupting our children's souls!"

Never put it past FOX spin something bad into something good.

[Zixinus]

<snip Gamepolitics article>

Holy shit, this guy really had this coming.

To add to that, you would expect a lawyer to know the constitution. Especially after several attempts to pass a law that was rejected because they were unconstitutional.

Also:

September 26, 2007: U.S. District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan reprimands Thompson for including gay porn in a court filing.

[The Vortex Empire]

July 2, 2008: Thompson is honored as winner of "America's Freedom Award" at America's Freedom Festival in conservative Provo, Utah.

Censorship is freedom?

[legio mortis]

March 7, 2008: Thompson circulates an e-mail which says that the Florida Bar will look like a bombed-out building if the Florida Supreme Court files an order against him.

Why isn't this man in prison? The last I knew, bomb threats were serious business.

[Admiral Valdemar]

March 7, 2008: Thompson circulates an e-mail which says that the Florida Bar will look like a bombed-out building if the Florida Supreme Court files an order against him.

Why isn't this man in prison? The last I knew, bomb threats were serious business.

I don't see how you can draw a bomb threat from an obvious analogy. If he said he was going to "explode" with anger, would you sic the Feds on him too?

[Lord Revan]

July 2, 2008: Thompson is honored as winner of "America's Freedom Award" at America's Freedom Festival in conservative Provo, Utah.

Censorship is freedom?

notice the emphasis which I put, conservatives in US can sometimes have perverted values.

though I'd like to know more details on that gay porn thing I mean

[legio mortis]

I don't see how you can draw a bomb threat from an obvious analogy. If he said he was going to "explode" with anger, would you sic the Feds on him too?

Whoops, didn't make that connection. I stand corrected.

[chitoryu12]

I'm surprised it's taken this long. He's spent years acting like an unprofessional ass, especially to the people he was working against. Why wasn't it until the Bully case that they finally started seriously considering action?

[Shogoki]

Did you guys notice the new trend born from this event?

So disbarred

Jack Thompson is so disbarred, he's only permitted to use pie charts.

[Coaan]

March 7, 2008: Thompson circulates an e-mail which says that the Florida Bar will look like a bombed-out building if the Florida Supreme Court files an order against him.

Why isn't this man in prison? The last I knew, bomb threats were serious business.

I don't see how you can draw a bomb threat from an obvious analogy. If he said he was going to "explode" with anger, would you sic the Feds on him too?

I don't see how you can draw 'Explode with anger' when it states that 'if you file a court-order against me, that building will looked like a bombed-out mess'

Even if the guy is a complete and utter prick, it should have still been looked into.

Edited to fix mistakes.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I don't see how you can draw 'Explode with anger' when it states that 'if you file a court-order against me, that building will looked like a bombed-out mess'

Even if the guy is a complete and utter prick, it should have still been looked into.

Edited to fix mistakes.

I can draw it... because it was an example illustrating my point of contention.

Oh shit, I'm typing like ray245! Must... compose... thoughts.

[darthdavid]

July 2, 2008: Thompson is honored as winner of "America's Freedom Award" at America's Freedom Festival in conservative Provo, Utah.

Censorship is freedom?

"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

[The Yosemite Bear]

So who will be the next person. After all We've had Booze, pot, jazz/blues music, horror movies, comic books, rock music, etc before him.

[Archaic`]

Did you guys notice the new trend born from this event?

So disbarred

Jack Thompson is so disbarred, he's only permitted to use pie charts.

More here.

[Davis 51]

Well, Gamepolitics just ripped Doug Lowenstein for his comments on Thompson.

Hey, Doug Lowenstein. Don't shoot the messengers.

While I've got a lot of respect for Lowenstein, the former president of the Entertainment Software Association, he sent a letter to Kotaku yesterday that simply blew my mind.

Commenting on Thursday's Florida Supreme Court order disbarring Jack Thomspon for life, Lowenstein blamed the gaming press for "making Thompson what he became."

Bull.

Doug Lowenstein should look in the mirror. It was Lowenstein's own unwillingness to stand up to Thompson years ago which emboldened the game-hatin', soon to be ex-attorney. It is a remarkable piece of spin to blame Thompson on the gaming media, but that's exactly what Lowenstein has done:

Time and again, the game press... would ask ESA to engage with, or respond to Thompson's latest excess. The media knew well that he was a charlatan who wholly lacked credibility. But hey, they said, he was news and could not be ignored. That was a cop out. It gave Thompson a platform...



Mainstream outlets... were worse but the game press knew better. But he was the game press' crack. And even as they said privately he was a kook, they treated him as if he was a credible, fair minded critic. That represented an abdication of the critical filtering role the media should play.



...for the game press it was all Jack all the time... You help set the tone for mainstream media coverage and if you validate extremists you give license to the less informed to follow your lead.

To be fair, Doug is no stranger to Thompson's tirades. During his days at the helm of the ESA he was a frequent target of the disgraced attorney's most outrageous vitriol.

But, by refusing to respond, Doug dropped the ball. Thompson, finding no resistance from the top of the video game industry, was empowered to push harder. In retrospect, it's important to understand that bullying is the essence of Thompson's strategy. In fact, one of the tips he offers in his forgettable 2005 book, Out of Harm's Way, is "be mean." And, since caveman days, bullies have pushed and pushed until someone got up the nerve to push back.

Doug never pushed back.

Instead, Lowenstein's ESA operated in a sort of la-la land in which Jack Thompson did not exist. As a journalist, I soon learned not to waste my time asking the ESA to comment on anything Thompson said or did because, ostrich-like, they pretended that there was no Jack Thompson.

The gaming press, on the other hand, deserves kudos for helping reveal to the larger world the kind of vicious tactics Thompson employed in his culture crusade. And isn't that the function of a free press? You'd think that Doug Lowenstein, a former journalist, would understand that.

Given the nature of what we cover at GamePolitics, Jack Thompson was undoubtedly written about here more than anywhere else. Did the Thompson coverage draw traffic? Yes, as much from the Miami activist's eagerness to mix it up with GP readers in the comments section as from the actual stories. Through his publicity-seeking, over the top antics Thompson came to symbolize anti-game prejudice and gamers - unlike Doug Lowenstein - invariably wanted a word with him.

Was there a price to pay for GP's coverage? Yes. Without going into detail, Thompson threatened me with lawsuits on an almost continual basis. While some might write off such threats as bluster, that's easy to say when you're not the one being threatened. He actually did add my name to one of his million dollar lawsuits until a federal judge ruled that he couldn't. But he didn't stop there. He vilified me to the newspaper that I write for and to the company that formerly hosted GamePolitics. He reported me to the FBI at least a half-dozen times. For a guy with a mortgage and kids and (back then) a day job, this was stressful. Frankly, I'm incensed at Doug Lowenstein's implication that GP did it for the traffic. I can't speak for other sites, but GamePolitics covered Thompson because there was a story there, a story that needed to be told.

In the end, it was Thompson who wrote his own story and carved out his own record. The things that he did and said eventually told the world all it needed to know about Jack Thompson and where he was coming from. It was Thompson, for example, who told a Louisiana newspaper that nobody shoots anybody in the face unless you're a hit man or a video gamer.

It was Thompson who appeared on Fox News while the bodies were still warm at Virginia Tech to claim that video games were responsible for the tragedy. And it was Thompson who carried out the vicious and unprofessional conduct outlined in his 2007 Florida Bar trial, behavior that one victim compared to the emotional equivalent of stalking.

In fact, if there is one thing in GamePolitics' four-year history of which I am most proud, it was our exclusive coverage of those transcripts containing witness testimony from Thompson's Florida Bar trial. If you think Thompson - who can turn on the charm when he wants to - is not such a bad sort, read the transcripts and then decide.

To be sure, GamePolitics wasn't the only game site in Thompson's crosshairs. He filed a lawsuit against Kotaku in 2007. He threatened My Extra Life over a Jack Thompson Photoshop contest. He tried to get the Seattle Police to bust Penny Arcade, and when he found out PA isn't actually in Seattle (doh!), he called the FBI, instead.

As for Doug Lowenstein, he's way out of line to suggest a "critical filtering role" for the gaming press. He is essentially saying that game sites should censor news that the video game industry doesn't like - in this case, news about Jack Thompson. By Doug's logic, the gaming press works for the game publishers, not for their readers.

Doug Lowenstein, of course, left the video game industry in 2007 for a new gig lobbying on behalf of the hedge fund crowd. Come to think of it, isn't there enough for Doug to worry about on Wall Street these days? Perhaps he should leave the gaming issues to the gaming press.

We can handle it. We always have.

[Link the First]

So who will be the next person. After all We've had Booze, pot, jazz/blues music, horror movies, comic books, rock music, etc before him.

Genetic engineering? Wait, that happened too. Apocalypse movies? Flash videos? Someone that wants to specifically get the Madness series removed and its creator arrested? If it exists, there will be someone to bitch about it.

Anyway it is good to see him go, and it's about time. Now about the people who gave him the legal qualifications in the first place...

[CaptHawkeye]

Personally I think something pretty funny about this whole thing was how gamers have been reacting to it. Honestly, did anyone really think this guy was going to do any serious damage to anyone's rights? What's the worst he did in his whole career? Annoy Take Two? Stalk the guys at Penny Arcade? Nerds have been treating him like he's Sauron or something when his entire career is made a laughable failure.

Maybe it's because they just wanted some kind of "enemy" for the sake of yet-another melodramatic civil rights movement?