Charles Carreon drops lawsuit against The Oatmeal

The EFF reports that Charles Carreon has withdrawn his mad lawsuit against Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal.

Attorney Charles Carreon dropped his bizarre lawsuit against The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman today, ending his strange legal campaign against Inman's humorous and creative public criticism of a frivolous cease and desist letter that Carreon wrote on behalf of his client Funny Junk.

To recap briefly: website FunnyJunk hosted many unauthorized copies of Inman's work. Inman mocked it. FunnyJunk threatened to sue him for mocking it. Inman mocked it again and established a wildly successful charity drive to lampoon FunnyJunk and fight cancer. Carreon soiled his legal drawers and dragged Inman, the charities, anonymous critics, and the entire Internet's attention into a demented knot of litigation. Now this. What will the new dawn bring?

Update: Charles Carreon: "Mission accomplished"

• [Scott Elyard]

  Ahhh, sweet reason.

• [Craig Cr]

  Is the original FunnyJunk suit dropped, though, or just Carreon’s personal lawsuit?

  • [Iron Clad Burrito]

    Funnyjunk has never brought suit against the Oatmeal.  Carreon (representing Funnyjunk) threatened to sue and tried to extort Inman for US$20,000, but the actual suit was Carreon himself vs. Inman.

    A smart Funnyjunk site owner will have dropped the idea of suing 2 weeks ago.  Even a developmentally challenged Funnyjunk site owner would have seen the wisdom of not suing about 7 days ago.

    • [Glenn Fleishman]

      Also, Carreon threw his clients under a bus: he said to one news source that he was unaware that FunnyJunk had not, in fact, removed all Oatmeal cartoons before he sent the demand letter and would not have sent the demand letter had he been aware of that fact.

      • [Marco Fioretti]

         Glen: source for this, please?

        • [Bonzo McGrue]

          See the last paragraph, titled “First Edit”, here:
          http://www.popehat.com/2012/06/21/the-oatmeal-v-funnyjunk-part-vi-the-electronic-frontier-foundation-steps-in/

      • [corydodt]

        The demand letter related to claims of damages for libelous mockery Inman posted. So the existence or absence of the images on funnyjunk was immaterial in his lawsuit. Either Inman was libelous or he wasn’t.

        So the notion that he would not have sent the demand doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. He’s now trying to distance himself from his own actions, one by one.

    • [asdfasfd asfdasfd]

      If Carreon represented Funnyjunk, then he had their permission to bring a suit against the Oatmeal. Yes, Funnyjunk brought a lawsuit against Inman.

      • [Steven]

        No. Carreon sent a cease and desist letter on behalf of FunnyJunk. Inman replied by publicly posting and ridiculing FunnyJunk and Carreon. Carreon proceeded by filing a suit against Inman personally and not on the behalf of FunnyJunk.

      • [Iron Clad Burrito]

        asdfasfd asfdasfd , [Citation needed] on this one. 

• [Sirkowski]

  Sometimes reason is the most boring path…

• [grimc]

  Shucks, I was really looking forward to seeing him get his butt handed to him in court.

• [jonathan_v]

  Only the suit for a “Temporary Restraining Order” against Inman+IndieGoGo+Charities was dropped.

  Carreon may still be insane enough to try and sue Inman.

  • [nixiebunny]

    There’s only one suit. The temporary restraining order is a byproduct of the suit. Had he only wanted to drop the TRO, he would have filed a motion to drop the TRO. This notice voluntarily dismisses the action; i.e., the suit.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_dismissal

    But IANAL, so don’t take me too seriously.

• [Dave Johnson]

  Let’s all get over it till the next legal amusement….

  • [Ryan Holmes]

    This is one for the books though. We’ll all be sitting around having a drink and remember back to good ol’ July ’12 to Old Man Carreon and frivolous lawsuit to Oatmeal

• [gratefulvideo]

  So Carreon finally ran out of cocaine.

• [BDiamond]

  He came to his senses? I didn’t think he had any senses to come to. Amazing.

• [FlickDude]

  The shame of this is that his dropping of the suit will likely keep him from being disbarred, which is what really needs to happen to this walking mockery of the walking mockery of our legal system.

• [oasisob1]

  That really sucks. Now what will Boingers do for entertainment?
  Here’s something to just look at…
  http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/chefn-banana-slicer/
  or was it already posted?

• [parclair]

  Oh, there’s still entertainment to be had:

  http://www.popehat.com/2012/07/02/oatmeal-v-funnyjunk-part-viii-charles-carreon-gets-sued/#more-15300

• [David Weintraub]

  So, that whole thing is all over. Carreon had Matthew Inman waste thousands of dollars, and now he calls it quits. No more.

  Wait… What’s that SLAPP SLAPP sound I’m hearing.

  • [Mitchell Bowman]

    As far as I know, Inman was being represented pro bono. This whole debacle should have cost him next to nothing.

    • [corydodt]

      Cost him money, that’s funny. The amount of free positive publicity this brought him is incredibly valuable, even to someone as popular as he already was.

• [Mitchell Bowman]

  Well this was abrupt. One has to wonder if the hasty backpedaling by Carreon might have something to do with rumblings of his disbarment if these shenanigans continued.

• [Gavin Flood]

  Charles Carreon: now the most unemployable lawyer in America.

• [Ted Bautista]

  Did he really drop it or did he drop it for now, with plans/threats to bring suit at a later date (the same way he threatened the Carreon parody site owner)?

  • [Kevin E. York]

    This is a dismissal without prejudice, meaning he could file it again

    • [Ted Bautista]

      can Inman use the declaratory relief thingy to prevent this?

• [Hibleton]

  YOU DONT SUE BREAKFAST DUDE!!! Not cool….NOT COOL!!

• [awaiken]

  Can he sue to recoup legal fees?

• [Bertil]

  Can he pleased be disbarred now?

• [Andrew Hildreth]

  What will the Oatmeal use as a running laugh now? I was rather enoying the constant feed of shenanigans from all of this. – Andy

• [Worldwalker]

  This guy is joining an elite legal fraternity: The pants guy. The darts guy. And of course  Jack Thompson. My definition of heaven, their definition of hell: they all get locked in a room somewhere … together.

• [TWX]

  What he should actually do is to file a DMCA complaint with Funny Junk’s Internet Service Provider, and possibly before doing this, should contact others that have had their content ripped off there too.

  Funny Junk doesn’t comment as an entity on the content on its site.  It hasn’t used that content for its own fair-use commentary, instead users only comment, and even that could be achieved by linking to the original location as opposed to rehosting it when the host doesn’t provide original commentary.  It’s not that I love the DMCA, but if the law exists and can be applied to the benefit of the little guy who actually personally creates his own works, then I’m much less opposed to it being a tool available.

• [Ryan Holmes]

  Woah woah woah