Hi Frank,
I'm new here, and I had no idea you were having legal problems in the forums. I shouldn't be surprised, considering the desperate times dealers have been having selling pianos. Desperate people do desperate things.
What have you decided to do? I skipped a few pages to get to the latest bits so please forgive me if I make you repeat yourself.
And as an aside, that attorney who sent you a cease & desist letter via email was just fishing and trying to bully you, or was just a moron. You can't serve legal documents via email. It's too easy for the recipient to claim they did not get it, or read it. Every attorney knows that, unless they're stupid. They have to build up a paper trail in order to show cause at the preliminary hearing. If they can't prove that you were properly served, there's no basis to sue and the judge will throw it out. The complainant also has to show they made a good faith effort to contact you and performed due diligence to settle the matter outside of court, according to the legal definitions of those things in your home state, not the complainant's. Or there's no suit. If you actually get to court on something so flimsy, your attorney can make a motion to countersue for damages and court costs right then at the preliminary hearing. At least, you can in California! Ask you lawyer about the maneuver before you try it it in your state, though.
One thing you can do about that attorney is to contact his local State Bar office and ask if he is a member in good standing. A lawyer can be sanctioned and even disbarred by their local if they abuse courts just to bully people. I think if you called his local office and told them he sent you a cease & desist via email, they'd all have a good laugh.
No, I'm not an attorney and (caveat) I am not giving you legal advice as I'm not licensed to. But my day job has brought me to court many times, and I have had to sue a few people to get them to pay me like they said they would. So this is just my experience talking as a lay businessman.
People sue YouTube every day. Almost nobody wins.
All the Best,
Last edited by laguna_greg; 04/28/13 12:45 AM.