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Goldman Sachs Backs Down in Legal Battle With Blogger
The American Lawyer
July 16, 2009
Mike Morgan, a Florida-based investment adviser who started the controversial blog GoldmanSachs666.com, has prevailed in a case he brought against the investment bank in April.
Goldman, which exceeded expectations by reporting $3.4 billion in second quarter profits this week, quietly agreed to several stipulations last month in order to dismiss the case.
The Am Law Daily previously reported that Goldman had sought to muzzle Morgan's Web site and its conspiracy-tinged blog posts via a cease-and-desist letter sent by Chadbourne & Parke IP practice co-chair John Squires (Goldman's former chief in-house IP counsel) in April.
Morgan responded by hiring Joseph Beckman from The Intellect Law Group in Palm City, Fla., filing a complaint against Goldman in federal court in Florida later that month. He sought a declaratory judgment that he was not infringing the bank's trademarks.
The suit wasn't Morgan's first court battle with a corporation he was crusading against on the Internet, but he appears to have emerged victorious in the Goldman matter provided he maintains a prominently displayed disclaimer on his Web site disavowing any affiliation with the investment bank.
In turn, Goldman agreed to refrain from interfering with Morgan's use of GoldmanSachs666.com. Squires and Chadbourne IP litigation counsel Peter Bucci represented Goldman in the litigation. Squires declined an Am Law Daily request for comment.
But Morgan, who recently told a British newspaper that he'd had a heart attack during the spat and was stepping down from the day-to-day operations of his site, did take some time to crow. In a blog post earlier this month, he wrote that "Lord [sic] Blankfein and his Band of Merry Thugs blinked, and we sliced their heads off."
While Morgan's rants might seem off-the-wall, if a recent feature story by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi is any indication, some of Morgan's ideas are starting to receive mainstream attention. Taibbi compares Goldman Sachs to a "vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity" in a scathing indictment of the investment bank that has Wall Street buzzing.
A Goldman spokesman told Reuters that "Taibbi's article is a compilation of just about every conspiracy theory ever dreamed up about Goldman Sachs ... We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance of being a force for good."
Goldman's charitable endeavors aside, the firm's surging profits and repayment of government loans have allowed compensation to return to 2007 levels.
This article first appeared on The Am Law Daily blog on AmericanLawyer.com.
