Letter of Claim

Today, I am publishing our Letter of Claim against John Szczepaniak in the UK. This document provides a good summary of John's libel campaign against Hanako and Agness. It was translated and submitted as evidence in France, and has never been disputed in court. I hope everyone who has taken an interest in the case will also take the time to read it.

Crowdsourced Investigation: A General Request

I humbly ask that anyone who received email from John Szczepaniak's hardcoregaming101.net address between 2012 and 2014 please contact me. [EDIT: removed particulars]

Thank you,

Peter Duimstra

Latest Appeal Failed

The Court of Poitiers chose not to reverse the lower court's decision on jurisdiction. Once again, we are denied a libel verdict in the French courts. Meanwhile, John Szczepaniak's UK counsel has rejected most of our claims on the basis that they exhaust the one-year statute of limitation for libel in the UK. This leaves only one path forward: a final appeal to the Cour de Cassation, the supreme court for civil cases in France.

We are profoundly disappointed by Poitier's judgment. For two years our lives have been tainted by the shiftless (and apparently homeless) John Szczepaniak, who even today shows no remorse, no sense of responsibility, and no willingness to retract or repair his libel. So the libel remains, and Kickstarter mostly ignores us.

I do not accept this outcome. I have convinced my wife, Agness, to go forward with a final appeal to the Cour de Cassation in France. The process will likely take another two years. I expect we will be the only people reading this blog when the final appeal is heard. I am fine with that.

As soon as I get a greenlight from our lawyers, I will publish our Letter of Claim against John Szczepaniak in the UK. This English document provides a good summary of Mr. Szczepaniak's core libel. It was translated and entered as evidence in France, and has never been disputed in court. I hope everyone will take the time to read it. If you have questions, I am happy to answer them via LinkedIn.

Trial Update #6

Our appeal went well. The court heard new evidence supporting John Szczepaniak's residency in France and it spent considerable time weighing our libel case. We won't know until October 29th whether the court wishes to reverse the previous ruling of jurisdictional incompetence, but if it does, it will also issue a verdict on the libel. We have waited a long time for that verdict. Keep your fingers crossed.

New Trial Date

Our hearing in Poitiers is scheduled for September 24th. We don't expect another adjournment, but let's just say we've learned to be patient with the French judicial system over the last year and a half. We will update everyone when appropriate.

On a more interesting note, last week we were alerted to two new developments:

1. Basic details of our case against John Szczepaniak were added to the "Controversies" section of the Wikipedia entry for Kickstarter.
2. Kickstarter deleted several of the more egregious passages from John’s updates of November 2013, March 2014, and May 2014.

It’s hard to say whether these events are linked. The deleted lines represent only a fraction of the defamatory claims made by John, but they certainly fall under the category of “personal attacks”. Perhaps the appearance of our case on Wikipedia has finally motivated Kickstarter to enforce their policy against such attacks.

We will provide a rundown of all of Kickstarter's edits to John’s posts in a future update.

Message to Project Backers

One of the oddest misconceptions about this case is the widespread assumption that Agness had something – anything – to do with John's problems in Japan. In this message to project backers, Agness dispels that misconception, and tries to convey some of the stupefying injustice she has faced over the last year and a half.

FAQ Part II: One year later

Legally, things are now proceeding on multiple fronts. We'll update everyone when counsel gives us the greenlight.

Today, we wanted to answer publicly some of the questions that have come to us privately over the last year. We will also append this content to our Joint Public Statement from April 2014.

FAQ Part II

(June 17, 2015)

What is this site and why should we care?

The VersusJS blog provides coverage of our lawsuit against John Szczepaniak, who for the past 18 months has conducted a campaign of defamation and endangerment against Agness Kaku, Hanako Abe, and their families. The case is interesting for a number of reasons, but unless you're involved personally, as a backer of John's Kickstarter project or as a victim of John's past behaviour, you have little reason to care.

Aren't you supposed to keep quiet about court cases?

We needed a bulwark against John’s mounting libel, so we asked our lawyer if a blog providing factual information about the case would be acceptable. He said it would be fine.

If John has no money, what good is suing him?

Without a verdict, we cannot compel Kickstarter to remove the libelous content from public view, or even to enforce their own policy against personal attacks. Our requests for help from Kickstarter have been consistently ignored.

What if you never get a verdict?

If we get no justice from the courts, we can at least prevent John from ever doing this again, to anyone. That’s a pure good, and enough to keep us fighting.

Why didn't Hanako just pay John the disputed $150 booking fee?

To do so would have implied wrongdoing. Had she some sort of guarantee that John would desist from false claims, Hanako would gladly have paid John $150 out of pocket. She had no such guarantee, and John had already destroyed whatever trust she placed in him at the beginning of the project.

If this is between John and Hanako, why is John attacking Agness?

The short answer is that John really, really hates Agness.

Prior to John's attacks, the history of interaction between John and Agness consisted entirely of John asking for favours, and Agness granting them. The last favour Agness granted was giving him Hanako's personal contact info, so that he could consult her directly. Six months later, John throws Hanako and her colleagues under the bus, and includes Agness purely out of spite.

So, you did nothing wrong?

We did absolutely nothing wrong, but the real kicker is that Hanako bent over backwards to help John, and for very little pay. She even gave half of her proceeds to another Kickstarter project as a sign of good faith to John's backers. (John promptly removed all mention of this fact from project comments, and has since refund-banned any backer who challenges his version of events.)

Do we have regrets? Yes. Hanako regrets that she continued to ask John for things when she should have demanded them. Agness regrets granting John's request to interview her in 2011.

Isn't this just "he said, she said"?

No, it really isn't. If you want a formula, it’s more like he lied, then he lied again, then he lied a third time, and then she sued. People who say this is a case of "he said, she said" are being lazy, and they are helping the libeler do his damage. If you must form an opinion, please look at the evidence, ask us questions, and then decide for yourself one way or the other. If you can't do that, then don't spread the damage through indiscriminate gossip.

Have you tried contacting John’s parents?

Yes, just before the initial hearing, we sent this letter via registered mail. We did not expect a reply, but we did hope that John’s parents would take positive action.

Have you thought about trying ... ?

Yes, we have thought about getting more press attention, moving the debate to youtube, filing a police complaint (especially after John's outreach to #gamergate), and several other courses of action. All options remain on the table.

What’s your gut feeling about the case?

Our feeling is that John’s behaviour will only improve when he has been forced to take responsibility for his failures. We also feel that the time is ripe for someone to make a real stand against online trolls and their enablers.

Trial: Redux

Good news! The Court of Niort's decision regarding jurisdiction has been successfully appealed and the trial has been moved to the Court of Poitiers, where, we are told, the entire case will be heard once again, including all of John's libel from 2014-15. We are also initiating legal action in the UK, so as to cut off further avenues of escape. We will have to wait another four months for the new trial, but this time around, there should be no delays by opposing counsel.

Never stop fighting until the fight is done.

Intermission

The French Court has returned our bond and declared that legal action against John Szczepaniak should take place in the UK. Behind the court's decision is John's testimony that he was and is a resident of the UK, and therefore bears the burden of liability in that country. Fortunately for us, John's trial delays in France were not enough to outlast the statute of limitations for libel in the UK.

Stay tuned. This may be a larger case than we expected.

Verdict

Because the court could not sufficiently establish John's residency in France, it has decided that the case is outside its jurisdiction. Dismissed. Why was this not decided at the consignation in June? Why did we have to endure two trial delays by opposing counsel, only to have him argue that John is not a resident after all, so none of this matters? Awful. Just awful.

We still don't know whether the court has issued a ruling on the libel itself. I will post again once we have a fuller understanding of the decision.

Verdict expected this week...

I will post another update once we have received and understood the court's decision.

Over the last several days, I have debated whether a review of John’s libel, stretching from late 2013 to the present, would be a useful addition to this blog. Yes, it would help to trace the trajectory of John’s behaviour, as it veered from peevish self-deception into purely malicious invention (and more recently, grandiose paranoia), but would it lead to a better outcome? Not really. We are only days away from a verdict, and if we get the verdict we deserve, our next task will be to leave John Szczepaniak in our rear-view mirror. A more thorough audit of John’s libel might be necessary at some point. Right now, it just feels counterproductive.

As always, I am happy to answer questions about the case via linkedIn.

Trial Update #5

Well, the hearing is over. Opposing counsel pulled some last-minute shenanigans (introducing a technical argument just days before the hearing), but the key evidence has now been submitted to the court for deliberation. We must now wait until April 9th for a decision. Obviously it is frustrating to wait so long for closure, especially with John continuing to lie about us over the nine months since the initial consignation. Nevertheless, it is good to have an end in sight.

We want to thank everyone who has maintained an interest in the case, even as it has dragged on these many months. It may not be a big case, but it is certainly an odd one – and an important one for the parties involved.

Please stay tuned. We will make one more post prior to the verdict, and at least one post after the verdict.