LOS ANGELES – In anticipation of California voters passing the controversial Proposition 60 measure, a Los Angeles attorney said he has prepared a “major low-class-action lawsuit” which names as a defendant every porn performer living and dead, 51 separate production studios, several industry trade publications, eight spelling-challenged porn bloggers and Ira Isaac’s pet cockatiel.
“As soon as the ink dries on the governor’s signature, we’re going to file this puppy in federal court,” attorney Ernest S. Hitter said while waving around what appeared to be several pages of a document of some kind. “Mark my words: By the time the court has finished hearing this groundbreaking low-class-action lawsuit, the world of porn will have been changed forever.”
While Hitter conceded his lawsuit currently lacks actual plaintiffs with standing to file, he doesn’t think finding willing participants will be at all difficult.
“You’ve seen those ads targeting people who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma after working around asbestos?” Hitter asked. “Well, we’re going to run ads just like those — and I mean just like those, because we’re using almost all the same footage. It has been overdubbed with different narration and features pictures of distressed porn viewers staring mournfully at television screens in their living rooms instead of distressed blue collar workers looking mournfully at the floor of a doctor’s office, but other than that, it’s the same highly effective ad.”
Under Hitter’s interpretation of Prop 60, each organization, every living person and every estate of a deceased person associated with the manufacture and distribution of pornography is “individually and severally liable for at least $100 million dollars” to his future clients.
“As I see it, every Californian who is not a living or dead porn performer, producer or distributor is a potential member of the class at issue here,” Hitter said. “With close to 40 million plaintiffs, obviously this complaint will quickly surpass in size and anticipated damages the massive late-for-class-action suit I recently filed against all California students on behalf of the state’s teachers and public school administrators.”
Legal experts are divided in their opinions about whether Hitter’s suit will fail, or fail spectacularly.
“I’ve been working as an attorney in the adult entertainment industry for nearly 20 years now, so obviously I’ve met a lot of total fucking idiots in my time,” said Tito Mendacio, another experienced adult industry attorney. “But Ernest is, without a doubt, the biggest idiot of the bunch. I say this with all the respect due to another member of the bar, even one who apparently grew up eating radioactive paste for breakfast: Ernest couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a Garmin GPS unit.”
Attorney Francis Edgar Mostaccioli, however, was somewhat more charitable in his view of Hitter’s legal strategy.
“This suit clearly has no actual merit, but it’s important to bear in mind most people are dumber than the proverbial box of rocks, so merely threatening several dozen adult studios and individual performers might be enough for Ernie to extract a settlement or two,” Mostaccioli said. “Not from anyone who can afford an attorney, of course, but within a few months of leaving porn, most ex-performers can’t even afford a free initial consultation with an attorney, much less a decent retainer. It was clever of Ernie to extend the lawsuit to all performers, including those retired and/or deceased.”
Irascible adult industry blogger Michael Southampton, rumored to be among those targeted in Hitter’s low-class-action, said he’s “not scarred” of Hitter or any other “embulance-casing atturnee.”
“A very reliantly source told me this Hatter guy isn’t even a atturnee in the furst place,” Southampton wrote in a recent blog post. “And even if he’s are, he ain’t got no staining to file a crass fraction law-soot agin’ somebuddy who making porns in Georgea, any ways.”
California’s Prop 60 will be on the Nov. 8, 2016 ballot.
