Despite Closure, ACS:Law Founder Could Face Bill

Both ACS:Law and MediaCAT, the firms which pursued alleged file-sharers with threatening letters, have shut up shop, but individuals involved may be liable for legal costs when the court judgement is given on Tuesday, and will probably face legal action for “wasted costs”.

Pornography licensee MediaCAT and ACS:Law, the firm which sent out threatening “speculative invoicing” letters to people it claimed were illegal downloaders, apparently closed their businesses down early last week in the face of the continued meltdown of the legal case against claimed file-sharers, according to reports by the BBC and others, based on a document seen by TorrentFreak. But the people behind the firms may not get away so easily.

Wasted costs?

ACS:Law brought 27 cases of alleged illegal file-sharing to court, but then attempted to drop them without evidence being heard. This was denied, as the defendants wished to claim damages. ACS:Law dropped all its cases against file-sharing suspects.

Judge Birss will pass judgement on Tuesday, having previously told the court “I am getting the impression with every twist and turn since I started looking at these cases that there is a desire to avoid any judicial scrutiny.”

Even if ACS:Law and MediaCAT no longer exist, the men behind them, Andrew Crossley (above) and Lee Bowden respectively, may not escape, according to James Bench of BeingThreatened, a blog which has fought the two companies.

“MediaCAT’s status as a private limited company may not protect [Bowden] from personal legal liability for the costs that will be demanded by the defendants of the claims MediaCAT brought,” said Bench. “ACS:Law was not a limited company in any sense. Mr Crossley will remain entirely and personally liable for all the actions of his firm.”

Later this year, Andrew Crossley will face the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal over complaints about “bullying letters” sent by his firm, which were taken up and lodged by consumer magazine Which? During the last several months, ACS:Law has been the focus of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks which at one point broke its site, resulting in the firm publishing personal details of its clients

Even though ACS:Law has closed down, some of its cases have been taken up by a new firm GCB, which is run by people connected with ACS:Law.