GET YOURSELF A WEBLOG, MR. KING . . . When lawyer Christopher King, Esq. left his first comment on this website, a helpful reader warned me in an e-mail that it was comment spam (as defined here), and that I should delete it. I didn't. The comment read, in part:

My name is Christopher King . . . My experiences in Columbus, Ohio as a Civil Rights lawyer and as a contracts manager working for Boston’s American Tower Corporation – a company fined $300,000.00 by the Department of Labor for overtime violations at my behest – are chronicled in a 15-minute movie on my website, soon to be developed in Hollywood.

King's full comment can be found after this post. I didn't delete it because it was intriguing enough to make me think I should follow the links he left. But when King added a more-or-less identical comment to another post a few days later, I deleted it, realizing I had a potential comment spammer on my hands. Then that same kind reader e-mailed me again to say that King was using other weblogs as he was using mine. And then . . .

And then I realized I could pass along some wisdom about the blogosphere to those who might be new to it: we weblog authors don't like comment spam. We have to spend a lot of time deleting it. If the primary point of a comment is to sell or promote another product or service or to raise a website's Internet profile, forget it. It's unfair to the other readers and commenters and makes a weblog look awful.

For these reasons, once a person acquires a reputation as a serial comment spammer, it might be rough going for him in the blogosphere. As for King, a Google search for "Christopher King" and "blog" will reveal that he has left similar self-promotional comments on many weblogs, including The Yin Blog, Sua Sponte,  De Novo, Robert Ambrogi's LawSites, My Shingle, and others.

Is King a serial comment spammer or just weblogging newbie unaware of proper commenting etiquette? I think the latter. Even so, King is relying on the bandwidth of others when he should have a weblog of his own.

Am I being too harsh? Hardly. It can't hurt to give more publicity to King's website and his short film about his career. Here's my advice to readers: Spend a little time learning about King's career on Google, Lexis, or Westlaw, then head over to his site and watch the film. Be sure to tell me what you think (if you can do it in a way that isn't slanderous).

Comments

[Eh Nonymous]

With due respect I'm sure to this Mr. King, comment-spam is against the Unwritten Rules of the Road, if not any given weblog's terms of use (explicit or implied).

My personal gmail account takes spam out of my way by eliminating things that many others perceive to be spam, that has a high spam-probability, using Bayesian analysis and a few choice parameters. Comment-spam is trickier, particularly if put in by hand.

I'm a strong supporter of spam control; I fear that we may (soon!) run out of electrons if we don't get ahold of our rampant multiply-duplicative electronic missive problem. Think of the electrons!

To that end, what would you think of a commentspamtrap, which notes when an unwanted, purely commercial message is multiply posted on one blog or spread across many blogs, and deletes it?

I'm sure the Hollywood project is interesting, but Mr. King should get a blawg, engage in substantive commentary with his self-promotion, or stay off the comments.

[David Giacalone]

No, you're not being too harsh about Lawyer King, Evan. He's appeared at my website recently. I think I'll drop a blurb about him at f/k/a today and help him find his way into the e-shame hall of infamy.

[Obi-Wan Anonymously]

Be sure to tell me what you think (if you can do it in a way that isn't slanderous).

I realize we all have a need to self-lionize, and to make it seem that our petty life struggles mean something. But not usually. Mr. King wants to believe himself to be both a hero and a victim.

Even after watching his slanted version of the facts, it seems to me that he was fired for being obnoxious, not for being African American. Employees who complain (rightly or wrongly) about working conditions are regularly released, or to use a term of art, shit-canned. Most employer-employee disputes come down to the bottom line. Employees who disrupt work substract from the bottom line and are then (again, right or wrongly) fired.

And while Mr. King might deserve respect for improving working conditions or ensuring that others deserving overtime pay receive it (though I didn't see anything verifying this), he's not a victim of racial injustice. Like millions of other at-will employees, he was fired after making a fuss.

[Mike]

Mr. King ultimately made two claims:
1) He made complaints that overtime wages were not being paid, and;
2) He was fired for this.

If that's the case, then why didn't he file a lawsuit for retaliation under the Fair Labor Standards Act? People who are fired in the manner Mr. King claims to have been fired tend to make sympathetic plaintiffs. I'm sure a lawyer would have taken his case.

That Mr. King did not file such a suit (or did he?) might be evidence that Mr. King did not have a legal leg to stand on. Which is why he's now mad at "the law."

I've met dozens (hundreds?) of clients like this. You tell them there's no Sec. 1983 action, or that the evidence seized can't be suppressed, and they tell you that you're in bed with the District Attorney. Or that you're racist. Or that everyone is afraid to take on "city hall." That the lawyer has taken on city hall thousands of times over a career, in cases a lot more controversial, doesn't matter much to these folks.

[Mike]

Caw, caw, caw. That's the sound of the crow I'm eating after reading page 15 of this document. How embarassing (for me).

[Steve]

I commend you for getting to page 15 of the SJ motion, Mike.

[christopher king]

Well guys I have indeed started a blog. Those who criticize me for being "obnoxious" should know that all of the comments in the video about how nasty American Tower was toward me and other employees are lifted directly from Deposition transcripts. If you want proof of the substance of my claims, just click on the "DOL" page and read the judgment there. I don't bring frivolous cases, and you can see that in the "Documents" section. I protect the First Amendment vigorously so that we can have blogs like this.

Lou Jacobs said what he said about what happened in Columbus "racism, ignorance and reactionary politics" because it was true. The Court apppointed him to me, he was not a personal friend at first.

Lastly, how is it that all of you ignored the pretrial motions that note rampant destruction of evidence and sexually-tinged emails from a Caucasian female toward me former Massachusetts Bar Association President Richard C. Van Nostrand.

My trial date is 26 September, 2005.

Sincerely,

Christopher King, Esq.

[Christopher King]

PS:

And the people in the room with whom I worked most closely, who were *NOT* personal friends, *ALL* thought that Jody Mitchell's comment "Dangerous Black Man" was racial in nature. You of course are welcome to your own opinion.

Cry the race card? Please. I live in Nashua, New Hampshire for Crissake. Talk to anyone up here about me and how I view life and how I act. My Caucasian Brother-in-Law and webhost will tell you how hard I laugh at frivolous racial claims and the people that bring them. I have gotten in the most trouble representing a Caucasian female in a pregnancy case "Lemaster v. Bank One" in my documents section. Please.

My trial date is 26 September, 2005.

Sincerely,

Christopher King, Esq.

[Evan]

Christopher: How can we find your new weblog?

[Sua Sponte]

Wait, when was his trial date again?

[Christopher King]

Hi Guys,

When I say I just started one, I mean I *JUST* started it! Nothing's on it yet and even I have to go back and figure out how to sign in, add things, etc. but I hope to post up some items in the next several days. All I can say in the interim is that if you read my "Documents" cases and knew how our family is so multicultural that some extended members of our family thought we were sellouts, you would know how I am loathe to brind a race card without merit.

I make the point that I was in no ways a perfect lawyer, but as my author points out this is classic Greek Tragedy: As in the Lemaster case, I just can't back off and take a little settlement or the quiet promotion without back pay. That approach leads to problems, certainly, but I am willing to allow my 15-year legal career, starting with Terry Gilbert and then the Ohio Atty. General's office -- to be analysed in an open forum, flame suit on.

Happy Fathers' Day to all of you who are!

-c

[Obi-Wan Anonymously]

Mr. King, thanks for the follow-up.

Perhaps one reason so few of us understand the legally operative facts of your case is that they are not clearly presented. Allusions to great works of literature have their place. But we first must understand what happened; and what your theory of the case is.

You've committed a common erorr of writing. By telling instead of showing, you leave us readers confused. You said you're a victim of racism. But what are the facts that, when presented to us, leave us with no other possibile reason for your treatment? Simply telling us that you are a victim doesn't mean much to lawyers who've devoted their professional lives to ferreting out the whole truth from their clients' stories.

Show, don't tell.

[Christopher King]

I too consider myself a good ferreter. I do see that the exact theory of the case is not made clear without reading the Memoranda that Attorney Lathrop and I prepared so assiduously. But trust me, it is all there, and my theory of the case was more than just race, it was primarily overtime, overtime retaliation, defamation and race: A Dangerous Black Man who might be lurking about the premises? Please. Just a clog-wearin' SAAB drivin' tree-huggin' activist-attorney a verbal pugilist only.

I know the movie comes off as showy, but really American Tower, if you were to really read everything, never offers anything under Oath that contradicts the material claims. Everything in the movie is straight from the Depo. transcripts.

Finishing up a Reply Memorandum on the Limine stuff for now. Will have things on the blog for review soon. If you want to know more about how and who I am, read the "Commitment to Education" link in the "Documents" section to see how I pull diverse sets of people together for the Good.

Cheers,

-c

[Obi-Wan Anonymously]

Mr. King, I sincerely wish you good luck.

When is that trial date, by the way. :^) (Sorry, couldn't resist!)

[Christopher King]

Hi guys. it's

Christopher King's First Amendment Page. If you like to link me I'd love it and I'll figure out how to link you. No luddite but hardly a programmer either. Have a great weekend.

http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/

[Mike]

I just followed this link to this post.

[dopderbeck]

Hi. I stumbled on this post because I'm trying to determine whether there is any kind of civil action against trackback and comment spammers. I get tons of it on my blog. The reason for it, in case you haven't connected the dots yet, is that the hyperlinks in the comment or trackback spam increase the spam page's ranking on search engines like Google. It's a search engine placement scam. If anyone has an idea for how to bring a civil claim against such spammers, drop me a line (BTW, I'm a lawyer and law professor, so feel free to be technical if you have an idea).