John

defence

Claim No. 3CL02233

The Parties
1. Agreed
2. Agreed
The Claim in Summary
3. The respondent opposes this application.
4. The claimant (as a resident of the United States of America) is not protected by the European
Convention on Human Rights. There is no copyright attached to rash and injudicious
messages sent without invitation to the respondent as the content in question fails to meet
any test for exhibiting labour, skill or judgement. All usage of messages or emails has been
given proper attribution, and content has not been altered in any way.
Background to the dispute
5. The claimant has never spoken to the respondent. She has left voice messages on his phone
but they have never talked. She also formed a purposefully deceptive relationship with him
through text messages and messages on Twitter via a false identity constructed for the sole
and express purpose of misleading him Matthew Spitz (aka @Matthew_Spitz) over the
course of five months from February July 2013.
Matthew Spitzs twitter timeline is attached as Annexure 1 (AX01).
It should be noted that, as at 05 November 2013, over 600 of the photographs that the
claimant (under the false identity Matthew Spitz) appropriated and posted are still
available on the internet at http://twitrpix.com/user/matthew_spitz. The respondent has
archived this website should the claimant delete these and will happily make this archive
available to the court if necessary.
6. The behaviour of the claimant, as outlined here, was undertaken with full knowledge the
respondent
and
maliciously caused the respondent considerable distress, by making an apparent offer of
employment which proved to be false. The claimant's apologies consistently implied that
the respondent was responsible for her behaviour. For example, in text archive dated 28 July
2013, the claimant stated:
Great. As I will do mine, please have a think about your behavior in regards to this
please. Then , if you and if I are still interested we can discuss it. I am not negating
any of my behavior. However i am curious as to why you did what you did with such
venom. We both played a very ugly part here. you lost nothing. I did and I don't
know why you felt it was your duty to see that happen. That's all for now. Have a
good few weeks.
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defence

Claim No. 3CL02233

Full archive of all texts is attached as Annexure 2 (AX02).

The claimants amends email is attached as Annexure 15 (AX15).
7. The respondent, having being publicly duped by the claimant, was entitled to reveal the
deliberate, intricate and sustained hoax of both himself and his friends. The claimant was
never employed by the client she claims fired her. The person in question asked the
claimant to cease all contact on 28 July 2013 - two weeks prior to the blog, prior to the
deletion of the false account, and without contracts or monies ever having been exchanged.
This is supported by a sworn statement from the person concerned. On 18 July 2013 the
claimant stated the following about her client Gail
:
Yes she is a new client. Just signed. I (jenny) tweeted about it the other day, guess
you missed that. You've done a lot of work. That's How I introduced myself to her,
through Deanie whose FB name is Margaret Kite. See text archive, AX02.
Also attached as Annexure 3 (AX03) is a statement from Gail
stating that she was
never the claimants client and detailing some of the claimants worrying behaviour.
8. The claimant is a resident of the United States of America. The respondent denies making
any statements whatsoever which could be rationally interpreted as malicious or
threatening. The texts in question cannot be reasonably interpreted as anything other than
blatantly facetious sarcasm. All text message communications between the parties has been
retained and will be available to the court. The respondent was entitled to tell the truth and
alert others to the history of sustained and dishonest behaviour of the claimant.
9. The claimant accepts that she sent an email to the respondent on 5th August 2013. The full
text has been retained and is available to the court as Annexure 10 (AX10). A cease and
desist order was not sent. The claimant also stated she had made complaints to both the
LAPD and the Metropolitan Police. There is no evidence that such reports were ever made.
The claimant is effectively asking the respondent to simply ignore all of her behaviour. The
claimant had in fact begun publishing defamatory tweets about the respondent, and libelling
him to third parties:
a. On 4th August 2013 03:41 GMT, @tryingtrue tweeted: My stalker is stalking me
again. Had a few days of a break on his end but it's started up again. Attached as
Annexure 4 (AX04).
b. Then, at 04:06 GMT, @tryingtrue tweeted: @robideg Deciding whether to press
charges that would really ruin his life. Or send him to court, but he cannot pay. So??
Thinking. Attached as Annexure 4 (AX04).
c. On Aug 4, 2013 12:36 EST Ms Frankfurt sent a text message to Gail
: "Gail, I
know you asked me to not contact you and I won't again but I have proof from
Twitter support that that account is not mine. Written documentation. You are now
being stalked on Twitter by John. He has threatened me and my son for weeks and
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defence

Claim No. 3CL02233

has been reported to the police and I will continue to report him until I decide
whether to take serious life changing measures for him through the police and my
atty. I will not bother you again. I am so sorry this happened, it's horrible. I am sorry
to have broken your request but feel it's important you know. Good luck. Jenny"
d. On Aug 10, 2013 17:20 GMT, the respondent was contacted by a US-based celebrity
, who wanted to know why photos were being used without his
consent by somebody purporting to be Matthew Spitz. Mr
said that the
claimant told him that the respondent was threatening Ms Frankfurts family. A copy
of this message is attached as Annexure 11 (AX11). Mr
has subsequently
read the respondents blog and provided a statement via email that at no stage did
he consent to the claimant appropriating his pictures in order to create her false
identity. This is attached as Annexure 17 (AX17).
The respondent was fully entitled to publish a true account of events and felt it necessary in
the face of this public defamation.
10. The claimant had not disabled the Matthew Spitz Twitter account at this stage, after multiple
requests to do so. The account was still active and publicly visible, with the last tweet having
been sent 28 July 2013 07:07. The decision to publish the account of what had happened
was a reasonable one available to the respondent who had suffered because of the
claimants behaviour.
11. The respondent is not responsible for the behaviour of the claimant. Her own actions were
rightly published as, inter alia, a warning to other potential victims, and to put forward a true
account of events in the face of the claimant's continued defamation of the respondent. The
full archive of texts has been made available to the court. Please see full archive of text
messages (AX02).
12. The blog was indeed published. The claimant, despite being asked to stop, had continued to
contact the respondent via tweets, text messages, and phonecalls. From 4th August 2013 - 7th
August 2013, the claimant sent the respondent 14 unanswered text messages in a row, 3
emails and phoned 3 times between 2am and 4am GMT. The respondent has a right to
explain what has happened to him.
13. The only messages omitted from the blog were withheld to protect the identities of other
people involved. There were around 500 text messages so the respondent could not
realistically publish all of them in the format of a blog. All are available to the court. No
messages were edited. Please see full archive of text messages (AX02).
14. The respondent has repeatedly asked the claimant through her lawyer to identify any parts
of the blog which were inaccurate. No response has been received. The respondent stands
by the facts as stated in his blog. The claimant's behaviour through her tweets, text messages
and voicemails, having been asked to desist, amounts to harassment.

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defence

Claim No. 3CL02233

Prior to the blog being published, the claimant sent (as one of the 14 texts in a row) the
following text message on 4 Aug 2013 at 05:04 GMT: Youre blog will be libelous under
every law. [sic] The respondent did not reply . He then received another unsolicited text
message from the claimant on 7 Aug 2013 at 03:25 GMT.
15. The claimant put herself in her position by virtue of her own behaviour. The claimant had
contacted other Twitter users (for instance @CityGirlNoMore) to further defame the
respondent and troll [i.e. provocatively attack on the internet, with the intent of
harassment] the respondent and his friends. These tweets have been made available to the
court. The claimants behaviour made it reasonable for the respondent to warn others and to
publish a true account of events. @CityGirlNoMore tweet archive is attached as Annexure
5 (AX05); Ms Frankfurts tweet archive is attached as Annexure 6 (AX06).
16. The blog was publicised. That is how blogs come to be read. The respondent's blog is fair
comment. The claimant continued to antagonise the respondent on Twitter full archives
are available to the court (Annexure 6 (AX06), as above). On 7th August 2013 the claimant
published a blog about the respondent and his partner, accusing them of blackmail.
Subsequently the claimant's blog was removed from the internet. The respondent has
retained an archived record of the page. This is available to the court and has been attached
as Annexure 7 (AX07). It should be noted that the claimants blog defaming the respondent
was published a full week before the respondents blog was published.
17. The respondent did not invite the letter from the claimant. Marking it confidential is
meaningless. The legal threats against him comprise an integral part of the profile of
iniquitous and vexatious behaviour by the claimant.
18. The respondent, concerned by the behaviour of the claimant, rightly refused to provide
details of his home address. On the 26th September 2013, in an email available to the court
as Annexure 08 (AX08), the respondent wrote to the claimants solicitor. The email ended in
the following terms; in a sincere effort to resolve this matter at the outset and to avoid
incurring further substantial costs for either party, I am prepared to remove the blog in its
entirety, subject to a written apology from your client for the very real distress her
unsolicited pursuit of me under the alias Matthew Spitz has caused to me and to my
family, and a written undertaking never to contact, or attempt to contact, me again, or in any
form or medium, or under any name, persona or alias. The claimant chose to ignore this
generous and reasonable offer.
19. The respondent contacted the Los Angeles Police Department and the claimants solicitor
warning them of the claimant's suicide threat within two hours of receipt of the email.
Evidence is available to the court attached as Annexure 9 (AX09). That this has been put in
the claim is knowingly dishonest on the part of the claimants solicitor and has been
separately reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The full text of the claimants
email is attached as Annexure 16 (AX16).

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defence

Claim No. 3CL02233

20. The respondent replied to the claimants father that as proceedings were ongoing he was
unable to correspond with him. This was beyond his obligations. He could have simply not
responded. The claimants fathers full, unedited email is attached as Annexure 12 (AX12)
and the respondents full, unedited reply is attached as Annexure 13 (AX13).
21. See 20. The respondent does not check his emails every day and in any event is not obliged
to respond to them. As per point 18, the respondent had made a good faith effort to achieve
resolution, which was ignored by the claimant.
22. The respondent, having suffered at the hands of the claimant for a considerable time, was
entitled, and remains entitled to publicise her behaviour.
23. Any abuse the claimant received on her blog was as a direct result of her own behaviour. The
respondent was neither aware of nor encouraged any abuse of her blog.
24. The claimant accepts setting up the @barrysaber account. The biography of the account
clearly identified it as the respondent's alternate account. He has no recollection of a
message about the claimant burning in hell. The account was set up to enable the
respondent to contact Twitter users who had blocked the respondent as a result of the
serious and untrue allegations made by the claimant, namely the two people whose
identities the claimant had appropriated for her Matthew Spitz account.
25. A journalist may have tweeted a link to the blog. This is quite reasonable reporting of the
horrific ordeal the respondent was put through by the claimant. The freelance journalist in
question, Jack Schofield, did not post anything to his blog. A statement from Mr Schofield is
attached as Annexure 14 (AX14).
26. Google and Yahoo are search engines which place results in order of relevance according to
proprietary algorithms. The respondent has no control over this.
27. The unemployed respondent was deliberately misled by the claimant into thinking she could
give him work. That the claimants behaviour and subsequent publication thereof has caused
her to lose work (which cannot be substantiated) is not the fault of the respondent. Further,
the respondent has actively sought to distance himself from any mutual overlapping Twitter
followers with the claimant. Any assertion that he targeted the claimant's followers or
sources of income is wholly false and completely baseless.
28. The respondent has no sympathy whatsoever. The claimant should have thought about this
before behaving in the way she did.
29. The respondent cannot be responsible for the situation the claimant created.
30. The application to join Ms
to the proceedings is malicious. Nearly 1,000
other Twitter users, many with far more followers, retweeted the link to the blog. For
instance,
, (who has 341,366 followers as of the 26th October 2013) also
retweeted the link on 15th August 2013 06:38. Neither he nor any others are being pursued.
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defence

Claim No. 3CL02233

The only purpose of specifically pursuing Ms

respondent by targeting people close to him.

is to vexatiously further distress the

31. The respondent is not liable for the natural results of the claimants deplorable behaviour.

The Claim for damages

1

The respondent is unemployed and has no means. No damages can be paid.

The blog has been repeatedly published and accessed inside and outside the jurisdiction of
the United Kingdom. Any attempt to prevent publication now would be meaningless.

The respondent has no means.

Annexures
AX01

Twitter archive of Matthew Spitz tweets

AX02

Text message archive between Jenny Frankfurt and J

AX03

Statement of Gail

AX04

Screenshots of tweets by Jenny Frankfurt

AX05

Twitter archive of @CityGirlNoMore tweets

AX06

Twitter archive of Jenny Frankfurt tweets

AX07

Blog entry on Sam Jones by Jenny Frankfurt

AX08

Email offer to disable blog, by John

AX09

Text and telephone records regarding Jenny Frankfurts suicide threat

AX10

Email to John

AX11

Direct Twitter Direct Message (DM) to John

AX12

Email to John

AX13

Email response to Harry Frankfurt from John

AX14

Statement of Jack Schofield

AX15

Jenny Frankfurt amends email

AX16

Jenny Frankfurt suicide threat email

from Jenny Frankfurt accusing him of harassment

from

from Harry Frankfurt, Jenny Frankfurts father

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defence

Claim No. 3CL02233

AX17

Statement of

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