[1] Netflix – The Most Hated Man on the Internet, Watch The Most Hated Man on the InternetNetflixhttps://www.netflix.com › title
[2] Vice – Bringing Down the Revenge Porn King, Bringing Down the Revenge Porn King: Hunter MooreYouTube · VICE2.4M+ views · 2 years ago
[3]Full disclosure: I have represented McGibney in other matters including in the quest to shut down Hunter Moore’s isanyoneup.com revenge porn site. McGibney came to me seeking to file a defamation suit against Retzlaff and Rauhauser. Retzlaff himself stalked me incessantly for years to try and stop me from representing McGibney. When Retzlaff was murdered, I was truly hurt that I was not a suspect.
Thomas Retzlaff and Neal Rauhauser spent years tormenting James McGibney, the man behind Bullyville.com.
The whole dispute started when McGibney financed the legal fight to destroy the revenge porn website isanyoneup.com,, Retzlaff and Rauhauser, apparent fans of the site, began a relentless onslaught of harassment towards McGibney. Retzlaff, in particular, was very upset that McGibney shut down the website since he had posted naked images of his own daughter on the site. Retzlaff was irate about the loss of control of his victim, and directed this anger toward McGibney. Yes, that’s right. Thomas Retzlaff posted photos of his own daughter on a revenge porn site. There is no evidence that Rauhauser was equally twisted nor perverse. Nevertheless, he too focused on McGibney and harassed him, his wife, and his children relentlessly.
After years of provocation, McGibney snapped.
McGibney asked me to file the lawsuit, and I declined–I believed the lawsuit would draw an Anti-SLAPP motion, which I expected would be successful. McGibney has authorized me to share the subsequent details, here. At the time, McGibney was in a tough spot because he had just signed a TV show deal with Warner Brothers, and Retzlaff and Rauhauser were allegedly harassing the execs at WB non-stop. As McGibney stated, “I should have listened to my lawyer and that was a tough lesson learned, I made a mistake and paid the price for it for over a decade.”
McGibney filed anyway. However, after some time, he realized that I was right, so he decided to withdraw the case. The defendants had not yet responded, so there was nothing to fight about. They won without firing a shot.
But here is where it got weird.
His lawyer at the time informed the defendants that they would be dropping the case. That should have ended it. But in response, Rauhauser’s lawyer, Jeffrey Dorrell, filed an Anti-SLAPP motion in Texas, and a few hours later, McGibney’s lawyer filed the notice of voluntary dismissal. However, since Rauhauser’s counsel filed first, McGibney was locked into litigation. And so a process that is supposed to end litigation early resulted in a decade long battle with the weirdest turns and twists I have ever seen in an Anti-SLAPP case. Mind you, not some of the weirdest, but the absolute weirdest.
The Case
McGibney sued Rauhauser in 2014 in Tarrant County, Texas. McGibney claimed that Rauhauser defamed him by making false statements online and engaging in cyberstalking and harassment. Despite being informed that McGibney was dropping the case, Rauhauser’s attorney, Jeff Dorrell, responded by filing a motion to dismiss under the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA), an anti-SLAPP law designed to protect free speech by allowing early dismissal of baseless lawsuits. On one level, that was clever of Dorrell– now McGibney was stuck. But Dorrell was pretty scummy for doing that–the case was over, and Dorrell’s intent to reserve his right to extract some fees from McGibney was clear.
The trial court initially failed to rule on Rauhauser’s motion within the required timeframe, which essentially functioned as a denial of the Anti-SLAPP motion. Rauhauser appealed the de facto denial; and in 2014, the Texas Court of Appeals in Rauhauser v. McGibney reversed the denial, finding that Rauhauser had shown the lawsuit targeted his speech and that McGibney failed to provide sufficient evidence to support his claims. What was interesting is that Rauhauser denied ever making the defamatory statements. The case was remanded for dismissal of most claims and a hearing on attorney’s fees and sanctions.
On remand in December 2015, without a hearing, the trial court ordered McGibney to pay Rauhauser $300,383.84 in attorney’s fees and $1 million in sanctions. The Court did not explain at all why $1 million in sanctions were warranted, and $300,000 for a single motion seems wildly excessive. Nobody has ever learned how Dorrell managed to get the judge to sign that order without a hearing.
This was even more noteworthy because it was the largest Anti-SLAPP sanctions award in history, and one of the largest fee awards in history as well.
The Appeals
McGibney challenged the lower court’s order, arguing the sanctions were excessive and the process was unfair. In February 2016, the trial court granted him a new trial, citing its failure to hold a hearing, temporarily rescinding the award. In April 2016, the sanctions were reinstated, though reduced to $150,000.
[4] Rauhauser v. McGibney, 508 S.W.3d 377 (Tex. App.–Fort Worth 2014, no pet.)
[5] https://www.courthousenews.com/1-3-million-in-anti-slapp-sanctions
McGibney appealed again, this time with a new attorney, Evan Stone. In 2018, the Texas Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, vacating the monetary and non-monetary sanctions and remanding the attorney’s fees issue for consideration by the lower court. The court found the trial court had abused its discretion, criticizing the lack of evidence tying the sanctions to deterrence and the questionable relevance of Dorrell’s fees–which reeked of bill padding.
Finally, upon another appeal, the Texas Court of Appeals finally ruled that both claims favored dismissal, and remanded the case back to the trial court for consideration of attorney’s fees and anti-SLAPP sanctions. There, the trial court found that there was no documentation to attest to the reasonableness of the requested attorney’s fees. And in a work of litigation kung fu, Attorney Stone managed to flip the script on Rauhauser. The trial court found that no award could be given to Rauhauser until he paid McGibney a separate court-granted award from six years prior. And in the end, when the numbers were crunched, Rauhauser got nothing and actually owed McGibney $2800.
[6] McGibney v. Rauhauser, 549 S.W.3d 816 (Tex. App.–Fort Worth 2018, pet. denied)
[7] Rauhauser v. James McGibney & Viaview, Inc., 2024 Tex. App. LEXIS 6611 (Aug. 24, 2024)
[8] McGibney et al. v. Retzlaff et al., Case No. 067-270669-14, in the 67th District Court in Tarrant County, Texas, https://bullyville.com/legal
