For background take a look at this excellent article from the Times on this lawsuit.

Oh dear, friends, more drama swirls around the Lunada Bay Boys case.¹ You may recall that, the other day, defendant Brant Blakeman asked the Judge to take judicial notice of the fact that proposed class representative Diana Reed had a default judgement against her in L.A. County Superior Court for a bunch of torts including one or more flavors of fraud and that that fact made her somehow unsuitable to represent the class of plaintiffs in this case. Tonight the plaintiffs’ response hit PACER, facetiously but accurately summarized in the headline, along with some other stuff, and I have copies for you along with descriptions, find it all after the break.

• Plaintiffs’ Response to Defendant Blakeman’s Request for Judicial Notice — Argues that the request was submitted without permission, that it was submitted past the deadline, that it constitutes an attempt to circumvent the court’s rules on allowable lengths of pleadings, that all its arguments in favor of the proposition that Diana Reed is not a suitable class representative are unsound for various reasons, including the fact that she didn’t even know about the suit against her, and that’s why she didn’t show up to defend it.
• Declaration of Samantha Wolff in Support of the Above Response — Samantha Wolff is one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Here she declares that the below-linked transcript of one of the defendants’ depositions of Diana Reed is what it purports to be.
• Exhibit A in Support of Plaintiffs’ Response — This is part of a transcript of one of the depositions of Diana Reed, in which she asserts repeatedly under oath that she didn’t know that she had been sued and had had a default judgement issued against her. It appears from reading this that the first time she’d heard of the matter was at the deposition. The argument this supports is that a default judgement doesn’t speak ill of her willingness to defend lawsuits if she defaulted because she wasn’t aware that she’d been sued. This seems quite plausible to me.

Don’t forget that there’s an upcoming hearing on the plaintiffs’ motion to certify the case as a class action, scheduled for Tuesday, February 21 at 10 a.m. in Judge Otero’s courtroom 10C in the First Street Courthouse downtown.

Free Lunada Bay logo is shamelessly kiped from the Coastal Protection Rangers website and I will be happy to take it down if they ask me to.

1. Much of it, I think, due to the exceeding trollability of defendant Brant Blakeman, but what do I know?