Orland Park, IL. (ECWd) –
Bridget Bittman’s attorney finally finished filing all documents as ordered by the Judge.
This batch was an Opposition to a Motion to Dismiss, and Opposition to Partial Motion to Dismiss.
These filings can be read or downloaded below:
[gview file=”https://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/5-4-2014-A.pdf” save=”1″]
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[gview file=”https://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/5-4-2015-B.pdf” save=”1″]
24 Comments
Emily
Posted at 19:02h, 06 MaySomething else that is never noted in these articles is what has been done to Megan Fox because she dared stand up to this library. I see Starla going on about “poor” Bridget Bittman and how she was supposedly “targeted” (even though she is a public employee who chose to tell lies about Megan Fox in the media for the deliberate purpose of harming Ms. Fox…but according to Starla public employees cannot be criticized for attacks they make on members of the public who criticize public bodies). You should really tell the whole story about how Megan Fox was targeted with death threats, rape threats, and had her children threatened. Ms. Fox received harassing phone calls, pictures of dead bodies sent to her, and other gruesome attacks. All because she dared to criticize the OPPL for covering up child porn and other sex crimes that happened there and to call out Bridget Bittman for repeatedly lying to the public and behaving unprofessionally (which has been caught on film). One of the people involved in these threats was a library employee and her husband, who encouraged the death and rape threats last year. Another person involved is the brother of an OPPL board member.It is believed that several other anonymous Internet posters are OPPL employees or relatives of same. Ms. Fox was doxxed and her home address was posted and the people doing that encouraged others to come to Ms. Fox’s house and murder her. Ms. Fox’s car was vandalized and she’s had to file several police reports and seek help from the state’s attorney. Bittman lied about Ms. Fox to reporters, knowing the reporters would not fact-check Bittman, and those lies damaged Ms. Fox professionally and personally. Many of the lies that Bittman originated are still being repeated. Bittman seems to have clearly known what she was doing when she chose to lie about Ms. Fox in her capacity as the public information coordinator for the OPPL. Bittman willingly engaged in a strategy of telling reporters things that she knew were not true, just to hurt Ms. Fox and try to scare her away as the library’s critic. Bittman’s behavior has been despicable from the very beginning. The library employee who was involved in egging on the online attacks on Ms. Fox was forced to resign. The brother of the board member who has participated in the attacks on Ms. Fox appears to be in serious trouble for it. It will be an interesting day when Ms. Fox and Ms. Dujan bring these and other civil rights matters to federal court, where no doubt Bittman’s actions over the last year and a half will get a lot of scrutiny. I hope Starla is around to offer her commentary then. I predict a year from now that the OPPL is going to have to write a giant check with lots of zeroes at the end of it to remedy all the damage that it and its employees did while trying to scare away Ms. Fox and Mr. Dujan.
Mitch
Posted at 21:23h, 06 MayWhere’s your proof?
Starla
Posted at 08:00h, 06 MayI recently took the time to read some of the filings of the Brittman case and some of the background leading up to the lawsuit.
Usually I just lurk around in these blogs and seldom comment. However, here’s my take.
Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan certainly have a right to their opinions and feelings regarding library filters and their stand against pornography. But as this whole OPPL story has played out, certainly their tactics and games have come off as childish and immature. Most troubling for me was the creation of the false Facebook page and assumption of Ms. Brittman’s identity.
While certainly people have the right to confront and even mock public officials (and people working in the public realm,) the lengths the defendants have gone to are frankly kind of shocking. I am a strong supporter in anti-SLAPP lawsuits as holding public officials to standards is never a bad thing.
However once Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan strayed away from true public criticism into the realm of personal attack on an individual, that’s when they crossed the line.
Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan had the right to attend the public meetings, file their FOIAs, form opinions and speak their minds on their public web pages and at the public meetings. Certainly some of the OPPLs actions should have been called into question. And the lawsuit that ensued which Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan won was a correct decision.
However when Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan chose to target Ms. Brittman in a manner that no longer had bearing on the discussion of public policy it was no longer an issue about her case being an anti-SLAPP lawsuit and crossed the line into defamation of her personal reputation. Ms. Bittman, as an employee of OPPL, does not make the official policies of the OPPL. She is not a board member.
I don’t understand why Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan spent an inordinate amount of time making their childish videos. Yes taking a photo of the OPPL board and adding little crowns over the heads of the board members is cute. However, wouldn’t their time have been better spent mounting a web based public petition to obtain filters on the adult computers? If they had acted more maturely, I honestly believe people may have taken them a little more seriously. Recently, they FOIAed all the little hearts that visitors to the library made comments on. How does that move the agenda forward, except to give one a platform to make more immature comments on Ms. Fox’s Facebook page. Does this really help you make your case or does it make you look like a petulant child who is stomping their feet and having a public tantrum. Or a nutcase who’s agenda is not really to change public policy but to make a public spectacle of themselves to serve their own narcissistic needs and feel important.
And I have to wonder, if Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan lose this suit, whether they will double down on their childish tactics or if they will take the time to reasonably assess their behavior and rejoin the discussion as mature people.
jmkraft
Posted at 08:19h, 06 MayOne thing that I don’t think was mentioned anywhere was that they were served with the lawsuit at a public meeting in the Library. Which, to me, is just one more indication that the sole intent was to infringe on their rights to speak their minds about the policies and people of the OPPL. Serving them at a meeting only had the perceived effect of chilling their participation in government.
Starla
Posted at 09:34h, 06 MayMr. Kraft. I’ve looked at your website and for the most part your criticism of public policies and the way small town governments are run is mostly laid out in a reasonable format backed up with documentation, along with some appropriate jabs, a little mockery and some digs. All fair game. I don’t think you have ever personally made an individual personal life an issue on this blog unless it has something to do with their government role.
I don’t know if there is ever a good place to serve a notice of a lawsuit. Certainly, Mr. DuJan, from reviewing his FOIA requests, maintains a PO Box and perhaps they did not have an address. Ms. Fox, probably would have made a dramatic video of how the process server showed up at her family’s door and scared her children.
Certainly by reviewing the ensuing months of trash talk on Ms. Fox’s website, the lawsuit has not stopped either one from speaking their minds, but perhaps their lawyer has advised them to turn it down a bit.
The anti-Slapp laws are evolving as they wind thru the courts. One thing that has become clear though is that it was not intended to protect those who commit torturous acts and then seek refuge in the immunity conferred by the statute.” The Court further held that the statute is not a privilege for those that defame another, even if petitioning for government action.
Emily
Posted at 17:35h, 06 MayThis question is for Starla, since you seem to know so much about all this: when did Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan “target Ms. Bittman in a manner that no longer had bearing on the discussion of public policy”. Can you provide an example of that? Because Bittman is the public spokesman for the OPPL and its board. Bittman told lies about Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan in the news media and she was criticized for lying. She was also criticized for her unprofessional behavior in public, which John Kraft the editor of this website was witness to on at least one occasion. All the criticism of Bittman has been regarding her behavior as a public employee and most notably her decisions to knowingly tell lies to the media and the public as part of the strategy the OPPL engaged in to scare away its critics.
Emily
Posted at 17:47h, 06 MayMy goodness Starla had a lot to say on this topic! It almost reads like something out of an American Library Association crisis management book. Great example of concern trolling. What you don’t address is the fact that child pornography was accessed at the OPPL and covered up, along with a lot of other bad management decisions there. The library has admitted it did this and it also had to pay out a $55,000 settlement for violations of the Freedom of Information Act and the Open Meetings Act. It’s also seems that the library is in the process of being sued in federal court on civil rights violations for some of the things it did to try to silence Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan. That will be a much larger settlement than $55,000 for sure. It’s interesting to me that you choose to criticize the people who uncovered the child porn being accessed and the other bad things happening in this public building. It’s a common thing in the Internet Age to armchair quarterback. But, from what I can see Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan sure got a lot of results in the last year and a half. Not only did they get the library to change many entrenched, illegal policies but they also won two lawsuits agains the library, forced changes in the library’s spending habits, and forced the library to clean up the computer area and start enforcing a strict no-sex policy in that building. That is a sea change for that place and it looks like the library fought these changes tooth and nail. No matter what they would have done, I am sure you would have criticized it. I must ask, where were you in all of this? If you have so many great ideas and you know how to do things better than Ms. Fox and Mr. DuJan, then why weren’t you leading the charge and showing them how it’s done?
SafeLibraries
Posted at 19:52h, 06 May“Starla”: Trolls avoid issues and attack messengers, as you have done.
To this date the library still makes child porn available and covers it up by policy and practice despite its various losses in court and before the Illinois Attorney General. Getting the library to comply with the law instead of with American Library Association policy is the issue.
How Mrs. Fox and Mr. DuJan address the issue is only of interest to trolls. Hence your repeated emphasis on their being “childish.”
Who’s childish, the trolls or the child porn whistleblowers?
SafeLibraries
Posted at 11:30h, 05 MayFYI @LibraryJournal @AmLibraries @ALALibrary @OIF @US_IMLS RT @ECWDogs: OPPL – Bittman lawsuit – May4 filings – http://t.co/zOWDZdxBaV
SafeLibraries
Posted at 09:24h, 05 MayI named for “vilifying” #libraries. @OIF #libchat RT @ECWDogs: OPPL – Bittman lawsuit – May4 filings – http://t.co/zOWDZdxBaV
SafeLibraries
Posted at 09:23h, 05 MayMT @ECWDogs: OPPL – Bittman lawsuit – May4 filings http://t.co/zOWDZdxBaV
@MeganFoxWriter @StoryTimeDigita @Open_The_Books @OrlandPkLibrary
SafeLibraries
Posted at 09:18h, 05 May#TeamHarpy: Today’s update on #OrlandPark defamation suit: RT @ECWDogs: OPPL – Bittman lawsuit – May4 filings – http://t.co/zOWDZdxBaV
SafeLibraries
Posted at 09:16h, 05 MayRT @ECWDogs: OPPL – Bittman lawsuit – May4 filings – http://t.co/EQAV6fHuwh
Emily
Posted at 08:24h, 05 MayCan I ask a question? Why are there no exhibits posted with her filings? For instance, she refers vaguely to photos she does not like, but no photos are produced. She claims that a Facebook page run by a gay man that posts humorous things impersonates her. But, she does not provide screen grabs or links to anything she finds objectionable. Is that normal for a lawsuit? This is the most bizarre litigation I have ever heard of because it’s like the defendants have to guess what she is talking about. The judge will have to guess what pictures she is talking about. That is like something out of the Soviet Union. She accuses people of things but then provides no exhibits backing up her accusations. How is that allowed?
Mitch
Posted at 20:00h, 05 MayWhen they first created the FB page, Dujan/Fox filled it with references to and some pictures of Bridget, all the while mocking her. Once the suit was filed the tone of the page changed. They deleted some of the content and continued to post on the page so they could say the page isn’t about her.
jmkraft
Posted at 20:01h, 05 MayThanks for your opinion
Mitch
Posted at 20:34h, 05 MayIt’s the truth.
jmkraft
Posted at 21:02h, 05 MayAll of it?
Mitch
Posted at 22:21h, 05 MayYup. The pics of Bittman were on the FB page when it started. Most were removed and the posts stopped making fun of her when the lawsuit was filed.
Emily
Posted at 17:40h, 06 MayMItch, I don’t why we should just believe you that things were deleted off the FB page. Can you cite what was deleted and provide screen grabs possibly? I feel like you just make statements without any proof to back them up and in this case the statements you are making are defamatory and accusatory and I hope that Mr. Kraft has your IP address handy should you need to be held accountable for that.
Mitch
Posted at 21:25h, 06 MayAs SafeLibraries says, you just want to attack the messenger.
Rose
Posted at 23:38h, 11 MayHere’s a screencap for you right here, Emily
http://tinypic.com/r/331izy8/8
Francis
Posted at 08:51h, 08 MayExhibits are generally not included where these documents are downloaded. I can assure you that exhibits have been submitted to the court with proof that the Facebook page was set up to harass Ms Bittman.
I would have written everything Starla wrote. Considering she did such a good job, I will leave it at that.
ECWDogs
Posted at 08:05h, 05 MayOPPL – Bittman lawsuit – May4 filings – http://t.co/EQAV6fHuwh