I might be misunderstanding, and haven't read anything other than this twitter thread, but it sounds like this is the discovery process in the lawsuit filed by the State of California against Amazon, in which Molson is a witness. It doesn't sound like Amazon is suing him for anything, but the discovery process in big cases can be a lot, and the requests are overwhelming him.
As such, given that he's not actually a party to the suit, I'd think that California and its attorneys should be assisting Molson with document requests?
Based on the discovery requests, it appears Amazon is mostly requesting documents and discovery from him that CA can't help him with, since Molson is in control of those documents.
Being an expert witness usually means that the party employing your services generally pays for your time to respond to discovery requests. In this case, it appears he was cited in CA's complaint but CA did not actually engage him as an expert witness so it doesn't appear (based on the Twitter thread) that he is being paid for his testimony.
As all of the requested documents should be standard business records kept in the normal course of running his sales business, and he does not have any employees, "reasonable compensation" in this matter is presumed to be zero unless he can demonstrate to a judge otherwise.
IIRC you aren't entitled to a court-provided lawyer in civil proceedings.
Although I guess the question is whether or not the AG could/should ask their legal council to represent the witness to some degree to fight these overbearing document requests.
Plain old witnesses, yes. Expert witnesses get paid when you pull them in to support your case.
The State of California should also have some reasonable interest here in protecting their expert witness from retaliation, so they can continue to obtain qualified expert witnesses in future cases.
This is usually the case. Having served as an expert witness in CA, this is what I was afforded. I still had my own legal team to interface with the state, but that was baked into my fee.
Correct, but there is a bit of an unstated threat any time you do this to one of your own witnesses where the witness may give testimony that is not as persuasive to your version of events as you’d like.
“The car was blue.” versus “Well it was dark out and I didn’t have my glasses on but maybe the car was blue.”
If you zoom in on the picture of him being served, the legal documents he's holding indicate the case is between the state of California and Amazon. He is neither plaintiff or defendant. It is a subpoena not a lawsuit.
Agreed, but half the comments here are getting hung up on him saying he's being sued when it really appears that he isn't. Which then brings in the "what did he do that is appropriate to sue over?" arguments...which can't be answered, because he isn't being sued.
They're holding firm that this is (in essence) a SLAPP. Whether it's a lawsuit proper or a subpoena resulting from a document request filed to the court by Amazon (and affecting the activist exactly as Amazon intended) is an almost irrelevant technical detail.
Given his available paths and options of how to proceed are vastly different between being sued himself and being subpoenaed in a lawsuit between other parties, I would not call it an irrelevant technical detail.
You seem to be nitpicking when the reality is that this is a person who is aggrieved at service of legal process, caused by Amazon, unjustly compelling him to do disproportionately onerous legal work, all in an attempt to discredit and/or dissuade him, and/or gain something for a countersuit. It's really not clear where you're going with this nitpicking, nor why. For the common person that's a pretty damn good approximation to being "sued", not that most people in this comment thread have actually said that in any case. So it's either a weird flex or a pretty bad faith attempt to throw up chaff.
Initial person said: "hey this actually looks like a subpoena not him being sued"
Next person said: "The dude involved said lawsuit, duh"
Me: "If you look at the actual documents the dude involved posted a picture of, it's a subpoena not a lawsuit"
You and that other account: "these are the same thing because both can be tools to suppress others"
The point that a subpoena can also be a tool to suppress someone is valid. I don't know why it's an issue in this specific branch of the thread, which started with someone pointing out a valid factual error, which got a flippant response ignoring what they said, and then I pointed out the evidence in the source that backs up the factual error reported by the previous poster.
Your fight isn't with me it's with someone else but you seem to have latched on to me for whatever reason.
As such, given that he's not actually a party to the suit, I'd think that California and its attorneys should be assisting Molson with document requests?