Jon Del Arroz filed suit on April 16 against the 2018 Worldcon and other defendants in San Joaquin Superior Court asking damages for claimed violations of his civil rights under California’s Unruh act, and for defamation.
The named defendants are:
San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions, Inc., aka Worldcon 76, David W. Gallagher (2019), President; David W. Clark (2020), Vice President; Lisa Deutsch Harrigan (2020), Treasurer; Kevin Standlee (2018), Sceretary; Sandra Childress (2019); Bruce Farr (2018), Chair; 2018 SMOF Con Committee; Cheryl Morgan (2020); Kevin Roche (2018), Chair; 2018 Worldcon (Worldcon 76) Committee; Cindy Scott (2018); Randy Smith (2019), Chair; New Zealand 2020 Worldcon Agent Committee; Lori Buschbaum; Susie Rodriguez and DOES 1 through 30, inclusive.
Del Arroz is represented by attorney Peter Sean Bradley.
The first 23 paragraphs of the Complaint lay out the history of Del Arroz’ banning by Worldcon 76 from his point of view, and allegations that he was banned because he is a Republican and Trump supporter.
Several of the causes of action quote from Worldcon 76’s announcement banning Del Arroz from the con, which said in part:
We have taken this step because he has made it clear that he fully intends to break our code of conduct. Worldcon 76 strives to be an inclusive place in fandom, as difficult as that can be, and racist and bullying behavior is not acceptable at our Worldcon. This expulsion is one step toward eliminating such behavior and was not taken lightly….
Repeated reference is also made to the committee’s email telling him he would not be allowed to attend, sent by Lori Buschbaum, the Incident Response Team area head. It is quoted in the Complaint as saying:
Jonathan, At this time we are converting your membership to Worldcon 76 to a supporting membership as you will not be permitted to attend the convention. On your personal blog you have made it clear that you are both expecting and planning on engendering a hostile environment which we do not allow, If you are found on the premises of the convention center or any of the official convention hotels you will be removed, Your payment of $50 covers the cost of your supporting membership in its entirety, and you have no balance owing. As a supporting member your nomination and voting rights for the Hugo Awards and site selection are maintained. If you prefer a full refund that can be arranged.
The Complaint outlines five causes of action, and in most cases leaves the requested damages to be determined at trial.
First cause of action: Violation of Civil Code Section 51 (Unruh Act)
28. …Under the Unruh Act, a business establishment may not discriminate against any person based on a personal characteristic representing a trait, condition, decision, or choice fundamental to that person’s identity, beliefs and self-definition as that factor has been applied in previous cases. …The protection of the Unrush Act extends to political affiliation….
30. Mr. Del Arroz was discriminated against in violation of the Unruh Act in that he has been banned from attending Worldcon 76 based upon his political affiliation and political beliefs….
Del Arroz claims lost sales and emotional distress as a result.
Second cause of action: Violation of Civil Code Section 51.5
This is a law against various forms of discrimination on account of characteristics such as “political affiliation.”
The Complaint says:
39. WorldCon 76 is a business establishment in that it holds itself out as open to the public without restriction and is using public facilities and engaging in public commcerce.
40. SFSF discriminated against, boycotted or blacklisted, or refused to contract with or sell to Mr. Del Arroz by refusing to sell him an attending membership because of his political affiliation and political beliefs. Plaintiff is informed and believes that the other named Defendants aided or incited this unlawful conduct.
Third cause of action: Violation of Civil Code Section 51.7
The Complaint alleges violations of the law’s protection against “violence, or intimidation by threat of violence” because of a political affiliation (or other arbitrary discrimination).
The Complaint says:
49. On Tuesday, January 2, 2018 at 5:01 p.m., Mr. Del Arroz received an email from Lori Buschbaum, who identified herself as the “Incident Response Team area head” for Worldcon 76 which stated in relevant part: “If you are found on the premises of the convention center or any of the official convention hotels you will be removed.” This statement constituted intimidation by threat of violence against Mr. Del Arroz because of his political affiliatuion in that Defendants and each of them threatened to have Mr. Del Arroz forced [sic] physically removed against his consent and acquiescence from locations he had a right to be in such as the lobby of a hotel. This threat was understood by Mr. Del Arroz to include violence in that Mr. Del Arroz had advised SFSFC of his concern about physical violence at WorldCon 76 and Mr. Arroz [sic] had been threatened with violence by members of SFSFC and individuals who had said they would be attending WorldCon 76 on social media maintained by SFSFC. At no time had SFSFC advised Mr. Del Arroz that he would be safe at WorldCon 76 and at no time did SFSFC make any effort to stop anyone from expressing a violent animus against Mr. Del Arroz on its social media sites.
Fourth cause of action Violation of Civil Code Section 52.1
After repeating verbatim paragraph 49 above, the Complaint alleges –
59. Mr. Del Arroz was threatened by SFSFC and Lori Buschbaum. Plaintiff is informed and believes that the remaining named Defendants aided or incited this conduct…. Individual Defendants and Does 1 through 30 aided, incited, authorized, ratified or conspired in the said discrimination, blacklisting, boycotting, and refusal to sell or contract with Mr. Arroz [sic] with respect to his purchase of an attending membership.
Fifth cause of action: Defamation.
Citing the January 2 email quoted above the Complaint alleges —
66. …Worldcon 76 never explained to him that anything he planned on doing would constitute a violation of any code of conduct. Mr. Del Arroz is informed and believes and thereon alleges that there is no such code of conduct. Further, Mr. Del Arroz is not a racist. Mr. Del Arroz has often made a point of condemning racism and proudly identifying his Hispanic heritage. Likewise, Mr. Del Arroz is not a bully. The statement that Mr. Del Arroz is a racist bully is false and SFSFC and its representatives knew t was false or made the statement with reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the charge and with a malicious intent to injure Mr. Del Arroz or his reputation….
Financial damage is also claimed, likewise emotional distress. The Complaint also claims that the defendants —
were aware that they were threatening Mr. Del Arroz with physical violence in order to prevent him from exercising his important civil rights including the right of association and the right to use public property and the right to free and equal treatment by business establishments.
Del Arroz also wants court costs and attorney fees.
Below are copies of the documents filed with the court. The Complaint contains all the allegations and support,. The judge has scheduled the initial case management conference for October 15.
- CM010 Civil Case Cover Sheet
- SUM100 Summons – Civil
- Complaint
- Notice of Case Assignment Scheduling Information
Update 04/16/18: Corrected the info under the Fourth Cause of Action.
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Jon Meltzer, thank you for your comment. This was enormously entertaining.
There are numerous David Goldfarbs in the USA, let alone the world – I’m still bitter that my primary care physician didn’t send me to David Goldfarb M.D. when I needed to see a urologist – but it would probably be quite trivial to figure out which of them is the one who comments here.
(There are at least two in this country who even share my middle name. Sheesh.)
As long as we’re confessing about real-world identities:
I’m not actually Rick Moen at all. In fact, I’m someone else of the same name. (Hope that helps!)
I scrolled with Rick Moen. I filed Rick Moen. Rick Moen was a pixel of mine. Sir, you’re no Rick Moen.
There are at least three living Kurt Busieks in the US at present, and others no longer with us, but as far as I know I’m related to all of them.
And the numbers of Camestros Felaptons is astounding.
I have an unusual name, and oddly, there are still several people who share my name — some of them male, and some of them female.
I’ve never met (or really heard of) anyone with my exact name but I know they must be out there somewhere. However, My parents’ next-door neighbours have the same surname as us. As far as we all know, we’re unrelated.
Edit: obviously I mean my real name rather than my pseudonym here. Plenty of people crap out and pick highly generic mythology inspired pseudonyms.
Dear JJ,
Thank you for the cross-stitch compliment! I shall cherish it (even if it can’t be hung on a wall).
~~~~
Dear Lurker,
Thenkyoothenkyoothewnkyoo. I shall live on in infamy.
~~~~
Dear Vicki,
Names turn out to be surprisingly common. I know a “Ctein” living in Taiwan and another in Norway. Based upon their ages, I think I was there first. So far as I know, neither is a fan.
Further regarding commonality— (shortly) before I entered fandom and not long out of college, I encountered not one, but TWO other photographers in my part of the country with the same parent-given name as I had. I had already started using “Ctein” for all my writing and photography, but this is when I threw up the absolute firewall. Bad enough having two three operating under the same name in the same business was just asking for Confusion.
pax / whatshisface
Dear JJ,
And Ghu help you if you have a common name. “Seven of Minneapolis” adopted her moniker because her first and last names are so fabulously common in her generation that it is impossible to find her by any kind of an online search on her birth first +last. In fact she adopted the nickname “Seven” when she was one of seven girls in the class at school who all had the same first name.
(No, I have no idea if the others went by “Six,” “Five,” etc.)
pax / Ctein
I share my real name with a mythical figure*, someone who once worked at NASA, and a horror writer from Australia. (I briefly corresponded with that last one. I joked that we should collaborate on a novel just so we could get into a public spat about which of us would get top billing. “Viral marketing” before the term was invented!)
On a somewhat more bizarre note, my mother’s family home was maybe a quarter-mile from a family with the same surname as my paternal DNA donor… but with no relation to him. When we moved back to that house after her father died, we occasionally had to exchange misrouted mail; their house number was exactly 110 less than ours.
* I occasionally grouse that I should get royalties from the plethora of books and movies made about him. Maybe I’d have a better case if I were any good at archery or looked better in tights.
I was once in a group of folks related by descent, some close and some extended. This meant that rather a lot of them had the same last name. And families being what they are, many of them (particularly the men) also had the same distinctive first names, going back to Nth-great-grampa or his brother, other Nth-great-grampa. Not even mentioning all the Jims, Mikes, etc. So nicknames abounded, usually geographical or professional or both. “Where’s Percival?” “Texas Percival or Professor Percival?”
Also, where I used to work, there were two men with the same first, middle, and last names (all common), of basically equal age, standing, and job. The one who got there first by a bit was “1”, the other “2”. Still managed to get each other’s email.
@Douglas Berry: Thank you. I just now gave an oral recitation of the non-legal parts and it was well-received by the audience, particularly my reading the part about the “calico dress” in an appropriate accent. An actual LOL erupted from reciter and audience at the G. Gordon Liddy parenthetical.
Locally, Soon Lee is not a common name. Globally, it’s common enough that I had to get creative when trying to use it as my gmail address.
(I also like that it is a gender ambiguous name.)
When I grew up, we had “large S”, “small S” and “tall S” (it is possible that large and small should be translated as “older” and “younger”, it’s amusingly ambiguous in the original).
My fairly unusual surname is more common as a middle name, so I’m aware of a few internet strangers who seem to have my first and last names as their full given name. Not aware of anyone else sharing my particular combo yet, but I hope they are prepared to duel for it if we ever do cross paths…
AFAIK, there may very well have only been one other Ray Radlein ever, and he was the uncle I was named after. Most of the few places in the world where “Radlein” isn’t completely absurdly uncommon are places where “Ray” is not a typical first name.
Back in the early days of the internet, my mere online presence was sufficient to give me the first page and a half of results for “Radlein” on Google and Alta Vista all to myself. These days, an until relatively recently unknown-to-me Jamaican / Canadian group of Radleins have become more searchable, thanks to a CFL football career and a Miss Jamaica title. But I can still usually grab “radlein” as a user name most places if I care to.
I’ve only met a few Tasha’s. Both times I was married I was the only person by that name that I could find on internet searches. During my latest divorce I legally took on my pen name. It’s a more common name. Back when I blogged regularly I “competed” for top spot on Google search results with a singer, a beauty expert who owns her own business, and a fashion trends magazine writer.
I have a google alert set up with my name. In addition to telling me when JDA tweets about me yet again, I find out about Paul Weimer the musician, Paul Weimer the real estate mogul in Florida, and there’s a Paul K Weimer who is apparently a microbiologist of some note.
I’m clearly the boring Paul Weimer.
Paul Weimer: I’m clearly the boring Paul Weimer.
Speaking of which, did you know you’re so boring that you have a blurb in the front of Raksura book 4? 😉
@JJ Oh yes, that delighted me enormously when it happened.
This is a great segue to a Meredith Moment:
The Audible deal of the Day is ALL SYSTEMS RED.
https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/All-Systems-Red-Audiobook/B076XSGP65
@Paul Weimer, or anyone who gets that audiobook of Murderbot, PLEASE tell us whether it’s delivered in a bored, irritated tone of voice… (because that would be perfect!)
My first name, though not unique, is still relatively unusual—enough so that I have sometimes been able to use it unadorned as a username. Sometimes someone has gotten in ahead of me, but by using “Kip Said” as a forum name (on something like AOL Chat), I’ve been able to have it appear as though I got it, since the “said” tends to seem invisible to many. I used “Kip Says” in the same forum when, for some reason, it didn’t believe I was really me and wouldn’t let me use my name because I was already using it. If need be, I could have gone through “Wrote,” “Spake,” “Sayeth,” and many others with much the same effect.
At my workplace, there is an official corporate policy regarding how to disambiguate similar names for official identification. (E.g., for email, since the standard format is [firstname].[lastname]@[company].com.) And also how to disambiguate initials for people working in the same department. Because initials are used for signing off tasks on production documents, they need to be unique, and evidently the vagaries of handwriting don’t make them sufficiently unique. The basic hierarchy is: first come first served, then add a middle name/initial, then add an arbitrary number. The unique identification on production documents is becoming less of a problem with the shift to electronic records and signatures (where it’s all tied to your employee ID).
When I first started attending cons back in the 1980s quite a few people looked at my name badge and gave me confused looks until I explained that I was not Denys Howard, I am an entirely different Dennis Howard. Denys and I finally met once in the 1990s when we were both at Wiscon.
It’s uncommon in the US to spell Elisabeth with an s, rather than a z. It does seem to have gained in popularity, but it’s still the less common choice. Carey, of course, is fairly common–but there isn’t a huge overlap between the ethnicities where Carey is a common surname, and the ones that spell Elisabeth with an s, or as we say in my family, properly.
Nevertheless, while I’ve never met another Elisabeth Carey, and certainly not a Lis Carey, Elisabeth Carey is a romance writer, and Elisabeth Carey Miller was a horticulturalist, in whose honor there is a magnificent garden somewhere.
To both of which I say, okay, no one is going to confuse me with either of them.
From my paternal grandmother down, my family has at least seven Catherines. I have lost count on the youngest generations – there may well be more. In particular there was a four-generation mother-daughter set. Some used different nicknames. Some had different last names. Some used their middle names instead.
I also had a brother and a female cousin who both went by Randy. When disambiguating we called them Randy Boy and Randy Girl. You Brits can stop giggling now.
When I was an officer of the Language Creation Society, I helped to organize one of our Language Creation Conferences In Austin, TX. Of the 50 or so attendees, three were named Zach. Also, one of the local organizers had the exact same first name as my paternal grandfather coupled with said paternal grandfather’s mother’s last name. We decided we were “cousins”, when it turned out that his family and mine came from the same part of Nicaragua.
I am not the only person with my name on the internet. I do usually show up on the first page of the search results for my first and last name together.
I’m several pages down the Google results for my actual name, but apparently I’m the top Mark Kitteh on the internet!
Eckerman is not that common and we actually spell it a bit different from the family branch (but there is another family that has a branch that spells it like us).
Add that Hampus more or less only exists in Sweden and that it used to be very uncommon (not anymore) and I think I’m unique with this combination. And if you add my first name (Hampus is my middle name), then I can’t see how there can be anyone more with my name.
Martin Morse Wooster sends me newspaper clippings of the doings of the many other folks I share a name with. Heck, there’s two in fandom and I’ve met both.
Heck even Wiki …. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Walsh
@Paul Weimer: Thanks for the “All Systems Red” heads up. I loved the ebook and had been toying with the idea of getting the audiobook; it’s only 3.25 hours, and I like Kevin R. Free’s work (e.g., he was very good with “The Ballad of Black Tom”). I’m an Audible member, but for $1.95, I’ll just buy it and save my (more expensive) credits for a longer book!
@Cassy B: I’ll try to remember to report back. 🙂 I don’t believe it is, from the sample, but the sample’s from the action-y bit at the beginning, so that may be misleading.
@Mark (Kitteh): If there’s aother Mark Kitteh, I’ll be a little scared! 😉
@Various: I like how the comments here have morphed into a Pixel Scroll style comment thread. 😀
I am definitely the only person in the world with my first-and-middle names *and* maiden surname, which is apparently not uncommon in Finland, but might be extremely rare anywhere else — besides maybe Minnesota. (I believe it is also Finland which has a fairly restrictive first name regulation, but even without, their common cultural given names don’t include Lenora). I *might* be the only person with the full three parts of my whole married name, though my current surname is far more common and I don’t discount the general possibility.
I am not the only person with Lenora *and* Rose as part of their name. I know this thanks to gmail’s disinterest in dots.
My husband went from a maiden name that was not terribly common outside of certain enclaves of a specific heritage to one which is common, and his first name is fairly normal, too, so unless he adds his now practically unique middle name (his original surname), he’s likely one of many.
But online, he’s had the same handle since before we ever met, and is easy to identify thereby.
@Kendall, get filers posting, and sooner or later (probably sooner) the topic comes around to either a) books or b) food. Or some combination of the two.
I have a common first name paired with a common last name. One of my good friends’ supervisor at work is another Eric Franklin. There are at least half a dozen of us in the Seattle Area alone. And one of us (who shares my middle initial) has a bad habit of bouncing checks. Or did when checks were still a regular thing.
My name is very common. Maybe just slightly less common than Mary Smith here in the US. In the speck of a town that I grew up in, there was another in the year after me at school. Different middle name. No relation as far as we knew.
I got into Gmail early enough to get my initials + surname. But I get wrong emails fairly often. And for things that they really should have made sure they gave the right email for! They’re lucky I’m not interested in stealing anyone’s identity.
Yes! For a while I was getting some rather important emails for a Denise Howard. I think her gmail address was the same as mine with some digits appended. Apparently she was either (a) forgetting the digits or (b) thinking that she was giving out a fake address.
The Other Me is a meteorologist in South Florida. I only became aware of him after his title company sent his loan documents to my gmail account, which I promptly destroyed and notified them of sending to the wrong address. Fortunately, his work address was easily available on the WPTV website, so I had something to cc him with.
I find it heartening that we have successfully hijacked this thread away from JDA’s trollishness and into a discussion of how common our respective names are.
(Mine, by the way, is extremely common — possibly one of the most common first-and-last-name combinations in North America, something I probably should have thought of before I started publishing. I have only personally known one other Matthew Johnson in my life, who happens to be a friend, a fairly near neighbour, the father of one of my son’s best friends and the reason why I’m not the top Google result for my name even if I limit results to Ottawa.)
Because our names are far, far more interesting.
I have an ethnic last name and a far from ethnic first name. Nevertheless, the combination is quite common. I even have a FB friend of the same name (she read something I wrote, couldn’t remember having written it, and then figured out that her memory wasn’t at fault).
My full first name is Chadwick, which I only use for my writing. Never knew anyone else with it, until Chadwick Boseman showed up. Although there seem to be other Chadwicks. Saxelid? As far I know, my family is the only one with that surname in the United States.
Norway, on the other hand…
I also point out that the percentage of bad guys/jerks named Chad in books, movies, and television is distressingly high. Can a good guy be named Chad, just once?
I know a Chadwick. And he’s a good guy! 🙂
@Chad, 50s/60s sf writer Chad Oliver’s full name was Symmes Chadwick Oliver. I suspect young folks don’t know him, but he was quite well known at the time.
My name is fairly common, the surname especially in the Yorkshire Dales where I’m from. However, as an immigrant now in a non-English speaking country it’s become very exotic. People even find ‘Rob’ unusual and difficult to understand, and I have travails ordering coffee at Starbucks.
Heh. My real first name is very common, even if I have the less-common variant spelling. Common as in, ‘I was in high school and two other people in my class had the same name’, or, ‘the theatre troupe I was with in University used to joke that it was one of the two names where you could call out the name and hear responses from five different directions at once’.
My last name, on the other hand, is sufficiently uncommon that someone else with the same last name has something like a 95% chance of being related to me within the last few centuries. (And it’s only not 100% because we did find some other family that changed the spelling of their last name within living memory.)
The closest I have to an exact name match is a fourth cousin who uses the more common variant spelling of the first name.
(My family has done a fair bit of genealogical research. Having a near-unique family name is really helpful. Trying to trace the MacDonald branch of the family is… rather more difficult.)
There is one other person in the US with my current first/last name combination. She was born with it while I took it on via marriage a few years before her birth. As fate would have it, we now reside in the same county, albeit many miles apart. I’ve received one or two phone calls meant for her. I am slightly concerned my bad credit is somehow visited on her from time to time.
Where I get name confusion is in emails. The name overlap ones make some sense. The Frenchman who insists on misspelling his Yahoo account name to match mine (it requires him to forget how to spell his own last name to achieve this) didn’t take it well when I escalated from “please stop doing this” to “here’s the bill for my forwarding services,” but at least he took the hint. After I delayed a wine shipment to his second home in the Loire.
My maiden name is so common in Quebec that I knew others with it in my small hometown, but none of us were close relatives.
I’ve got a pretty funny name-origin-story, but sadly I’m reluctant to share the details of it because I’m afraid it would make me too easy to doxx.
So I will just say that I have a rare first name and a common last name, which means that there are several folks on Facebook who share the name — but not in combo with my middle name. And my first name is an old family name, passed down through four generations, and used to be relatively common in “ye old pioneer” days. When I lived in Utah for several years everyone seemed to have had an old aunt or grandmother with my name, and there are several old western pioneer towns with my name slapped onto them.
Oh, and
@Paul —
Thanks for the post about Murderbot! I’ve been out of town — which means that I’m behind on weeding through my inbox, and I probably would have missed that Daily Deal. Which is now mine, all mine, thanks to you!
Relatively common first name, fairly common last name, and initials that don’t make it less common. (My brother has an uncommon middle initial, though, which helps in finding him in searches.) It could be worse, as some of my recent ancestors have even more common names. (And great-great-grandfather with very common name came over in 1848 or 1849 – from Liverpool – which means he’s invisible among the Famine immigrants.) Don’t even talk about looking for the lot with the last name of “White” (from NJ via the Finger Lakes and Wisconsin).
Chad, I have a cousin whose first name is “Chad” – I don’t know where his parents pulled it from, as it’s the first appearance on both sides of his family.
My first name is common enough that whenever someone calls it out in a crowded room, odds are at least two or three women will turn around. My last name is a fairly common Russian name, but my family spelled it so idiosyncratically (even two American branches of the same family spelled it two radically different ways) that AFAICT anyone who spells their last name the same is a first degree relative of mine. Many google searches have turned up no exceptions.
Cassy B: PLEASE tell us whether it’s delivered in a bored, irritated tone of voice… (because that would be perfect!)
Cassy, there’s a 5-minute sample at that link (click the “Play” icon under the cover image). The narrator does speak in an emotive, albeit fairly matter-of-fact, way — though there’s a “blah blah blah” which is pretty amusing.