San Francisco Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon 76) has reached settlement with Jon Del Arroz in the lawsuit he filed against them for having been banned from the 2018 convention and for statements made in the public announcement of that decision.
Under today’s settlement, SFSFC will pay Del Arroz $4,000, and is publishing the following statement on its website and Facebook page:
SFSFC AND JON DEL ARROZ HAVE SETTLED THE LAWSUIT MR. DEL ARROZ FILED WHICH INVOLVED HIS BEING BANNED FROM WORLDCON 76. IN CONCLUDING THE DISPUTE, SFSFC WISHES TO ISSUE THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT:
SFSFC acknowledges the importance of reputation, especially for a relatively new author, and regrets that its public statement about barring his attendance might have led people unfamiliar with Mr. Del Arroz and his work to infer that he is or was a racist. For that, SFSFC apologizes. This attendance ban was specific to the Worldcon 76 events produced by SFSFC, and Mr. Del Arroz has the same opportunity as other members of the public to register for future SFSFC events. Worldcon 76 does not tolerate discrimination in any form — including through cosplay — based on but not limited to gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical/mental health conditions. SFSFC firmly believes that healthy political discourse requires active, mutual, good faith participation by members of the community with differing opinions.
Kevin Roche
Chair, Worldcon 76 in San Jose
President, San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions, Inc.
The agreed settlement is “a full and final settlement of all claims between the parties.”
The final settlement meets Del Arroz’ demand for an apology, but rejects two additional conditions originally included in his attorney’s proposal of May 27 (copy subsequently filed with the court), which were:
2. SFSFC will agree to make an active attempt to avoid exclusionary practices in the future to anyone in science fiction based on race, religion, creed, or political affiliation by having its board attends a diversity training course (which can be online) showing completion within one year of the date of the agreement. The settlement agreement will provide for liquidated damages of $25,000 and attorneys fees if this provision is breached.
3. Mr. Del Arroz will be added as a Diversity & Inclusivity Officer to the organization for future conventions and events to ensure discrimination based on identity does not occur again.
Also, the compensation is less than the originally proposed sum of $50,000 “for the damage done to Mr. Del Arroz’s reputation, emotional distress, and financial losses.”
SFSFC, Inc. is the parent corporation of Worldcon 76, held in San Jose. Del Arroz sued SFSFC in 2018 after the Worldcon 76 committee announced he would not be allowed to attend the convention (“Del Arroz Files Suit Against Worldcon 76”. In February 2019, the court tossed four of the five causes of action in Del Arroz’s lawsuit against Worldcon 76’s parent corporation. The case continued on the fifth complaint, defamation, and focused on SFSFC’s statement on social media banning Del Arroz from attending Worldcon 76. In May, the court rejected Worldcon 76’s Motion for Summary Judgment, and in addressing five arguments Worldcon 76’s attorney made in support of the motion Judge Manoukian said that four of the defense’s contentions were not proven, and another would need to be decided by a jury. Del Arroz’ attorney at that point waived the originally-requested jury (according to a June 2 filing). Therefore, if the case had gone to trial, it would have been solely before the judge who’d just ruled against the MSJ. These kinds of litigating hazards were likely a strong incentive to settle.
Copy of the statement approved by the parties to the settlement.
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Re: condition #3
insert Annoyed Picard meme
tick
Adam Rakunas: You may have realized that proposed condition is not part of the final settlement, but I have tweaked the post to make that even clearer.
Clickity tick
I suppose the $4000 was less than the court costs if they had continued, and not definitely prevailed. And probably less than JdA spent on the lawyer.
Though I wonder what “discrimination … through cosplay” would be.
…I’ve got nothing.
So everybody lost?
Maybe it’s just me, but “SFSFC firmly believes that healthy political discourse requires active, mutual, good faith participation by members of the community with differing opinions” reads like a pretty big FU to JDA and his trolling.
Jon Del Arroz is DEAD TO ME. I would trust advice from him on “diversity and inclusion” about as far as I could throw him…into an active volcano.
Apologizing to him and paying him money is not something that will look to JDA like an FU.
Perhaps people should be a little more careful how they throw around the word “racist”. A court is capable of determining when a term of art becomes a slur.
@Mike – I know. And I’m sure he’s milking his “victory” for everything he can get.
@John D Arkansawyer
They “know it when they see it”, like pr0n?
I wish I could believe what you said, but there’s enough evidence that they don’t.
@PJ Evans: When the court said that Worldcon might have to answer for the “sting” of JDA being called a racist, this end or one like it became predictable. I’m glad I didn’t try to predict it. because I expected Worldcon to lose at trial, so I’m also glad they had a wise lawyer who told them to cut their losses.
The only person who destroyed JDA’s reputation is JDA himself. This settlement is garbage.
Mike – I did realize earlier that it was a proposed condition, not a final condition. The Annoyed Picard stands, regardless.
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This is disgusting. JDA neither deserves an apology nor compensation beyond having his membership reimbursed, which Worldcon 76 already did.
Clickity
@John A. Arkansawyer
Why would Worldcon have lost? Everybody can see exactly what a jerk JDA is. The only person who is defaming him is JDA himself.
Jim C. Hines: The only bitter thing for JDA is that just this moment he’s under a four-week ban on Facebook and serving a 5+ day timeout on Twitter, so he can only crow about it on YouTube or places like Gab.
I’m glad he’s off of Twitter and Facebook right now, because this will be old news before he has a chance to be completely insufferable about this in public again.
Sucks that SFSFC has to pay him anything.
Shame that JDA is incapable of good faith participation.
Having dealings with California legal on a frequent basis, I can confirm the courts are unpredictable and temperamental. I am sure the SFSFC Lawyers advised them wisely. That said, the Complainant is best left as a footnote of a fine Worldcon.not as a focus.
That apology is magnificent in its deployment of shade. “might have led people unfamiliar with Mr. Del Arroz and his work to infer that he is or was a racist” is a work of sheer majesty.
Oh well. JDA will get bragging rights (once he gets out of his social media bans). I guess he got some of what he paid for.
So they paid a nuisance fee to get rid of him. Honestly I was hoping for a trial and they could have gotten closer to the data and just had him give up with an apology, but I imagine the judge wanted this off their docket.
JDA till has to pay his legal fees and deal with a reputation as the litigious ahole.
That $4000 probably doesn’t even cover his legal fees.
Although I’m not sure how banning someone because they announced on twitter that they were going to violate the code of conduct by secretly recording people without their permission leads to an inference of racism. I’m assuming the argument would have been that people think of codes of conduct as relating solely to issues of sexual harassment and racism and thus would lead to a wrong impression about JDA. OTOH, I’m not on very many forms of social media, so I might have missed something. Other than JDA accusing SFSFC of being racist for banning him.
Juries and judges can both be unpredictable. It’s a relatively cheap settlement.
One possible future issue is going to be how SFSFC handles JDA’s requests to be on program at future events going forward. Given his tendency to get in fights with everyone on twitter, I wouldn’t want him on programming at any convention I was a part of, but it might be safer for the next couple years to put him on program so he can’t claim he’s being retaliated against.
He’s suspended from FB for a month & Twitter for a week.
@cathy
Unfortunately, no inference required. It was in the statement about the ban.
It was always the weakest bit – JDA is a so-and-so, but I’m not sure I’ve seen him speak about race except when being self-aggrandising or throwing accusations, which doesn’t lend itself well to proving Worldcon’s case.
So, lesson learned: Ban away, just don’t be specific, and if you are specific, be damn sure you can back it up with receipts.
It was in the announcement that was put out.
“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. ” [1]
Which if you will indulge the armchair quarterbacking; was a bad choice. They could have banned him and just never spoke of it outside of the convention staff and when he showed up have him trespassed. If you prep the officers ahead of time about it they are more likely to give someone one chance to leave or be arrested and JDA is the type to push his luck. I follow the less said the better on these things.
Less said on this the better, but just speculating, yes it can cause people to worry about including someone in the future given the litigiousness they have shown. However, I advise anyone thinking on this to NEVER write a plan or statement that could be used later to accuse you or your organization of retaliation. You can think what you will, but never record such thoughts.
The safer thing to do is just not consider one way or the other. If you have a specific hole that he would fill, sure. However he aside from this case he is a no-name author whose only claim to fame is his marketing tactic of attacking people using culture war themes. He is not even very good at it and if you wanted to have a more talented, articulate and intelligent representative from that spectrum there are far better known and well behaved people to choose from.
So you have to ask yourself what would he bring to the table that would be unique or worth making time in a panel. Not much in my estimation, he is a hack writer, a hack comic book author, a hack social commentator and not at all likely to attract an audience.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/worldcon76/posts/worldcon-76-has-chosen-to-reduce-jonathan-del-arrozs-membership-from-attending-t/1934320506829548/
Cathy says One possible future issue is going to be how SFSFC handles JDA’s requests to be on program at future events going forward. Given his tendency to get in fights with everyone on twitter, I wouldn’t want him on programming at any convention I was a part of, but it might be safer for the next couple years to put him on program so he can’t claim he’s being retaliated against.
Who gets on the program at Worldcon is absolutely up to the programming folk. No individual has an absolute claim to being placed on any future event, period. JDA is no different in this.
That $4000 probably doesn’t even cover his legal fees.
Given the length of time this litigation has taken, I expect that it probably doesn’t even cover a tenth of his legal fees.
The shade, it’s amazing. Law school was good for something. The irony of him being banned on social media for his a-hole behavior the same day the settlement is released is the cherry on top.
I also don’t see where the racist accusation came from, it was all a-hole behavior related.
So jda comes out way behind on legal fees, settles for less than 10% of his original claim, 4 out of 5 claims are summarily dismissed, and Worldcon says he wasn’t racist, which they never said in the first place. If that’s what he thinks “victory” looks like, I’m not sure what defeat is.
Hope all the volunteers who had to live with this for years are feeling relieved and are partaking in an adult beverage or three tonight. This whole mess had to be stressful for them.
At the college where I teach, I’ve been on several faculty search committees. And there are always some great candidates that we can’t hire for various reasons. And as much as I would like to tell the candidates why we didn’t hire them, we are under absolute orders from HR not to say anything to them about our reasons. Because anything we say could open us up to lawsuits. As Eric pointed out, the whole problem was because the announcement tried to explain why they were banning him. If all you say is “banned due to violations of the code of conduct”, sightseers might want more detail, but you avoid legal issues such as were raised here.
Of course we would like to use a ban as a way to let people know that we are standing by our code of conduct, and we are protecting them; while warning other potential violators that we aren’t kidding about this. But, to be legally safe, you just can’t use one person’s ban as an “educational opportunity” for others.
That is one beautiful non-pology. I commend Worldcon’s lawyers for parsing words so perfectly. It looks like an admission of something and yet… it isn’t. The shade is chef kiss They are infinitely better writers than him.
So I hope the $4K is worth having completely ruined his chances at ever becoming a Prominent Local (or Worldwide) Author. Not that he needs the money — I looked up his house on Zillow after his deposition. I guess maybe he can get a couple more bucks crying to niche RWNJ outlets, but long-term? Nope. Good thing he’s already got bucks.
I suspect (from rumblings I’ve gleaned) that his lawyer realized he was in way over his head if it had gone to trial. Particularly when the deposition had his client basically ruining his own case.
Maybe now the volunteers can get their reimbursement! I know many of them can use every penny they can get. Unlike this asshole.
Him currently being banned from FB and Twitter is another chef kiss
Also, now everyone knows what lawyer NOT to hire, after that completely screwed up MSJ with typos, errors, missing forms, etc.
Protip: If you have to go to court to establish you’re not a racist, even when no one’s called you one… well… it’s like beginning a sentence with “I’m not racist, but…”
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I’d really like to believe JDA when he says that he is not a racist. But he associates with Vox Day, who supports “white Christian masculine rule”. If JDA is not a racist, he’s going about it in a very contradictory way that is unlikely to lead to good results.
What a mess. At least the lawsuit is over.
@Tom Becker: As with everything in life, there’s a Simpsons reference for that:
https://thecomicscomic.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ed02a6788330147e03f98d2970b-pi
So JDA isn’t a racist, he’s just friends with one.
Does anyone remember how much he crowdfunded from his followers for legal stuff? You know, because he’s such a successful person but wanted others to pay his legal fees? I want to say the 4k doesn’t even cover what he had others pitch in on his behalf.
WorldCon76 was wise to settle.
Maybe this will be a lesson to fandom. Be careful what you say publicly. Even if you eventually prevail in the lawsuit, you will wind up spending money which you won’t get back. And, if you lose, the Court determines the damages.
They should have privately returned his membership fee.
A retired lawyer.
Parler, Gab, and MeWe are surely sufficient for JDA to reach his fans. And when YouTube inevitably boots him for the same reasons as Twitter and Facebook, there’s always Rumble.
@Eric: “Which if you will indulge the armchair quarterbacking; was a bad choice.”
At least it was a traditional one, just kinda bass-ackwards:
Sitting through a couple of depos and drafting an extensive MSJ reply, not to mention answering all those interrogatories, normally costs a lot more than a percentage of $4k. Not really a sustainable business model.
Kelli Stasi: His crowdfunding site said it raised $3,043 of his $10,000 goal.
By the way, it’s obvious JDA is trying to get comments posted here with sockpuppets. So he’s reading. Everybody wave — or whatever gesture comes to mind.
There’s no way this is anything other than a loss for JDA. Four of his five claims were dismissed out of hand. On the fifth claim he settled for less than one tenth of what he was asking for plus a vague apology and none of the other concessions he was demanding. Basically, Worldcon offered him “go away, you’re a nuisance” money and he took it.
Basically, JDA is a loser and no matter how much he might try to spin this, everyone knows it.
A way to have worded the ban back then might have been to the effect of:
‘Named person has publicly stated their intention to violate the CoC during the convention. As such, we are refunding their membership and not permitting them entry to carry out their stated intentions.’
That way, there is no other possible claim that the banned person can make attached to that statement.
A public statement that goes into more specifics is what then starts to open the door for such legal challenges.
Aaron Pound: A compromise settlement means both sides gave up something they wanted, but in talking about the outcome each is going to focus on the settlement conditions that serve their narratives.
JDA has a signed statement from Worldcon 76’s chair with the word “apologizes” and that says Worldcon 76 “regrets” their statement might have led “people”-blah-blah “to infer that he is or was a racist.” So all of JDA’s antics — verbally trashing the committee, siccing the alt-right demonstrators on them, posting video of him stalking the public Hugo announcement and his attempt to crash the Worldcon itself, and everything else — ends with them apologizing to him and paying him money.
What does Worldcon 76 have to balance the scales? Well, their settlement statement is a fauxpology, they gave JDA less than 10% of the money he asked for, and they saved the expense of a trial that — looking at the already-rendered anti-SLAAP and MSJ decisions — they could hardly count on winning. Unfortunately, they didn’t get what their narrative requires, which is a complete litigating victory upholding their efforts to enforce their Code of Conduct. Winning on four-fifths of the original grounds of the lawsuit will forever be obscured by the consequences of referring to “racist” behavior in the statement announcing his ban from the Worldcon.
Its been a while since I’ve visited.
Let me sing of the wrath of Arroz…
who was defamed in an attempt to hurt his business, and then forced his oppressors to publically apologize in writing.
The lesson is simple: Don’t be evil.
Do not accuse an innocent man of something in order to hurt him because you don’t agree with his politics or moral views.
If I accused Mike Glyer of being a Nazi in order to hurt his attempts to earn money, that would be wrong.
My advice is to stop looking for ways to get away with being evil as so many advise on these threads, and just decide to be a better person.
@Mike: Sure, it is a settlement, which means a compromise of sorts, but from the perspective of a litigator, this is the sort of settlement a plaintiff’s lawyer advises their client to take when they know they are going to lose, and a defendant’s lawyer advises them to make when they know they are going to win but it will cost them more than the settlement amount to do so. Pretending this is any kind of victory for JDA is delusional at best.