>From the 10/19 PW Daily:
Amazon vs. Amazon Looking as Ugly as Kramer vs. Kramer
If you haven't seen it, Pat Holt's most recent column details the peculiar and perplexing exchange between Amazon.com lawyers and witnesses for Amazon Feminist Bookstore.
Q. Are any of the employees at the Bookstore gay, and forgive me for asking this question?
[Amazon FB lawyer objects]
A: You're asking me to speculate on my coworkers' sexuality, is that the question?
Q: I'm asking if you know.
And to a different witness:
Q: You see in the e-mail it states, all the owners at this time of Amazon Bookstore Cooperative and historically have been all lesbians. Do you see that?
A: No. Where is that?
Q: Is that an accurate statement, to your knowledge? I don't mean to ask a personal question, and I apologize for doing so.
Holt doesn't, however, really explain where the Amazon.com lawyer might have gone with this. Her speculation--"Can't you see some strategist in a back room somewhere suddenly looking as if the light has dawned. Say, he says to himself, these women are dykes! We can't lose! Our 'defense' is proof they're a bunch of lezbos and we walk away with the trial! "--seems more than a bit ironic.
The lawyer's own bumbling attempts--"In deposing people, and if we continue to depose employees at the Bookstore, I would certainly like to know if they have a relationship with somebody else at the Bookstore. And it would be more likely than not that they would have access to the same information, similar to a man and a woman who are married"--lacks any coherence.
The lawyer also offers the following tautological nugget: "I think it's important, as I said yesterday, that a jury understands how Amazon Bookstore Cooperative represents itself to the public, and I think as part of that, it's important for the jury to know, for example, whether the people who work in the Bookstore have a particular sexual orientation because obviously from the perspective of my client, we think that's important to the case."
Perhaps it has something to do with different customer bases? Seems equally preposterous. As Holt points out "Of course it [Amazon Feminist Bookstore] sells a lot of lesbian books--so does Amazon.com!"
Whatever the reasoning, Amazon FB isn't going for it. Lawyer Matt Samuel called the questioning outrageous and has made a motion for a protective order "to prevent defendant Amazon.com from inquiring into the sexual orientation or relationships of any witness in this case."
So it's come to a motion to quell absurdly off-point questioning in a case that strikes us as a little off-point, at least for many indies, to begin with. (Does Amazon.com's name go to the heart of deep discounting and deep-pocket marketing that has so roiled the ABA?) But as we've noted before, Amazon v. Amazon has become a touchstone in places far beyond Minnesota--the mere fact that NCIBA-sponsored Holt is writing about it demonstrates this--and in today's urgent climate, perhaps that's enough.--Steven M. Zeitchik