Lawyers for Costigan Media (parent of unruly child Gambling911.com) submitted their rebuttal brief to US District Court in New York, seeking to have the warrant applications in the SDNY poker seizures unsealed by the court.

Link: SDNY seizures - Costigan Media rebuttal brief

High points: Contrary to what SDNY asserted, there is absolutely precedent in the 2nd circuit for unsealing warrant applications in advance of a prosecution; the fact of the seizures are already in the public sphere, so similar account holders are already on notice of the possibility of a similar seizure; that newsworthiness diminishes with time, and that each passing day may constitute a separate and cognizable infringement of the First Amendment.

I think this brief and effort is helped by the fact that the lead attorney, Baruch Weiss, spent so many years as a star assistant US attorney in the very SDNY office that started this affair, and can aggressively counter all of those assertions for secrecy that Devlin-Brown & Co. throw out. The guy would be a first-round pick in your "fantasy lawyers league" draft.

Oral arguments are this coming Monday, July 27th, at the US District Court in New York.

Joe@iMEGA

Great to hear

Keep us updated!

Just curious what is motivating Costigan Media to pay a high-priced attorney to try to have the warrant applications unsealed?

Are you serious? While there are legitimate complaints about the accuracy at times with G911 no one can argue that they are always in there reporting on the most important stories related to online gambling of all forms including the skill game of poker. This is potentially the biggest story of the year if not the decade on their beat. They would be remiss to not be doing this.

Well, paying a high-priced attorney usually involves some financial incentive. It's not like they exactly get "a scoop" if the warrants are unsealed.

I'm not well versed in the economics of making money from a free web site, but anything that would tend to make them seem like a leader in their niche (and thus drive more traffic there) would be an ecomomic plus. Although maybe not being the first with the details they would have the bragging rights of being able to say, "without us fighting for it you wouldn't know."