GardenBanter.co.uk - Pets Warehouse

John Benn, the Alabama lawyer who runs petsforums lost his all claims
against www.Petswarehouse.com I saw this press release a few days ago
http://www.send2press.com/PRnetwire/...arehouse.shtml.

Pets Warehouse Announces Grand Re-Opening After Scoring Supreme Court
Victory

Article Editor: Beverly West

NEW YORK, NY - October 5, 2004 /Send2Press Newswire/ -- Pets Warehouse
(www.PetsWarehouse.com), an industry leader in online pet supplies
since 1997, today announced that it will re-launch its online store in
the wake of an Alabama Supreme Court ruling which dismissed the
frivolous case against Pets Warehouse Principal, Robert Novak.

The April 2002 case alleged that a chat room post was made on
CompuServe's Aquaria/Fish Forum chat room, stating, "no lawyer worth
his salt would do what you are doing, which is why a complaint is
pending with your state bar." Although Benn could never identify the
anonymous person making the statement, he falsely accused Novak in a
complaint filed in Alabama. Novak immediately contested that Court's
personal Jurisdiction. However, Benn, a private attorney, proceeded
pro se before the Court and obtained a default judgment against Novak
for $50,000. Novak filed an appeal in March 2003 and on April 2, 2004
the Appeals Court reversed the Lower Court and dismissed all of Benn's
claims.

"I have always been confident that the Appellate Court would rule in
my favor," said Novak. "The original court showed extreme bias in
granting Benn most of his outlandish requests. I was railroaded for
someone else's comments."

To make matters worse, Benn, rather than waiting for the appeal to be
resolved, maliciously obtained a post-judgment order of execution to
obtain the domain name PetsWarehouse.com and Novak's registered
Trademark "Pets Warehouse®" That order was faxed to Tucows Inc., the
ICANN registrar, who negligently accepted Benn's document on its face
and "gave away" the domain PetsWarehouse.com to Benn. This action
effectively put the Internet operations of PetsWarehouse.com out of
business.

"To add insult to injury," said Novak; "Benn used my well-established
domain to display a web page replete with false, defamatory and
disparaging remarks which were discovered by Pets Warehouse's existing
and prospective customers."

Pets Warehouse was established in 1974 and began an Online pet store
in 1997. Shortly thereafter, Pets Warehouse attained international
recognition, and was named as the fourth most visited pet website in
the world by NPD Research.