The long running saga of the Dallas Buyer’s Club litigation may shortly hit another snag, but for the plaintiff this time.

In his judgment earlier this year, Justice Perram granted preliminary discovery for the plaintiff against the defendants to require the identification of 4,726 people suspected of downloading the film Dallas Buyer’s Club so long as a regime was put in place to protect those persons privacy.

The plaintiff was to put a draft letter forward to the court for approval and thereafter send that letter to all the suspected pirates.

At the time, Justice Perram expressed concern that the plaintiff:

should not be permitted to send what were referred to at the hearing as ‘speculative invoices’ to the account holders

Speculative invoicing has been a tactic used in the United States by rights holders to send invoices or letters of demand threatening ruinous legal proceedings against a suspected downloader unless a settlement is reached.

The plaintiff tried, and failed, to keep their proposed draft letter from reaching the eyes of the public.

The letter, and an accompanying telephone script, asks very intrusive questions of the suspected downloader such as whether they downloaded other films and what their income was.  This latter information would be very useful for the plaintiff to work out how much in damages they could demand without needing to incur the cost of actually suing a suspected downloader.

The letter is highly likely to come under criticism given Justice Perram’s earlier comments regarding ‘speculative invoicing’.

According to IMDB, Dallas Buyer’s Club cost an estimated USD$5,000,000 to make and has grossed USD$55,000,000 to date.