Joseph v. NASA

Background

Rhawn Joseph, proceeding without a lawyer, sued NASA, Springer Nature America Inc., and Springer Nature Academic Publishing LLC. He alleged that NASA and the Springer Nature defendants conspired to conceal his claimed discoveries of possible life on Mars, defraud him and others, and defame or discredit him. His claims arose from Springer Nature’s retraction of articles concerning possible extraterrestrial life.

Joseph had previously sued the Springer Nature defendants over the same article retractions, including claims for breach of contract and libel. Judge Cronan dismissed that earlier case, and the Second Circuit affirmed. In that proceeding, the court relied on click-through agreements that permitted retractions. Joseph argued that he had never agreed to those agreements and that the defendants had submitted a fake version. The earlier court rejected those arguments.

Motion to Set Aside the Earlier Judgment

After the earlier case was affirmed, Joseph filed this case and moved under Rule 60(d)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That provision addresses relief from a judgment obtained through fraud on the court. Joseph again argued that the Springer Nature defendants had submitted a fraudulent click-through agreement and that Google searches showed the agreements did not exist when he dealt with the defendants.

The court first questioned whether it had authority to grant relief from a judgment entered by another district court and affirmed by the court of appeals. It explained that a Rule 60 motion generally allows a court to correct its own judgment, rather than allowing a different district court to review the first court’s decision. The court stated that the Second Circuit’s earlier instruction to bring the motion before the trial court meant that Joseph should have filed it in the earlier case before Judge Cronan.

The court also ruled that, even if it had authority to grant relief, Joseph had not provided a plausible basis to find fraud on the court. The court defined such fraud as an intentional lie that interferes with the court’s ability to decide the matter properly. It found that Judge Cronan had been aware of Joseph’s argument that the agreement was fake, so Joseph could not show that Judge Cronan had been deceived about that argument.

The court further found that Joseph had offered no new evidence or argument establishing that the agreements were fake. It rejected his reliance on Google searches. The court also reviewed the explanation attached to Joseph’s motion: counsel for Springer Nature had said that the submitted document was a plain-text rendering of the agreement stored on the defendants’ servers after Joseph’s acceptance and therefore did not include the webpage’s logos, headers, accept button, or checkbox. The court concluded that this explanation was not an admission of fraud and supported Judge Cronan’s earlier conclusion.

Disposition and Further Proceedings

The court DENIED Joseph’s Rule 60(d)(3) motion to set aside the earlier judgment. It did not dismiss the current complaint in this order. Because Joseph said he did not want to amend, the court told him he could voluntarily dismiss the current case. If he wished to continue, the court required him to notify the court and defendants by August 11, 2022, whether he would amend. The court set August 25, 2022, as the deadline for an amended complaint or for the defendants’ contemplated motions to dismiss, depending on Joseph’s choice, and warned that failure to follow court orders could lead to sanctions, including dismissal for failure to prosecute. The Clerk was asked to terminate the motions listed at docket entries 12, 14, and 18.