SAN DIEGO, Calif.—The fraud/breach of contract trial that has pitted 22 Jane Does against GirlsDoPorn.com, its owner Michael Pratt, videographer Matthew Wolfe and actor/director Andre Garcia, as well as various shell companies created by Pratt, will continue later this week, despite the fact the U.S. Department of Justice filed charges against the company, Pratt and his employees last week for sex trafficking.
"I can’t see the benefit of staying this case for something I think was more than a specter on the horizon," said San Diego Superior Court Judge Kevin Enright, who has presided over the civil trial for the past nine weeks, but delayed proceedings last Thursday to give attorneys for both sides time to file briefs regarding the continuation.
Defense attorney Daniel Kaplan had argued that the civil trial should be suspended until the federal criminal charges are resolved, but no one has even hazarded a guess as to when those charges might be brought to trial, nor how long such a trial could be expected to last. On the other hand, plaintiffs' attorney Ed Chapin had estimated that there could be as little as two more weeks' worth of testimony left in the civil trial, and argued for its continuation.
But Kaplan suggested another reason for delaying the civil trial: It provides evidence the feds could use against his clients.
"This case is being used as a direct conduit to the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office’s investigation,” Kaplan said, as reported by Courthouse News' Bianca Bruno. “To be forced to participate in trial would violate our fiduciary duties to our clients. We don’t know if we’d be helping them or hurting them."
In the meantime, U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Lopez yesterday denied bail for Wolfe during a detention hearing regarding the criminal charges in the San Diego Federal Courthouse, and Garcia is expected to appear before her tomorrow, where it is expected that he too will request bail.
One of the things being sought in the civil trial is an injunction to "shutter" the GirlsDoPorn website, since Kaplan has confirmed that his clients' videos are still live on the site, a situation that Kaplan said is "still harassing" his clients, who are seeking to "sort out their lives" once the videos are taken down.
Meanwhile, popular hardcore site Pornhub, which previously had a GirlsDoPorn channel among its offerings, finally removed that "Content Partner" page from its list of available channels—on Monday, four days after the federal criminal charges had been filed. However, although Pornhub recently removed the hardcore videos of the specific Jane Doe plaintiffs from its site, there are reportedly still 100 or more GirlsDoPorn videos, many of which may have been made under the same circumstances that led the 22 Jane Does to sue the site, still available to subscribers. Moreover, even after the Jane Doe videos' removal, Pornhub users have reportedly reposted some of them, and it is unclear what steps Pornhub is taking or will take to weed out the offending content.
"It makes you wonder what, if anything, will be enough to convince Pornhub and its porn owner MindGeek to proactively get rid of Girls Do Porn’s worrying content, seeing how the simplest searches for Girls Do Porn videos on Pornhub turn up plenty of Girls Do Porn videos that aren’t even trying to hide," wrote The Verge's Sean Hollister, adding, "They’re on YouPorn too, for that matter—another brand owned by MindGeek."
And finally, GirlsDoPorn owner Michael Pratt is reportedly still hiding out in his native New Zealand, and is still considered a fugitive by federal authorities, even as he reportedly continues to operate his business from abroad.
Pictured, l-r: Andre Garcia, Matthew Wolfe, Michael Pratt
