This person sued the wrong entity to recover his domain name. It’s a shame.
In August 2019, I wrote about an unfortunate expired domain name case involving Scott Rigsby.
Rigsby suffered a horrific car accident as a young man. He was dragged hundreds of feet from a pickup. He spent the next 12 years under medical care and underwent 26 surgeries.
He created the Scott Rigsby Foundation, Inc. and set up a website at ScottRigsbyFoundation .org, registered at GoDaddy.
The domain name expired. The person who acquired the domain set up a site that looks similar to the Foundation’s site, but it promotes gambling.
Rigsby blamed GoDaddy for the expiration and subsequently auctioning the domain through its expired domain platform.
It’s an unfortunate use of the domain name. It’s also unfortunate that Rigsby decided to sue GoDaddy over the matter rather than the person who acquired the domain name.
After a couple of years in the courts, the judge dismissed Rigsby’s third amended complaint. Rigsby is appealing.
It strikes me that this could have been settled a couple of years ago for a lot less money. If the goal is just to get the domain back, I think Rigsby would have prevailed with a simple UDRP filing. Barring that, he should have sued the domain registrant.
Instead, Rigsby is trying to convince a judge that GoDaddy is culpable for things like ACPA, which is just not going to happen.
That IS a shame because he sounds a nice person who has gone off wrong track. Hopefully GoDaddy will do the right thing.
In a short time I am going to post the story of a fairly well known US Person who has entered false evidence (lies) into Court case going on in order to try and win it. A the moment a Criminal case is now being looked at. Just shows some people will stoop to any low.
It’s not really GoDaddy’s position to “do the right thing”. They can’t just take the domain from the current owner. The person should just file a UDRP to get the transfer.
No I agree really, but I hope GoDaddy don’t pin him to the ground with Costs Orders.
I have a gut feeling that there is more to this story than what is being told. For sure the lawyers etc on this case would have figured out that the owner is someone else and gone after them. Unless it was “bought” by another entity owned/controlled/associated with Godaddy so they feel Godaddy is the ultimate responsible entity…???
I imagine that if Godaddy was totally innocent in this they would have actually helped/advised the other party as to who and how to go after the lost domain. Why didn’t they do that and avoid expensive and lengthy litigation? Why did Godaddy withold this critical “wrong entity” detail from the complainant for so long?
Or there is some other detail which has not been released here.
“He created the Scott Rigsby Foundation, Inc. and set up a website at ScottRibsbyFoundation .org, registered at GoDaddy.”
Wow, I didn’t know he registered a mistype of his foundation name unless the writer of this article was craving Ribs for dinner?
I was craving ribs