New York|How a Profane Joke on Twitter Spawned a Legal Army
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
![A man with short hair wearing glasses, a dark suit and light-colored shirt sits on cabinet in an office next to a window.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/05/26/nyregion/00twitter-legal-team/00twitter-legal-team-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)
How a Profane Joke on Twitter Spawned a Legal Army
A litigation team built from the sharpest, funniest tweeters is suing Elon Musk.
Akiva Cohen at his Manhattan office. He turned a one-off joke into something much larger. Credit…Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
Here’s one way to build a legal team: Interview graduates from the top law schools or firms, then hire the most qualified.
Akiva Cohen, a trial lawyer at a small New York firm, tried a different way: Spend way too much time on Twitter, talking trash about other lawyers’ cases, then hire the people who post the smartest, most biting comments.
Now, from his suburban family room on Long Island, Mr. Cohen, 45, is leading this small team of Twitter adepts against an almost comically outsized adversary in a $500 million lawsuit against Elon Musk.
Their saga begins in 2019, far from Long Island, in a Texas defamation case that took an unintentionally comic turn, then blew up on Twitter.
That January, a voice actor named Vic Mignogna, who made a career dubbing English dialogue for Japanese anime cartoons, was accused on Twitter of sexual misconduct. He denied the allegations and sued three of his accusers for defamation.
His lawyer, Ty Beard of Texas, sent notification letters to the defendants, citing the tweets he considered defamatory.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement