Bill Ogden is no stranger to the internet. In 2018, the lawyer and partner at Texas law firm Farrar & Ball LLP helped litigate a case against notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on behalf of the families of Sandy Hook victims. The law firm won $49 million in defamation damages after Jones wrongly claimed that the Connecticut school shooting was a false flag.
One day, Ogden got another call about a lawsuit, which he knew he had to take.
“A friend of mine gave me a call and said, ‘Hey, I got a buddy who might need some help in the defamation realm,’” Ogden told Passionfruit.
That buddy happened to be YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, known to his over three million YouTube subscribers as Coffeezilla. Ogden had been a subscriber to Coffeezilla and had watched the YouTuber’s in-depth investigations into the fall of trading platform FTX, the unfulfilled promises of the CEO of the Rabbit AI pin, and crypto allegations against mega-influencer Logan Paul’s younger brother Jake.
On June 27, the Prime founder, WWE wrestler, and 23-million-subscriber YouTuber Logan Paul filed a lawsuit against Findeisen, claiming that Findeisen had defamed the older Paul brother in multiple videos and tweets about Paul’s crypto project, CryptoZoo.
“Starting when he released a three-part YouTube series on CryptoZoo in December 2022, and continuing into the present, Findeisen has perpetuated the false narrative that Paul scammed and defrauded his own fans in connection with the project,” the filing reads. (Paul did not respond to a request for comment via email.)
In 2021, Paul announced CryptoZoo — a game where users could spend Ethereum to purchase individual eggs that would have real-world value. In a three-part series on Findeisen’s channel in late 2022, Findeisen claimed that Paul, along with two accomplices, never materialized the promises of the project.
After the investigation, Paul thanked Findeisen in a video for covering the story and agreed to pay back upset investors. In January 2024, Paul announced he would spend $2.3 million of his own money to pay back his investors. Those who accepted the refund agreed in the fine print they could not take “actual or anticipated claims against Paul.”
Paul isn’t suing Findeisen for the three-part series. Instead, Paul is suing for Coffeezilla’s two follow-up videos and a tweet discussing the refund.
When Ogden took the call about the lawsuit, he said he “could tell very quickly” that Findeisen is “doing the right thing for the right reasons and isn’t just motivated by the money.”
So Ogden and his firm agreed to take on Findeisen’s case. Not for the money, since Ogden told the YouTuber to “pay us what you can,” but rather as a way to take on a worthwhile cause. This was a relief for Findeisen, who had learned that the errors and omissions insurance he had been paying for excluded defamation claims, he said in a video.
When suing for defamation, a plaintiff must prove that a “statement was published, false, harmful to him or her, and not privileged,” according to legal website Justia.
Proving that Findeisen’s videos and tweets were actually damaging to Paul’s career will prove to be a “huge hurdle” and an “uphill battle” for Paul, Ogden said. Paul has already dealt with a fair share of controversy over the years, from filming a dead body and uploading it to YouTube in 2018 to promoting the failed cryptocurrency DinkDoink in 2021.
Because of the fervent nature of online discourse, both the media and fans are weighing in on the lawsuit on social media and in videos. “We’re not just talking about public figures with small audiences,” Ogden said. “Both sides have millions and millions of people that follow and subscribe and pay and buy their products.”
When the suit dropped, Findeisen wanted to publish a video response. Ogden said his first thought was that “it was a terrible idea.” But because of the public nature of it all, Ogden said he and his team “were more than willing to work with our client to come out with something that we knew would be safe and would be able to tell as much of the story as we could.”
Ogden said the team “sat down for hours” and “went through all the different aspects” of the response video to ensure all of their “bases were covered” and that they were “as thorough” as possible.
“It’s rare that somebody answers a lawsuit and then has a video discussing it,” Ogden said.
Paul did not directly respond to Findeisen’s response video published on August 5. Instead, the same day, Paul posted a seemingly mock lawsuit on X against the wrestler LA Knight as a part of a WWE storyline. It doesn’t say that Paul actually filed the lawsuit.
The Coffeezilla case is still in its early days, with Ogden and his team responding to Logan’s suit on August 5. They still have to wait for the judge to schedule an order before they can even start discovery.
“In my opinion, I think my client is a hundred percent accurate,” Ogden said. “I saw a David versus Goliath story, and David just happened to be on the defensive side.”
