Judge McMahon scolds Freeman's lawyers over delay tactics

Judges don't usually say things like this out loud. When they do, you should sit up.

In the Freeman-Wolff copyright case, Judge Colleen McMahon has had enough. Her written rebuke doesn't mince words: "Freeman's counsel is acting in good faith and I will not stand for being jerked around — and I am indeed being jerked around — in this manner by any lawyer who practices before me." That's a judge naming the game and calling foul, on the record, in a filing.

The dispute at the center of all this isn't the copyright claim itself — it's a fight over whether Lynne Freeman can pay the legal fees the defendants have racked up. According to the filing, that question has generated months of back-and-forth. Months. Over fees. While the actual case sits waiting its turn.

Here's what this means if you're an author watching from the sidelines: copyright litigation is slow enough without a side-quest over who pays whose lawyers. Every month spent litigating the fee question is a month the underlying case doesn't move — and a judge this openly frustrated is a judge who may start clamping down on procedural maneuvering from both sides, not just Freeman's.

There's no ruling yet on the fee question itself, and no timeline given for when McMahon will resolve it. What we have is a judge on record saying she's tired of the delay — which in practice tends to mean tighter deadlines, less patience for extension requests, and less tolerance for filings that read like stalling.

What to do this week: nothing changes your obligations today, but if you're tracking this case because it touches your own rights or you're simply watching how courts handle copyright disputes involving individual authors, mark it as a "watch" item, not a "wait for the check" item. The next filing to look for is whatever McMahon issues on the fee question itself — that's the one that will tell you whether her patience has actually run out or whether this was just a warning.

My take: a judge saying "I am indeed being jerked around" isn't neutral language, no matter how the docket labels it. When courts start naming the tactic instead of just ruling on the motion, it usually means the next order is going to be less forgiving. If you have any stake in how this case resolves, that's the signal to watch for — not this filing, but the one that follows it.