Laid-back singer Jimmy Buffett is taking aim at a Galveston-based website he claims is falsely representing itself and selling items at too high a markup. Uh, not to take away from the gravity of the situation, but don't those claims relate to 99 percent of all beach-related retail enterprises?
In a lawsuit filed in federal court Monday, Buffett's lawyers claim that Robert Akard's website, underonehut.com, falsely represented itself as "Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville Online Store for Merchandise" (when everyone knows the real Margaritaville Online Store for Merchandise is actually over here) and that Akard marked the prices of some Buffett-related merchandise up as much as 50 percent. "Many of these products are ones (Akard is) not even authorized to sell, but primarily, the problem is that, in some cases, the markup on items is as high as 50 percent," Buffett's attorney, Anthony Buzbee, told the AP. "Jimmy Buffett's not in business to make money, certainly not anymore, and he doesn't appreciate what this guy's been doing." The suit seeks to shut down underonehut.com.
Akard's lawyer, Darrell Apffel, said he would fight the suit and called Buffett's attempt to close Akard's business "a classic case of David versus Goliath." He said Akard had already made changes to the site to remove implied ties between himself and Buffett: "After taking these steps, in good faith, to comply with these requests, Jimmy Buffett then sought a restraining order to shut down the site, without any warning to Mr. Akard or myself, as his attorney," Apffel said.
This isn't Akard's first brush with Buffett, by the way: A federal judge in Nevada previously shut down his last Buffett-related website, parrtotsofthecaribbean.com. Give the man a margarita for determination!
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