Interview of Trey Perez by Cheri Marks

( ADDENDUM: The plain text version is showing up crazy on my website. Give me some time to figure it out. )

(Unedited PDF):

“Are we working together, or are we working against each other?”
Cheri Marks speaks to Trey Perez

CM
Would you mind starting by giving me a little background about yourself, where you’re from, and how you initially came to be involved with court reporting issues?
TP
My name is Trey Perez, and I’m a videographer from Texas and Central Texas. I have an
associate’s degree in video technology. I want to make movies, but I got into the legal video business, and did that for 25 years. In 2019, I noticed there was a shortage of court reporters because of jobs that would be canceled.
CM
Could I back you up a little bit? How exactly does legal videography work?
TP
Sure. Back then it was separate. The attorneys would call the videographer, and then they would also call in a court reporter. The court reporting firms didn’t really handle a video then. They were strictly stenography. So in 2019 I got the idea to work on an app that would lay down the foundation of the transcript.
CM
Was there a defining moment that propelled you to design the stenography app? Or were you just watching the relationship between stenographers and videographers and sensing that it was inefficient?
TP
There’s a couple of different factors. One was the shortage of stenographers, and videographers losing jobs because of that. Then these companies, when there wasn’t a court reporter available, would hire us to go do video only depositions. One company in particular, Veritext, had a login which they wanted you to write down the times and objections etc. And so you would have this extra work to do. And I’m not very good at keeping notes. And so I had this friend of mine working on a website. He’s a very talented developer. And I told him about this situation and he developed the app for me. That’s why I created it, so that I could just take notes. By pressing a button, the speaker would change, it would designate who’s who. And that’s just how it started off.
CM
Do you think they initially were trying to cut corners and save money by having you do both the work of videographer and stenographer?
TP
No, I think there was a shortage. My understanding of the way it worked back then, was that the app would help the court reporter with her job, so that she could go back afterwards and listen to the audio, and know exactly where to go when listening for objections. They wanted us to take hand-written notes! The idea of having some sort of app that could simplify the process of finding objections seemed that it would just make the whole thing easier.
CM
Can you tell me how you got involved in the related antitrust lawsuits? How did you become aware of the criminality, and what were your first moves?
TP
The first thing was having a grievance filed against me by the president of the Court Reporters Texas Court Reporters Association. She’d sent me an email. And I was already getting little cryptic messages and things and telling me I was doing illegal things–
CM
By developing your app or by paying attention to–?
TP
By developing an app. That pissed off the court, big time. And so a grievance was filed against me.
CM
And what was the basis for the grievance?
TP
They said that I was trying to do court reporting.
CM
But isn’t that what they’d essentially asked you to do?
TP
When I came up with my app, I could produce a transcript easier and cheaper than the court reporters, but that wasn’t my intent. My intent was to offer it to them, and I did offer it to them. But no one would do business with me. It didn’t hurt the court reporting firms that the court reporters were upset with me. But still, they used the roar of the court reporters to shut me down. It was a tool to help the court reporters. And all the evidence will show that. It did change for me at one point, when there was no work left and my business was destroyed. By then I was just trying to make a living. But I did say that people could take a deposition without a court reporter, because everyone else was doing it! I never did this on my own. I never once built out a video-only deposition without a reporter unless the court reporting firm asked me to. So how can that be illegal?
CM
Right. And can you tell me then how it moved from you having a grievance filed against you to you being involved in that antitrust lawsuit from one to the next?
TP
For the grievance, I represented myself and it was dismissed. And then they appealed that dismissal and I got to speak again and they dismissed it again for the second time. And that’s their own body that governs the court reporting firms and the court reporters. But at that point, my business was devastated. There was so much evidence because the court reporters would taunt me on social media. They would post pictures or taunting videos along with my name, or make snide, thinly-veiled insults in my direction. So that pissed me off. Just the audacity: that I can’t even work now because I was developing a tool.
CM
It seems tragic, because presumably you and the stenographers shouldn’t even be the ones fighting. It seems like you both have a common enemy, which is these huge corporations that don’t have working people’s interests in mind.
TP
I tried to work with the court reporters here in Austin. I contacted a few, individual court reporters and asked them: what’s more important, your family or your career? Because it’s going to be a 20 billion dollar industry soon, and no one will be able to compete with that. I was trying to get the court reporters to come on board, and every time I talked to them, I said, we weren’t trying to replace court reporters. We were just trying to help out with the situation. They can deny it, but here in Texas, court reporters were getting 500 bonuses to up and leave a job they were supposed to do, if they got a better offer that same day.
CM
Geez. Do you feel like your reputation was smeared a bit unfairly?
TP
Oh, yeah, Most definitely. There’s a lot of rumors. It’s been difficult because when you don’t have any money, it’s hard to get representation.
CM
Are you still embroiled in the lawsuit, or are you past it at this point?
TP
I’m still involved. We’ve had really bad rulings, let’s put it that way. The name of my company was called Depo Notes, the notes of the deposition. And so the judge ruled that, in my case,
that in my hands, that it was illegal. Check this out. So when I couldn’t find work, I started doing landscaping and mowing grass. And I would go into different neighborhoods to do this. So then when I’m cutting grass, there’s these certain people who keep coming around, riding their bikes around me and, like, making racialized judgements about me. I could just sense that, you know, with the political climate here in Texas, all this talk about “getting rid of illegal people” – and then here I have a judge telling me that I can’t use my tool, my app that I developed, and it’s illegal in my hands. Then when I go out to cut grass, I have this person wondering if I’m illegal or not.
CM
Oh my God. That’s awful, I’m sorry. I feel like this is important, and I’m curious now– do you think there was institutional racism involved in your initial vilification?
TP
No, I think that the industry is 85% white, though. Here’s the thing, though. Why would a judge even be bringing up that AI could hurt minorities? I even wrote that in when my attorney wanted to leave. I wrote an objection to him leaving. I put that in there. That from the beginning this has been biased. And judges, I know they have court reporters that have been with them for many years. But for him to rule the way he’s ruled–it’s odd. What’s funny is that people that believe in the law, they say, yeah, the Constitution, the Constitution. But yet when their man tries to overthrow our government, they forget about the Constitution then.
CM
Absolutely.
TP
In my case, the judge said that for me to have this app was illegal because every deposition in Texas must be taken by a stenographic court reporter. But one of the biggest plaintiffs firms in Texas just put out an ad, and he does 98% of his job without a court reporter. And how do I know? Because I did some. And he came out with an ad saying that in the past four years, he’s given away $1 billion to his clients. He didn’t advertise that, of course, that he did it all without a court reporter.
CM
Do you feel like you were too primed for success and they wanted to quash you and take your ideas?
TP
No, it was because the firms themselves were worried. They were threatened by the app. But the court reporters are just worried about their jobs. Why didn’t they get on the court reporting firms that were hiring me asking me to do this? That’s who they should have been after.
CM
It’s easier to punch down than to punch up, right?
TP
Right. And I think that they thought I was just gonna go away, you know, and I’m not. Because
it’s hard to argue that the rules and laws apply to only me in this case. I don’t think they should be able to win.
CM
So when you win, you could very well be setting a legal precedent, perhaps, for this kind of case.
TP
That’s what I feel is going to happen.
CM
Is there an end in sight? Or is it one of those kind of entrenched legal things where it’s hard to
know when it’s going to end?
TP
It’s hard to know. And right now, I don’t have counsel. My attorney withdrew, and I don’t even
know why– “irreconcilable differences” he wrote. The real “differences” were that he wasn’t
willing to fight for me. We had even agreed that these rulings were wrong, but there was nothing he could do about it. It’s about the truth. That’s what we do is we take testimony down. And, you know, I know it’s a talent to be able to type fast, and that’s a skill and it’s worth some money. It has value. And. But when you don’t have that– because not every court reporter is the same– you could be greatly assisted by using this type of technology.
CM
What do you think about, the claims that AI has an inherent racism to it because of the people
that are building it and the speed at which it’s being kind of put into the world before being read
by an ethics committee, for example, or do you have any opinion on that?
TP
I think that a human being, at the end of the day, is the one that signs off. AI is not going to be
certifying itself. You would have someone reading [post trial, in this case] it and cleaning it up,
and we could be improving the performance of the tool in this way.
CM
You can check accuracy against AI instead of just giving over all the responsibility.
So at this point, have they shuttered your business and have they told you you’re not allowed to
reopen it, because it’s illegal?
TP
No. Once money stops coming in and work stops coming in for a couple years, your developer
gets pissed and, you know, those relationships don’t last. So development stops and then, you
know, then everything stops.
CM
I’m so sorry. Do you feel like you’ll have the drive at some point to develop a new app? Or are
you kind of done with it?
TP
I’m done with it, yeah. So this will be, understandably, my last fight. And that is to change the
way that I’ve asked this question on social media, on LinkedIn: can a deposition be taken in
Texas without a court reporter? Yes or no.
CM
Why are they afraid to say?
TP
Because if they say yes, then that helps my case. But if they say no, they’re lying, because
they’re doing it already.
CM
So, they’ve put you and court reporters between a rock and a hard place just to benefit this huge
Speech to Text Institute and these corporations that are developing the same software.
TP
When they filed a grievance against me, I spoke anyway. So the reporters are commenting on
this thread and they say: “He spoke at the meetings. He says he can’t find work. Says he’s basically been blackballed or boycotted”. And then the next person chimes “Hell yes, we did!” And another one writes “He bit the hand that fed him. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too.
Maybe if he would have stayed in his lane”…that kind of thing
CM
It’s really a shame. I wanted to ask you how you felt about Stenonymous’s previous coverage of
your lawsuits– and if you felt it was too focused on the speech to Tech Institute involvement.
TP
No, I just think that he’s biased and he’s on the side of the court reporters.
I haven’t done anything illegal. There is no evidence stating I did anything wrong. We were
never reprimanded for developing a tool, a tool that they’re actually using now.
CM
It seems like you’re just being bullied.
If that were to stop, could you see any opportunity for collaboration with court reporters
happening in the future, for example with sympathetic figures or outlets like Stenonymous?
TP
I don’t see it because it’s just been too much. You know, last time I went into the deposition, I got kicked out. So, I just don’t see it. You know, I’d walk in a room and I’d get this just look of
disdain. And then the court reporters got racist, too. You know, saying I was jealous of them. One lady, and her husband represents some of the court reporters that are defendants in this case, even went as low to repeat the racist stereotype, “most Hispanic men are short and have ego issues”
CM
That’s really awful, I’m sorry.
TP
So, they talk about how AI can be biased. But that lady just proved that a court reporter can be
biased as well. The court reporter is taking live deposition, and she’s biased right there in your
face.
CM
So what’s your best case scenario, both with the legal case and your own future and career?
TP
My end goal is to set a precedent here in Texas, and that’ll be my legacy. The testimony in
Texas will be able to be taken down by other means, not just stenographically. And it’ll be clear,
you know, because apparently there’s currently this gray area. I want it to be clear because
litigants should have a choice. That’s why I feel like I have a case. I’m gonna appeal. So they can be happy all they want, but it’s not over. It got personal.
CM
I look forward to hearing about your success with this case, and you setting the precedent.
TP
Did you hear about the case that was filed by the court reporters against the NCRA? It was on
Stenonymous– the court reporters filed a lawsuit against their association, antitrust as well.
Okay. So that brought up another topic: that videographers record the court. And the court could want our audio. And under the NCRA, if you’re a certified legal video specialist, you have to give it to them, that’s just courtesy. But the thing is, they’re suing the NCRA, the court reporters, because in order to become certified, and stay certified, a court reporter has to take these continuing education courses. And in order to do that, they have to have a membership with the NCRA. And so that’s why they’re saying that there’s an antitrust lawsuit there. They don’t have any competitors. And then the videographer would just have to give away his work product. And that’s a thing that I have an issue with now, because here I was getting blackballed. And then I’d go to a job and the court reporter would want my audio for free. And I’d be like, damn, are we working together or are we working against each other? They would say that we’re working together, but it didn’t seem that way…
CM
It seems like there’s a lot of elements at play here. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me
today. I wish you the best.
TP
Thank you

Trey Perez Lawsuit Dismissed Against TCRA, et al. November 2023

53 – Order granting in part and denying in part Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss.pdf Download

Trey Perez’s lawsuit against many defendants has been partially dismissed. Notably, it seems that plaintiff Depo Notes lacked standing because it was not complying with the law. For many of the defendants, insufficient facts were pled to allege group boycott or illegal anticompetitive behavior.

The case against the Texas Court Reporters Association is done.

The case was also ended against Kennedy Reporting Service and Lorrie Schnoor; Sonia Trevino and Sherri Fisher; Shelly Tucker; Court Reporters Clearinghouse.

Lexitas and Southwest are still stuck defending against claims.

I want to note that the study I always mention, Racial Disparities in Automatic Speech Recognition, was also mentioned in the order.

Texas Federal Court acknowledges the Racial Disparities in Automatic Speech Recognition (Western District)

I see no mention of the Speech-to-Text Institute, so I’ll have to check PACER, but as of my last update, they were still in the case and hadn’t made a proper motion to dismiss, instead opting to send a “response to civil action.” I may not be a lawyer, but I previously believed that a response to civil action was an “answer” or a “motion to dismiss.”

I can’t help but continue to strongly believe that non-digital providers might be able to make a claim stick against Speech-to-Text Institute and many of the corporations that were represented on it, including Veritext and US Legal Support. Think about it.

STTI Bloc 1) Engaged in a conspiracy to manipulate the market toward digital reporting. This is all but assured considering they’ve been unable to write an effective cease-and-desist letter, or any letter, or even make a comment stating these allegations are untrue, for over two years of me publishing about it. 2) This inherently restrains trade. If you’re collectively using your considerable market power (Veritext alone may be more than 16% of the market’s revenue) to push out non-digital providers and then using your considerable market influence (there are only like five “nationals”) to convince consumers those non-digital providers don’t exist, what can it be called but a restraint of trade? You’re trying to destroy those non-digital businesses or force them to buy digital tech from your buddy, fellow STTI conspirator, Stenograph. 3) in a particular market. Well, court reporting.

And that’s just looking at those elements for group boycott. I’m quite sure if I went through all the law in the United States, I’d find other things that make it illegal to get together, publish substantial lies about a market, and mislead consumers, jobseekers, and other small businesses. Maybe there are laws against deceptive business practices and false advertising. Maybe. Who knows?

(NOTE: Facetious. Those laws exist.)

And the best part is that to claim they didn’t know the information they were publishing was wrong, the multimillion dollar corporations have to go under oath and say they never did the math on the statistics they published and it didn’t seem odd that they were projecting a shortage constituting a third of the field by 2023 with likely less than five percent of their business going uncovered, a number that existed before the 2018 “tipping point.”

Maybe this is a runaway train at this point. Maybe some stenographic and other non-digital providers are going to realize they have standing and take a crack at STTI and the corporations that were represented on its board. I reached out to Lex Ferenda a long time ago and they basically said that if we could find an appropriate claimant and lawyer, they’d consider funding the litigation. At the very least, perhaps people that have suffered damage will reach out to the FTC and their state attorney general and let them know to Google the court reporter shortage fraud and that this fraud has hurt their business, or how it has hurt their business.

If you’re reading, Trey, good luck against Lexitas and STTI. If you’re able to get to discovery, you may very well uncover the things that I was hoping to uncover through my media publishing strategy and get a nice fat settlement when their lawyers realize they don’t want that stuff to be public. And if they broke the law… why not?

NOTE: Some dismissals are without prejudice, so the complaint could conceivably be amended to allege facts satisfactory to sustain a claim against some of these defendants. I’ll continue to check the case on PACER periodically for documents.

Lawsuit Update: Pasqual Perez III v Speech-to-Text Institute, et al. July 2023 Update

ORIGINAL POST HERE.

I recently took a look at Pasqual “Trey” Perez III v Speech-to-Text Institute, et al, lawsuit. I would like to share some notes I wrote as I went through the documents. So far, there have been no formal “Answers” in the case, mostly pre-answer motions to dismiss by defendants and, from the Speech-to-Text Institute, a “response to civil action.” I’m providing documents for download here and my typed notes below:

Amended Complaint – Didn’t really see huge changes, but admittedly only glanced through it.

Southwest Reporting Motion to Dismiss – Basically attacks facial sufficiency of the complaint under the Twombly and Iqbal standards for federal pleadings. They’re saying that the complaint does not allege facts that show a that Southwest conspired with anyone else. Paragraph 8 says the only new facts alleged in the amended complaint were in paragraph 16 of that amended complaint. Paragraph 8 goes on to talk a little about COVID and how that drove down demand for videographers.

Motion for Summary Judgment by Alderson Reporting Company – Alderson basically says “we didn’t make the decision to stop using Trey based on his new product.” They also point to COVID as a reason things changed. Alderson explicitly denies it ever discussed its decision to choose a new vendor with any other third party.

An order granting Dennis Holmgren’s motion to appear pro hac vice is included. Dennis Holmgren was the lawyer that helped bring the writ against the government for failing to enforce the law against StoryCloud.

Lexitas (Deposition Solutions, LLC) motion to dismiss – This makes the claim that Trey attempted to market his speech-to-text product to lawyers during depositions where he was hired to provide video recording services. Lexitas makes the claim that plaintiffs were not entitled to provide rough transcription services because they are not CSRs. It also alleges that the facts in the complaint do not support that Lexitas engaged in any kind of collusion. Lexitas likens Trey’s actions to a house painter trying to conduct electrical work they’re not qualified for and dismissal by a general contractor.

Court Reporters Clearinghouse, Kennedy Reporting, Sherry Fisher, Lorrie Schnoor, Sonia Trevino, and Shelly Tucker motion to dismiss – These movants also challenge the facial sufficiency of the complaint. The motion to dismiss makes the claim that the reference to others blackballing Trey does not rise to the level of sustaining a claim against Defendant Tucker. It further goes on to state that movants are within their right to stop doing business with plaintiffs because plaintiffs were violating court reporting laws. Similar to the Lexitas motion, it makes the point that the government sets the bar for entry and that plaintiffs did not meet that bar, therefore there can be no conspiracy to keep them out of the market. It also makes the claim that the non-certified transcript market talked about in the complaint does not exist. This motion also raises the claim that movants are not competitors and therefore cannot be sued under the antitrust laws.

Response to civil action by the Speech-to-Text Institute – Interestingly, the Speech-to-Text Institute doesn’t seem to file a formal motion to dismiss, but it sends a “response to civil action” by someone named Greg Kohn, Executive Manager of the Speech-to-Text Institute, care of Virtual, Inc. The response features affirmative defenses, such as stating that Steve Townsend was never President of the National Court Reporters Association, among other things. What surprised me about this was that they referenced their website. That website likely went down between 5/19/23 when this document was filed with the court and 5/31/23 when the Stenograph Town Hall occurred.

To be honest, it doesn’t really surprise me that they’re hoping to get out of it based on the bare-bones allegations in the complaint. The complaint never makes reference to any of anticompetitive acts I was accusing the corporations behind the Speech-to-Text Institute of, such as pumping the market with false, outdated, or misleading information designed to expand demand for digital court reporting. Actually, reading this response gives me a bit of a theory. They’re hoping to be blanket released from the case with the other defendants and now with their site gone plaintiff will have a harder time proving their false claims because their website has been dusted. To my knowledge, the only way to peruse that website is to pull snippets off Stenonymous or use the Wayback Machine. If Trey manages to get past pleading stages here, I wonder if it’ll come up that they vaporized their website about 10 days after filing a document with the court referring to that very same website.

The Texas Court Reporters Association also filed a motion to dismiss, but I did not have time to review that prior to launching this post. I can only assume it points out the same issues, but if I get around to reading it and learn I am wrong, I’ll amend this post.

Overall: Reading through the defendants’ filings has made me rethink some of what I thought in my original post. It will be interesting to see how many defendants are able to succeed in extricating themselves from the lawsuit before filing an Answer.

Addendum:

The Speech-to-Text Institute’s response will also be hosted here.

STTI-Response-to-Action Download