Parents of young children know the scenario well: When the kids are fighting, both automatically say the other started it.
But what if the kids in this metaphor are actually adults from the upper-middle echelons of San Francisco society: a cartoonist for The New Yorker and an investment director for the Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation?
Then the squabble devolves into anonymous social media posts, claims of emotional distress, dueling lawsuits, and very large, and growing, legal bills. Whoever started this fight, there’s no stopping it now.
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The paths of the two men in question crossed (literally) April 18 at the intersection of Lake Street and Third Avenue in the Inner Richmond. The cartoonist, Jon Adams, was walking to pick up his kid from school when the investor, Michael Cohen, failed to stop his blue Tesla at a stop sign, Adams claims.
Adams blocked Cohen from proceeding by stepping in front of the car. Then he walked over to record the man behind the wheel and, according to a video of the incident, Cohen angrily knocked the phone out of Adams' hands.
He kept recording, though, saying, “Stop signs are for everybody, not just cool people.”
“Fuck you, dude,” Cohen responded before driving off.
According to a lawsuit Adams filed Tuesday in San Francisco, he was left in “shock, emotional anguish, shame, humiliation, and depression” after the ordeal. Adams also alleges that he witnessed Cohen driving recklessly through the neighborhood on two later occasions.
This inspired Adams to anonymously create a series of Instagram and TikTok posts and to create a website making others aware of Cohen’s alleged actions. These online rebukes led Cohen in July to file a lawsuit against “John Doe,” now revealed to be Adams, for defamation, violating his privacy, and appropriation of name and likeness, among other offenses. The website Adams created maliciously impersonated and mocked Cohen, according to his lawyer Michael Bentz.
Bentz declined to share screenshots of the websites or posts Adams created, which have been taken down. He also declined to connect The Standard with Cohen. However, the posts made Cohen feel “shame, mortification, and hurt feelings,” per Bentz.
According to Cohen’s suit, Adams has made false and defamatory accusations about Cohen’s personal life and emotional state through various online handles, including an Instagram account with the username “@mikeytoughboy.” Adams allegedly claimed that Cohen has “anger management issues,” is a “total cliche of a bully,” and “there probably isn’t much consensual touching in his life, so he has to resort to hitting strangers just to feel the touch of another person.”
While Adams agreed to let The Standard photograph him, he left the talking to his lawyer, Ronald Fisher, who defended his client’s decision to create the websites and social media posts, saying it is a fairly common way of expressing one’s opinion these days.
For his part, Adams is suing Cohen for assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Fisher argued that Adams' content creation was mostly an act of political expression, as it involves one of San Francisco’s “Slow Streets,” which were installed in the aftermath of the pandemic to encourage active transportation such as cycling and walking.
“Rather than file a lawsuit or file a police report,” Fisher said, “[Adams] hoped to use an informal method of, essentially, trying to embarrass someone into doing the right thing, which is drive safe and drive normal, to stop being a jerk.”
Only after Cohen sued Adams for defamation did Adams decide to sue Cohen right back. Both parties are requesting damages for the pain and suffering inflicted, with Cohen seeking more than $6 million. If the cases aren’t settled or dismissed, they could go to trial.
In the meantime, both men say they fear their paths might cross again, whether online, in the courtroom, or on the streets of the Richmond.