It’s probably safe to say that not much phases Trevor McNally, a former marine turned full time lock-picking YouTuber. Unfortunately for the lock company Proven Industries, its leadership underestimated just how composed McNally would remain as they sued him for showing how to crack one of its laughably insecure locks.
The whole thing began in March of this year, when Proven blasted a 90 second promo clip called “YOU GUYS KEEP SAYING YOU CAN EASILY BREAK OFF OUR LATCH PIN LOCK.” In the video, detailed by Ars Technica, a guy in a bald cap takes a sledgehammer to the company’s $130 trailer hitch lock, hollering that he will “prove a lot of you haters wrong.”
It’s the kind of challenge McNally made his bones on — he’s accumulated over seven million followers, and billions of views, by busting common padlocks, pin tumbler locks, and deadbolts.
A month after Proven issued its challenge, the YouTuber released a simple video that shows him watch a few seconds of the promo clip while kicking his feet and sipping on a juice box. Then he films himself silently rolling up to the lock and shimming it in seconds with a hunk from a can of the water brand Liquid Death.
That’s when everything went off the rails.
“Just wanted to say thanks and be prepared!” Ron Lee, the owner of Proven Industries vaguely threatened after viewing McNally’s lock-shimmying video.
The following day, Lee personally texted McNally’s wife, leading him to feel that the business owner was trying to “intimidate me and my family,” the YouTuber told Ars. Proven employees soon started blasting McNally with spurious claims, while lawyers for the company began haranguing him with DMCA takedowns, arguing he had somehow violated copyright law.
All the while, McNally took it in stride, releasing videos of him opening more Proven locks.
Eventually, Lee and Proven Industries filed a federal lawsuit against McNally charging him with eight separate offenses, including copyright infringement, tortious interference with business relationships, civil conspiracy, and “defamation by implication” — the last one because McNally hadn’t said a single word in his original video.
As Ars notes, McNally’s choice to drink a juice box in his original lock-picking video came up at least five separate times in the legal proceedings.
“McNally appears swinging his legs and sipping from an apple juice box, conveying to the purchasing public that bypassing Plaintiff’s lock is simple, trivial, and even comical,” one passage read. McNally, the lock company argued, would simply “not stop until he destroys Proven’s reputation” — despite the fact that Proven Industries had technically fired the first volley by inviting scrutiny of its product.
For the YouTuber’s lawyers, the lawsuit was about as easy as shimming the trailer hitch lock with an aluminum can.
At one point in the preliminary hearings, the judge flat out dismissed that McNally had even approached anything resembling tortious interference.
“The fact that you might have a repeat customer who is dissuaded to buy your product due to a criticism of the product is not the type of business relationship the tortious interference with business relationship concept is intended to apply,” she told the court, according to Ars.
“I will pray that you all come to a resolution of the case that doesn’t require all of this,” the judge said. “This is a capitalist market and people say what they say. As long as it’s not false, they say what they say.”
In July, the company finally dismissed the lawsuit — likely at the advice of its lawyers — though it requested that the judge seal “almost the entire court record,” including the request to seal the court record.
The judge has yet to issue a ruling on that, though the genie is obviously out of the bottle.
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