ANALYSIS OF 03/29/2019 CYBER LIBEL COUNTER-AFFIDAVIT

Since this letter is part of an ongoing legal proceeding, no comments will be provided until all appeals are resolved. Therefore, only the actual document will appear below.

NPS DOCKET NO. XV-15-INV-198-00351-00357

MOTOR IMAGE PILIPINAS, INC, Complainant JULIAN COHEN, Respondent

COU NTER·AFFI DAVIT

I, Julian A. Cohen, of legal age, American, with home address of Mango Drive, Binictican, Subic Bay Freeport Zone, 2200, being duly sworn, hereby state that:

1. I was the owner of a Subaru Forester which was covered under a valid warranty issued by Motor Image Pilipinas, Inc. (hereafter "MIPI"), with liability for said warranty held apparently held jointly by Autosales & Aftersales Co. Inc.

2. I was the plaintiff in Civil Case No. 73839-SJ (hereinafter "civil complaint"), filed

August 16, 2017 at RTC Branch 764 of Pasig City. The civil complaint was filed

January 23, 2013, and amended twice, with the final amendment filed November 5, 2014. The complaint worked its way through the court for almost 5 years, but was not able to proceed beyond the pre-trial phase due to defendant's abuse of the court system by filing a countless number of motions, appeals, a Petition of

Certiorari, etc. to prevent the case from going to trial in a reasonable amount of

time. Upon meeting with the third judge in case, it was explained that this case

could go on for up to another 10 years if the motions and appeals continued at

the same pace the same pace. The judge explained that this case was delaying far

more important cases (this civil case was, after all, only over a dispute of about

140,000 pesos) and could be handled far more efficiently by the Small Claims

Court. With all parties (MIPI, Autosales and Aftersales, Laus Marketing, and

myself) in apparent agreement.

3. On October 18, 2018, a Small Claims filing was made for the amount of 138,200

pesos. This complaint was dismissed as the judge determined that the correct

jurisdiction for the lawsuit was the Regional Trial Court. Therefore, the RTC had

dismissed the case stating that Small Claims had jurisdiction, and Small Claims had

dismissed the case stating that the RTC had jurisdiction. While proving my case

was very important to me, filing an appeal would almost certainly bring the case

back to the RTC and clog up the courts for another 10 years and was not want I

wanted, apparently not what the defendants wanted, and clearly not in the best

interests of justice due to a backlogged court system.

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4. Upon the dismissal of the Small Claims case, I determined that the best course of action was to inform potential purchasers of Subaru cars that Subaru warranties

were worthless. Since the evidence presented over the course of the previous 5

years was overwhelming as to the merits of my claim, and since this evidence was

of public record, it was mv responsibility to ensure it was made available. As such, a campaign was launched online (against Subaru of Japan, not MIPI) to expose the warranties of Subaru products. It is several statements made in this campaign that

MIPI contends is defamation, however, the campaign only included statements

that were facts, or clearly supported by the evidence presented in the lawsuit.

5. The videos that were uploaded, as well as the analysis of the legal documents posted at neverbuyasubaru.com, were clearly focused at Subaru of Japan. In the main video, Subaru was mentioned numerous times, and MIPI was not mentioned

once. In the approximately 70 pages of analysis posted by myself, l was quite clear

that I was attempting to expose the action,s of Subaru and warn consumers

(worldwide, not only the Philippines) against purchasing their cars. MlPI, as the Philippine company responsible for the brand in the Philippines, was also mentioned as they were the target of the lawsuit due to their legal responsibility

in the country.

In Paragraph 9 of the Complaint-Affidavit, MIPI attempts to twist my valid criticism of Subaru as defamation against MIPI. To this end, they quote a statement from my analysis, as follows:

"Motor Image-A multinational company based in Singapore. They handle sales and service of Subaru cars in many Asian countries. It is unknown if their warranties are designed to be worthless due to their own initiative., or by direct instruction from Subaru. Either way., Subaru has stated in no uncertain terms that Motor Image operates with complete authority for selling and servicing Subaru cars., so it really doesn't matter. For this reason., I will often refer to Motor Image as Subaru . .,.,

Here I am making it very clear that I am avoiding mentioning Ml Pl. l consider their

actions regarding Subaru car warranties to be either the result of direct

instructions by Subaru, or by Subaru allowing them to offer the warranties. In my

analysis, I do not always refer to MIPl as Subaru Uust read it to confirm the many

instances when I refer directly to MIPI). When I believe their actions are truly their

own, I refer to them by their corporate name, Motor Image. For example, If you buy a Samsung TV and it breaks under warranty and they send XYZ Company to fix

it and they deny the warranty claim, are you going to tell people about XYZ company? Of course not. You are going to tell people not to buy a Samsung TV.

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This is why I often refer to Subaru even through certain actions I attribute to them may technically be the responsibility of MIPI. I blame Subaru Corporation in japan

(hereafter "Subaru"). WHEN I SAY SUBARU, I MEAN SUBARU.

Another reason I attempt during my analysis to avoid mentioning MIPI is because MIPI has a history of spurious defamation claims (they asked for millions of pesos

for defamation in the civil suit, only to spend 5 years trying to get the case dismissed).

MIPI is attempting to construe factually supported claims against Subaru as defamation against MIPI. Clearly, this is not the case.

6. The Affidavit of MIPI lists several examples of my alleged defamation. I will

respond to each claim. Each letter below references the corresponding letter in the Complaint-Affidavit paragraph 13.2

a) Subaru was contacted numerous times by myself in relation to this case. They

made it very clear (Letter from Masayuki Ohahi, page 16, Annex "A") that they

are well aware of MIPl's denial of valid warranty claims.

b) Subaru does not do business directly in the Philippines. They use a proxy, just as MIPI uses Autosa/es and Aftersales Co. as a proxy to handle their warranties. This is a fact.

c) In this paragraph, I clearly use the term "my contention" as this is something

that I was attempting to prove in court. While I did not claim this as a fact, to

be clear, I believe this statement to be true and well supported by the

evidence. I trial would have proven this. It was always MIPI that used delay

tactics to avoid a trial, never myself.

d) The 400 page PDF (Annex "A") that I have posted on line at

neverbuyasubaru.com clearly proves this. Key items are in red (grey on B&W copies) on the Table of Contents. MIPl's barrage of motions and appeals were

all struck down by the courts. Their only logical reason for these motions was

to cause such long delays and prohibitive legal costs that I would be forced to

drop my case. Anyone with a legal background would agree with this

statement if they were to read this document (While 400 pages is certainly a

long read, It is only a summary as the actual RTC file, the Appellate Court file,

and the Supreme Court file totaled well over 2,000 pages, even without my

analysis.)

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While I was hesitant to attach a 400 page Annex, the only way to support my

contention that MIPI was attempting to "motion me into bankruptcy" was to attach all the motions and show their consequences, hence, a 400 page

attachment. Also note that here I say MIPI and not Subaru. This is because

with this specific issuel it is attributed to MIPI. I strive to be precise with my wording, which is why it is offensive when MIPI makes so many claims that are based on twisting my words into something that they are clearly not.

e) See "d" above

f) The civil complaint was filed 3/19/2013. On April 20, 2013, I was forced to file

an amended complaint as there were additional defendants that needed to be served. Even after the filing of this amended complaint, MIPI intentionally did not disclose that there was an additional defendant that was actually responsible for the warranty. Therefore, 18 months later we also had to file a

second amended complaint on 4/20/2013. This caused significant delays and

expense. This evidence proves that my statement, rather than being defamatory, is something that is well supported by numerous documents presented by both myself and MIPI in a court of law.

g) At the end of the almost 5 year court battle, the RTC ruled that the Small

Claims Court had jurisdiction, and the small claims court ruled that the RTC had jurisdiction. I had spent almost a million pesos attempting to recover less than 150,000 pesos, without any reasonable legal ·recourse due to MIPl's actions. Nothing had changed and Subaru cars were still being sold with worthless warranties. The highly unusual situation where RTC and Small

Claims have issued conflicting orders regarding jurisdiction, even after 5 years

and a thousand page case file, is certainly a perversion of the efficient

administration of justice by the courts. This was directly caused by MIPl's

actions in court.

7. In paragraph 14, the affidavit of MIPI lists several examples of my alleged

malicious intent. Here I respond:

14.1 Here I make reference to "dummy companies". This was part of a long video interview. The term "dummy company" is a synonym for "proxy compan( under some circumstances, although I should have used "proxy companies"

in this instance. The term "dummy company" was never used in any of the

documents. Also, I took particular care in this interview to ensure it was

aimed at a global audience. I see no way that anyone viewing this video would infer that "dummy companies" referred to MIPI. In fact, I see no way

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that anyone viewing this video would know that it related to any event, individual or company in the Philippines.

"Teaching Subaru a lesson" is not evidence of malicious intent. The purpose

of my online postings is to inform, educate and to warn. Teaching Subaru the

importance of honoring a warranty is one objective, just as informing consumers about the time and expense of a lawsuit is another. Another lesson would be about the consequences of denying the legitimate warranty claim of a person who will work long and hard to obtain justice.

I state here, and in many other places, that Subaru warranties are worthless. This is based on many facts, as presented during the 5 year RTC case. Following are some of the reasons:

The owner's manual for the car states that the first oil change is due at

12,500km. However, without an oil change at 1,600km (performed by the dealer at a cost of 10,000 pesos), the warranty was is not valid. And it should also be noted that MIPI does not even stock the correct oil for the car, as

detailed in the Civil Lawsuit. This requirement was confirmed by MIPI in paragraph 4.2 of the Appeals Court motion filed 5/11/2016 {item 61 of Annex "B"), as follows:

the Vehicle Maintenance Record (page 16 of the Booklet) bore no stamps or any indication that the subject vehicle underwent any maintenance (i.e. the 1,600 km, 5,000 km and 10,000 km services required for the validity of the warranty).

So, even though the owner's manual requires the first oil change at 12,500km, unless you have one at 1,600km (about 6 weeks after purchasing

the car) using the wrong oil, the warranty is not valid. Instead of a 3 year

warranty, you only get about 6 weeks. And then they require yet another oil change at 5,000 km, still not even half way to where the owner's manual

states that the first oil change is required. To be very clear, such a warranty has no value. And while I recognize that environmental concerns are of no relevance to the merits of their defamation claim, I will still mention that requiring unnecessary oil changes on thousands of cars results in untold liters of used motor oil, one of the major pollutants of our time.

This proves that their warranties are worthless. This was what I attempted

to expose with my 5 year court case, but was denied my right to a trial by the

tactics MIPI used in court.

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14.2 This was one of many attempts at humor during the interview, and certainly not malicious intent. But again, this comment is aimed at Subaru (as

specifically stated), and not MIPI, so it has no relevance here.

14.3 One of the motivations for my publications, as stated numerous times in both the videos and my published analysis, was to warn Philippine consumers that Subaru cars were sold with worthless warranties. I may have used the term

"revenge" in the video (There is no specific reference given, so I cannot verify

or view the context) but if I did, it would have certainly been a comedic

element in the background. The video, (which never mentions MIPI, as stated before) must be viewed in its entirety, not by taking a word out of context to prove malicious intent.

8. Freedom of speech laws give me the right to complain publically about companies

as long as what I state is true. At best, the affidavit submitted by MIPI shows that

in about 40 minutes of interview time and 70 pages of my analysis, they were able

to find 2 or 3 words that I probably should have replaced by more appropriate synonyms. By comparison, MIPI has issued worthless warranties to countless

numbers of consumers. They have filed countless motions and appeals in the RTC

case which I believe have perverted the course of justice. They continue to issue

their worthless warranties. And most importantly here, they attempt to muffle deserving criticism by filing a spurious criminal libel case.

I got nothing out of what I published online. No money, just a lot of time spent

trying to inform consumers about Subaru warranties, unnecessary oil changes,

and useful information about the consequences of pursuing an unjust warranty

denial through the Philippine court system.

Additionally, MIPI also had a significant monetary claim against me amounting to

several million pesos in the civil lawsuit due to claims of defamation similar to what they allege now. And that was a lawsuit that THEY sought to dismiss. Why

would MIPI have they spent almost 5 years attempting to have the case dismissed

if they thought their defamation claims have merit? And they sought this dismissal

even though a civil defamation claim has a lower burden of proof than a criminal

claim. Clearly, they have a history of making false defamation claims.

In summary, there is no defamation here due to the following:

a) Everything stated online is true and supported by hundreds of pages of

court filings and analysis;

b) There is no malicious intent as my intent is to inform, and warn,

consumers; c) The target of the alleged defamation is Subaru in Japan, not MIPI

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Therefore, this should not be considered a valid claim of defamation, but rather a crude attempt by MIPI to get me to take my postings down. Due to the importance of this information to consumers in the Philippines and worldwide, this is something that I have no intention of doing.

9. All of the contentious statements that I have made are supported by documentscontained in the Civil Case filing and its analysis. It is attached as Annex "A", andthe entire file is organized in a downloadable PDF with a table of contents. It canbe viewed online or downloaded here:http://neverbuyasubaru.com/files/Subaru warranty.pdf, or you can go toneverbuyasubaru.com and click on the link for "The Complete Case File" or "TheDocuments." The website has no commercial component whatsoever, noadvertisements, and it's sole purpose is to document my experience attemptingto get the warranty on a Subaru car honored.

10. I am executing this Counter-Affidavit to contest the Complaint filed against me byMotor Image Pilipinas, Inc. alleging seven violations of Republic Act No. 10175, orseven counts of "libel committed through a computer system."

In witness whereof, I hereby execute this affidavit f ,,. 2_ r

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2019.

NEVERBUYASUBARU.COM

http://neverbuyasubaru.com

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