> The guy has devoted his life to harassing people through litigation.
Exactly. He's probably not that well-versed in physical security. Maybe he's got a gun he shoots once in awhile, that's probably going to be the extent of his precautions. He's not going to be some unassailable hermit with aggressively unreasonable defenses. Guys like that are too busy doing that to earn law degrees.
So I can learn how to effectively harass him faster than he's going to be able to learn how to effectively defend himself. He might be able to win a judgment against me, but not before I've reduced his life to a shambles.
John Boyd, considered by many to be the finest military strategist since Sun Tzu, invented something called the OODA loop. Essentially, the faster you can react and respond to opposing threats, the more control you can exert over the terrain, the greater command you have over the outcome of the battle.
Winning is just the start. John Boyd was one of the greatest pilots who ever lived, and he didn't just beat you in simulated air combat, he utterly trounced you in a way that left no doubt.
If faced with somebody seriously threatening my lifestyle, my secret weapon isn't going to be my willingness to fight dirtier, it's the fact that my 'weapons' work faster than his. The first intimidation attempt is going to communicate, in a way that's absolutely impossible to mistake, that we're not just playing law here. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but only because it's backed up by guys with swords. If you don't have any of those, then you're going to lose, and he won't until he wins his case.
The communication here will be calculated to be overwhelming and total, yet breaking only the minimum of laws. I'd trade a criminal case for assault, the state is going to be more reasonable than this asshole is, over what was described in the article.
If he doesn't go away, then that means I failed and I need to know why. I will have already considered the failure modes as a part of planning the initial intervention. Future interventions will be carefully orchestrated to hit him hard where it hurts while causing a minimum amount of attention-grabbing collateral damage. The idea is that if he complains to law enforcement, they won't have much to prosecute me with. (faced with this, I'll absolutely start making some cop friends, guaranteed they're going to hate him more than they'll hate me. Their input on how to resolve this would be very welcome)
I don't have to actually break laws in order to convey the fact that I am not someone to be fucked with. I can attenuate my response such that likely reprisals are easier to deal with than the actions they were intending to deter.
The idea though, is that he just finds a softer target.