With his fifty second birthday fast approaching, Jose “Chille” DeCastro received a gift of sorts at the end of August as it was revealed that the State of California’s Second Appellate District dismissed the appeal of his civil lawsuit against Kate Peter, Michael “Blue Bacon” Pierattini, Team Skeptic and Daniel Clement.
DeCastro originally filed suit against the group in 2023, following his transformation of his Federal civil rights lawsuit against Kate Peter and Josh “Accountability for All” Abrams into a copyright related lawsuit against Peter, Abrams, YouTube and over a dozen John Doe defendants who were never named.
As the federal civil rights lawsuit was eventually dismissed in 2023, his California state suit proceeded forward with Pierattini as the only defendant who accepted service.
While Clement was initially served, the court would later rule that he was not properly served with DeCastro’s amended complaint. Team Skeptic was never served and was out of the country for a good portion of the first year of the lawsuit.
Kate Peter was in question as there was confusion about her service. Eventually, DeCastro received a default against Peter from the Clerk of the court. However, DeCastro never followed up on the default to seek a default judgment.
The lawsuit itself was a collection of grievances that DeCastro barely tied to anyone involved in the case. With DeCastro stating that all of the charges, including the theft of his original mini van, which was later recovered after being stolen by a homeless person, being blamed on all defendants equally.
When pressed by Pierattini to show how the charges applied to him, or anyone in the case, DeCastro avoided contact, missed court hearings and provided nonsense responses in discovery questionnaires.
Even after having sanctions levied against him, DeCastro continued to play games with Pierattini, refusing to provide even the simplest of concessions. When Pierattini eventually asked for terminating sanctions, DeCastro announced that he was dismissing the cases against Pierattini, Team Skeptic and Clement without prejudice.
Pierattini objected and the judge allowed the case to be dismissed without prejudice against Skeptic and Clement, while allowing for the terminating sanctions to terminate the case against Pierattini with prejudice.
DeCastro would eventually change his mind about dismissing the case, leading to his appeal. For some reason, while DeCastro appealed in November of 2025, the appeal itself never went to the Second Appellate District until the late spring of 2026. Where problems quickly arose, DeCastro did not pay the proper filing fees.
In the end, DeCastro failed to pay one of the two required filing fees with the appeals court. He was given thirty days to pay the filing fee and when he didn’t, he was given notice that the court would dismiss the appeal, which it ultimately did on August 31, 2026.
It is unclear what will happen to the lawsuit as the default against Peter has never been resolved and the original judge has been reassigned. There’s also a matter of the sanctions against DeCastro, who continues to owe Pierattini over $15,000.00 in sanctions.
The official loss continues a losing streak for DeCastro who has had multiple federal cases either dismissed or put on life support this year. While he still claims he has nearly a dozen active cases, DeCastro freely admitted that he would probably lose the majority of the initial cases, winning later in appeals court.
With his appeals exhausted in the case, it is unlikely that DeCastro will go on to receive his first real win of his legal career.
This is an on-going news story.
