Sam Bayard at Citizen Media Law: “In perhaps the most blatant misuse of the subpoena power we’ve seen since the subpoena served on Kathleen Seidel of Neurodiversity last March, a lawyer for Thomas Garrett of Virginia has served a patently overbroad subpoena on blogger Waldo Jaquith, who publishes cvillenews.com, a community news blog about Charlottesville, Virginia.” Garrett is suing The Hook, a Charlottesville newspaper and associated website, for defamation, and Jaquith at his own publication covered that controversy in a blog post. Now, as part of his suit against The Hook, Garrett is demanding from Jaquith information to assist in identifying the many persons who commented on the post and even persons who merely viewed it.
Posts Tagged ‘online speech’
February 16 roundup
- “Texas Judge Orders 178 Anonymous ‘John Does’ Who Posted on Topix Be Revealed” [Citizen Media Law]
- $4 billion lawsuit over racially insensitive Miley Cyrus eye gestures [Michelle Malkin, TMZ.com]
- Update: “Tulsa World drops lawsuit after writer apologizes” [Romenesko/Tulsa World, earlier]
- Also update: “Seventh Circuit Affirms Dismissal of John Lott’s Libel Lawsuit Against Steven Levitt” [Volokh, earlier]
- “M-I-C — Cease and desist! K-E-Y — Why? Because we caught you! M-O-U-S-E” [Ron Coleman]
- California: “Another Step Toward Shielding Good Samaritans From Civil Damages” [Calif. Civil Justice Blog, more]
- Montana lawmakers consider bill saying hazardous recreation goes on at your own risk [PoL]
- Senior writer at Wired decides to go work for Wal-Mart, what he found departed from the Barbara Ehrenreich formula [BoingBoing]
Update: BlockShopper settles with Jones Day
In a case that sent alarms around the internet, the giant law firm had sued a startup website for supposedly impermissible linking; a judge let the suit go forward, and BlockShopper said it couldn’t afford to defend the case through trial [Alison Grant/Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ambrogi, Wendy Davis/Slate, ABA Journal, settlement agreement (PDF); earlier here, here, here, etc.]
More: Paul Alan Levy/CL&P, Ron Coleman, Sam Bayard/Citizen Media Law.
February 8 roundup
- There’s money in lost personal data: “Counsel Could Rake in $5 Million from Veterans Settlement” [Weissmann/BLT]
- Commentaries on now-settled GateHouse v. NYTimes lawsuit (news organization grabs/aggregates rival’s reports) [Ardia and Lindenberger, Citizen Media Law; Nieman Journalism Lab]
- Funny and instantly recognizable: cop talk converted to human talk [Legal Antics]
- No need to worry about revival of Fairness Doctrine, they told us — uh-oh, here comes talk radio “accountability” [Patterico]
- Lenders whipped up one side of the street for too-easy credit standards, then down the other for tightening them [McArdle]
- Murder convictions for drunk drivers? Not so fast, a New York appeals court decision suggests [Greenfield]
- When no one writes a leniency letter at your sentencing, maybe problem is not so much that you’re a crooked lawyer as that you’re a powerless lawyer [YallPolitics on Tim Balducci, Mississippi]
- If lawyers strike everyone who’s griped about jury duty on Facebook “we’re going to run out of jurors really fast” [Anne Reed]
Domain name registrars
They might prove to be a weak link in the chain of online free speech [Electronic Frontier Foundation via Ardia/Citizen Media Law]
Ohio homebuilder vs. gripe site
The lawsuit was eventually dismissed, but “at a high cost”: “Even if you are only making innocent comments on a blog,” said the defendant, “you can wake up one day and find out you are being sued simply because someone didn’t like what you wrote, and the nightmare begins.” [“Anonymous Gripe Site Wins Legal Battle With Ohio Homebuilder Powermark Homes”, Ardia, Citizen Media Law].
January 13 roundup
- IP turf-staking: charity tries to trademark the phrase “Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness” [Likelihood of Confusion]
- Bad excuses dept.: Ohio 17-year-old killed his mom but lawyers “insisted youth and video game addiction made him less responsible,” a theory judge wasn’t buying [AP/WBBM]
- Lawsuit over Yelp review (chiropractor vs. disgruntled ex-client) settled [CNet; earlier]
- “Can U.S. Laws Protect Online Speech from Foreign Libel Suits?” [Neuberger/PBS]
- Coverage of Philadelphia’s Fumo scandal trial, “law firms [and some big ones] used in an alleged blackmail scheme” [Lowe, AmLaw Daily, earlier]
- “Another wrongful-paternity case from hell” (wrong guy, but default judgment) [Balko, Reason]
- Never trust content from “ProPublica” [Kopel @ Volokh on environmental effects of oil hydraulic fracturing, response from ProPublica, Kopel’s riposte; their attack on Goldman Sachs in California and New Jersey; Carter Wood at NAM “ShopFloor”]
- Few places have emulated San Francisco and Santa Cruz ban on discrimination based on appearance, i.e., against less attractive folks [WorkplaceProf]
Why defamation law protects opinion
“Wouldn’t that make for an entertaining factual inquiry: ‘The court finds as a matter of fact that the supermodel is/is not “a skank”‘” (Planet Kauai, Jan. 7). Underlying story:
Canadian model Liskula Cohen has sued Google for a number of snarky remarks that were made by a blogger using the company’s Blogger service. The NY Daily News reports that the former Vogue cover girl has been called ‘skanky’ and ‘an old hag’ by an anonymous blogger on a website called Skanks in NYC (could be deemed NSFW).
(Robin Wauters, TechCrunch/Washington Post, Jan. 7). It should be noted that the site seems to have little purpose but to engage in vitriolic attacks on Cohen, not all of which are as obviously grounded in “opinion” as those quoted. More: ArsTechnica, Bayard/Citizen Media Law.
January 8 roundup
- “You’ve got to be alive to be inconvenienced”: some thoughts on the withdrawal of an emergency battlefield therapy [GruntDoc]
- Yes, let’s all have a nice scare over “third-hand” tobacco smoke, or actually let’s not [Sullum, Siegel, Greenfield] And you knew they were coming: “smokeasies” [Tuccille, Examiner]
- “We are fully cooperating with the government in its investigations” (Hey, I never said “we” included my client) [WSJ Law Blog on Madoff case]
- Speech so precious it must be rationed: Yale Law Journal author proposes “Tort Liability on Websites for Cyber-Harassment” [via TortsProf]
- Rick Hills on Richardson probe: federally criminalizing state-level pay-to-play is a bad idea [Prawfs]
- Paul Alan Levy: Martin Luther King Jr. estate, much criticized for its aggressive trademark assertions in the past, deserves due credit for its handling of a case where free speech was implicated [CL&P]
- Lawyers on Craigslist: “If you practice as well as you spell, we’re golden” [Nicole Black, Legal Antics]
- Yes, I’m overhauling Overlawyered’s look and feel with the aid of Thesis, a powerful “theme” (way of changing presentation) for WordPress. Expect my tinkering to go on for a while.
“Bumping” online item not republication for purposes of defamation law
Thus a New York lower-court judge has ruled (NYLJ).