Following up on our entry of last Aug. 31: Acting Supreme Court Judge Felix Catena has dismissed attorney Romolo Versaci’s defamation suit against Diane Richie, who called Versaci a “so-called lawyer” on a local online message board, saying the expression was by its nature rhetorical opinion and not actionable. Versaci has said he plans appeal. David Giacalone (Mar. 15) has the details.
Posts Tagged ‘online speech’
Michael Zwebner gets a prior restraint injunction
Michael Zwebner regularly sues critics and people remotely related to critics of his penny-stock corporation, UCSY, which has a track record easy to criticize (Feb. 17). He claims in a press release to have persuaded a Florida state court to enter a constitutionally suspect order:
Defendants, Dembovich and Villasenor … are forever barred from making, stating, mentioning, posting on the Internet anything which included the words “UNIVERSAL COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC.” and “Airwater Corp.” “UCSY” or “Michael Zwebner” or any derivations thereof.
The defendants are further ordered to remove and cause to be removed from all web sites and any all references caused to be posted by them under the above and any other alias all postings which reference either Plaintiff and/or Plaintiffs’s President Michael Zwebner.
The purported order (which, in the press release, misspells “tortious”) also purports to bar third parties from “publishing” these posts (and arguably extends to linking to the posts) so it will probably be struck down as soon as Zwebner goes after a deep-pockets defendant (like, say, Google) that defends itself. (Universal Communications Sys. Inc. v. Dembovich, No. 2004-27383-CA-01 (Miami-Dade Cty., Fla.)). Where’s the SEC in all of this?
Amazingly, I see that the federal District of Oregon has agreed to enter a stipulated injunction barring another Internet poster from ever mentioning Zwebner in any context, true or otherwise. Related story: Polly Sprenger, “Dirty Laundry Airs on Stock Site”, Wired.com, Dec. 11, 1998.
James Guckert threatens suit
Media Matters may have to rethink its apparent bias against litigation reform. They’ll have to spend some unnecessary money on lawyers if Jeff Gannon/James Guckert follows up on his claim that he’ll be suing the group (along with liberal bloggers) for the non-existent cause of action of “political assassination” for revealing his strange double-life. (Newsweek, Feb. 28).
Zwebner lawsuits on Internet posts
Michael J. Zwebner, the CEO of penny-stock holding company Universal Communication Systems , is unhappy that he’s being flamed on the RagingBull.com message board, run by Lycos. He may have a legitimate beef to some extent; the dozens of John Doe usernames he’s seeking to discover in one lawsuit are being represented by a lawyer, L. Van Stillman, who apparently pled guilty to SEC charges of “pump and dump” schemes. (Then again, UCSY has a fishy 10-K, being forced to admit that their auditors don’t think that the company can be maintained as a going concern. They’ve certainly had some bad luck: UCSY’s 2003 10-K was late “because of a fire at the building which houses the Company’s corporate headquarters”. The most recent 10-Q was late “due to a fire at the corporate accountant’s office”.)
More importantly for our purposes here, Zwebner’s litigation methods, through his lawyer John H. Faro, are questionable. He’s filed five lawsuits in federal court in Miami, against anonymous posters, against Lycos (for, among other things, “trademark violations” for naming a message board after the ticker symbol UCSY), and even a couple of purported class actions. He’s especially upset at one anonymous poster, who has the especially credible username of Wolfblitzzer0 [sic]. So, Zwebner has sued… CNN and the real-life Wolf Blitzer! It seems, according to Zwebner’s view of the world, that Blitzer is supposed to be on the lookout for anonymous posters using similar names, and should be held liable for such posters’ postings when he fails to police the use of such usernames. (Jessica M. Walker, “Executive Faces Uphill Battle in His Suits Over Anonymous Web Attacks”, Daily Business Review, Jan. 28).
A Google search shows that Zwebner seems to have had previous success intimidating posters into silence. Update: Professor Volokh comments.
Sued for criticizing
National Law Journal covers the continuing tendency of companies to sue customers and others who post “gripe sites” complaining about their products and services (see Nov. 7 and links from there). “Currently, about a dozen gripe-site lawsuits are pending across the country.” Courts have been unfriendly to such suits, but some companies continue to pursue them, leading critics to suspect that they’re aimed at punishing the critics. (Tresa Baldas, “Trademark Lawsuits: The Price of Online Griping”, Dec. 2). There’s a site called webgripesites.com that monitors the action.
Imperfect Lawsuits: Perfect 10 v. Google (and Visa and …)
“Perfect 10” is an unsuccessful California pornography business that has branched out into the litigation business with the same results. The company is justifiably upset that disreputable pornographers are stealing their copyrighted photos for their web sites. (We know you’re shocked to hear that some pornographers are disreputable, but we call ’em like we see ’em here at Overlawyered.) But unsatisfied with the results of suing fly-by-night operators, they tried to sue the billing services these sites used. These suits were mostly shut down; a federal court held that billing services that aren’t responsible for web site content are not, well, responsible for web site content. (A billing service that did regulate content did not fare so well. Perfect 10 Inc. v. Cybernet Ventures Inc., 213 F. Supp. 2d 1146.)
Then Perfect 10 took on credit card companies Visa and MasterCard. The credit card companies noted that they processed millions of transactions a day, and could not do so economically if they had to be responsible for enforcing property rights of third parties, and compared it to a company “send[ing] a notice to the electric company supplying power to people infringing its rights and say ‘shut them off.'” The Northern District of California threw those cases out.
With this track record, you’d think the media would be more skeptical now that the company has sued Google for providing a search engine with which someone can find web sites that infringe Perfect 10’s copyright, instead of giving company president Norman Zada an unrebutted platform, but the idea of a lawsuit over pictures of naked women is apparently too titillating to resist. Because, of course, a search engine shouldn’t just index the web, but should have intelligent spiders that test the propriety of the web sites indexed. Perfect 10 seems to be trying to get around this problem with their lawsuit by alleging that Google prioritizes search engine results for participants in its Ad Sense program and is lying to the public when it says its search engine results are objective. One wonders why Google doesn’t more prominently feature this benefit of sending them money, as well as about the Rule 11 basis for this allegation. Meanwhile, I guess we should be happy that Bo Derek never sued Perfect 10. (Wendy Davis, “Adult Publisher Sues Google For Copyright Infringement”, MediaDailyNews, Nov. 23; AP, Nov. 23; Lisa Baertlein, Reuters, Nov. 22; Chris Gaither, “Porn Firm Sues Google Over Photos”, LA Times, Nov. 20; Brenda Sandburg, “Strange Bedfellows”, The Recorder, June 7; Gretchen Gallen, “Perfect 10 Sues Visa/MasterCard”, XBiz, Jan. 29). Other Google lawsuits: Nov. 9, Aug. 9, Mar. 28.
Update: Dow Jones settles online defamation suit
Dow Jones & Co. “has settled a defamation lawsuit launched against it by an Australian mining magnate”, agreeing to pay $137,500 plus $306,000 in legal fees to Joe Gutnick and issuing a statement in court that it never intended to suggest that he was a client of a Melbourne man jailed for financial misdeeds. The case drew wide attention (see Jan. 18-20, 2002) primarily because it occasioned a “landmark ruling in December 2002 [in which] the High Court of Australia unanimously ruled that the case could be heard in Gutnick’s home state of Victoria because people there could have read the article online. … The settlement is not likely to affect the precedent already set, said University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, who noted courts in the United Kingdom and Canada have already cited the Australian decision in asserting jurisdiction over other Internet defamation cases.” (“Dow Jones Settles Precedent-Setting Internet Defamation Suit”, AP/Editor & Publisher, Nov. 16).
Latest customer-complaint-website suit
Alan and Linda Townsend of Dallas, Ga. were dissatisfied with a product called Spray On Siding after it was applied to their house and started a website to vent the opinions of other unhappy customers. The company that sold them the siding is now suing them for defamation, trademark infringement and other sins. (“Careful Where You Complain”, AP/Wired News, Nov. 5). For more suits against critics’ websites, see Mar. 31-Apr. 2, 2000 (Terminix case), as well as other cases on our free speech and media page. More: “May It Please the Court” also comments.
Update: PetsWarehouse again
In the latest development in one of the Internet’s most celebrated and protracted legal disputes (Apr. 8 and links from there), pet store owner Robert Novak has announced that the Alabama Supreme Court has dismissed a default judgment against him arising from a case filed by attorney John Benn of Sheffield, Ala. Novak has also regained control of the domain petswarehouse.com, which had for a while been taken over by his adversaries. The controversy originally arose when Novak sued members of a listserv who had expressed dissatisfaction with their experience as customers of his Long Island-based pet store; he has also sued a widening circle of list operators, search engines and other online intermediaries. See PetsWarehouse site; press release, Oct. 5; Defense Fund; PetsForum; Dynamoo.
His so-called reputation
Reports David Giacalone (ethicalEsq):
Elderly Schenectady (NY) lawyer Romolo Versaci has filed a $100,000 defamation suit against Diane C. Richie, an unemployed social worker and widow with two children. Versaci claims — and Richie admits — that she called him a “so-called attorney” on a SchenectadyNY.info message board. …
Versaci says the comment has “greatly injured” his reputation, and adds that “She’s got to stop these cutesy messages and think a little bit.” He has been replaced with another lawyer in the controversy that spawned this lawsuit. Richie says, “I haven’t got $100, let alone $100,000. I couldn’t even imagine a judge looking at this. It’s so stupid.”
Adds ethicalEsq: “Most days, I’d consider being called a ‘so-called attorney’ a compliment.” Evan Schaeffer has strong words concerning the action and his comments section should also be checked out. More watch-what-you-say-about-lawyers cases: Nov. 30, 2003, Sept. 16-17, 2002, more. Updates Jan. 19: David Giacalone reports on a further development; Mar. 20: judge throws out case.