In 2001, the Port Arthur Independent School District sued Philip Klein and his company Klein & Associates Political Relations for defamation after Klein published a post on the South East Texas Political Review blog stating that a "huge fight" had occurred at a prom sponsored by a high school within the district.

The Texas trial court granted summary judgment to Klein and dismissed the case, holding that the First Amendment barred a defamation suit by a government unit.  The Court of Appeals of Texas affirmed, holding that a government unit may not sue for defamation. See Port Arthur Ind. School Dist. v. Klein & Associates Political Relations, 70 S.W.3d 349 (Tex. Ct. App. 2002).

In October 2007, Jonathan Lee Riches, a federal inmate incarcerated in South Carolina, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Wyoming against celebrity blogger Mario Lavandeira. Riches has gained notoriety for bringing bizarre lawsuits (The Smoking Gun has coverage here and here). In this lawsuit, Riches claimed that Lavandeira "slandered me with hate and is distributing my copyrighted name Jonathan Lee Riches©, along with selling Anti Jonathan Lee Riches© mugs and T-shirts, stickers, buttons, hats."  The complaint also alleged that Lavandeira invaded his privacy by publishing a sex tape involving Riches on Perez Hilton. Riches requested an injunction shutting down Lavandeira's popular blog.

In December 2007, the court dismissed the case on its own motion, finding that the complaint did not state a claim and that it had no jurisdiction over the lawsuit.

Don Danks, CEO of Imergent, Inc., filed a lawsuit against Stocklemon.com and its operators, Andrew Left, Bill Harris, Alex Waynberg, and Alex Khachaturyan, alleging defamation, tortious interference with economic advantage, and violations of federal and state securities laws.  According to one press account, Danks maintained that Stocklemon posted defamatory statements about companies in order to manipulate their stock price for profit.  Danks appears to have been complaining about statements posted by website operators and anonymous users of the site, but the record is not entirely clear.  Barry K. Rothman, Danks's lawyer, said the following about the lawsuit soon after it was filed:

This litigation is intended to be a test case that will make it mandatory for principals of these self-professed consumer watchdog sites to disclose their identities, and the true identities of the fictitious names of the people who post. Most importantly this litigation is intended to be a test case that these websites have a financial motive in publishing the false and negative information they publish and they cannot hide behind Freedom of Speech and 1st Amendment Rights and we intend to have the court impose severe punitive damages against all defendants as a result of the outrageous defamation that has been published "for profit." (source)

Andrew left filed a special motion to strike the complaint based on California's anti-SLAPP law,  but the record is not clear on the result of that motion. Two appeals were taken during the course of the litigation, but their outcomes are similarly unclear. The trial- and appeals-level dockets for this case indicated that it is closed, but the CMLP has not been able to determine exactly what happened.

In September 2001, John Vogel and Paul Grannis, who at the time were candidates for public office, sued Joseph Felice for libel, false light invasion of privacy, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, and negligence. According to legal filings in the case, Felice operated several website on Geocities (www.geocities.com/bobvalenzuelasass and www.geocities.com/bobvalenzuelasass.isonfire.com) that allegedly contained defamatory statements about Vogel and Granis, including "a list entitled 'Top Ten Dumb Asses,'" in which Vogel and Grannis were "listed as the number 1 and number 2 dumb asses, respectively."

Vogel and Granis also alleged that the website “contained statements associating Plaintiffs with criminal conduct and fraud,” and specifically noted “the statement ‘J. J. Vogel’s Wanted as a Dead Beat Dad,’ which, when clicked upon, opened another web site dedicated to locating ‘deadbeat dads,’ ” and “the statement, ‘Paul Grannis—Bankrupt, Drunk & Chewin’ tobaccy’ which when clicked upon, opened a new web page associating Plaintiff Grannis with criminal, fraudulent, and immoral conduct.” Plaintiffs alleged that additional (but unspecified) defamatory statements appeared in “[n]umerous e-mails and bulletin messages . . . sent and received through said web site” as well as in “[o]ther web pages in said web site,” which “contained false and defamatory statements about Plaintiffs, including . . . patent associations with criminal and fraudulent conduct.”

Felice brought a special motion to strike the complaint under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, Cal. Civ. Proc. Sec. 425.16, which requires dismissal of any cause of action “arising from any act of [the defendant] in furtherance of [his or her] right of petition or free speech under the United States or California Constitution in connection with a public issue . . . unless the court determines that the plaintiff has established that there is a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim.”

On April 9, 2002, the trial court denied the motion to strike.  Felice appealed the decision, and the Court of Appeal reversed, finding that Vogel and Granis had failed to establish a probability of success because they had failed to plead that Felice acted with “actual malice.”  Vogel v. Felice, 127 Cal. App. 4th 1006 (2005).  The court also concluded that being called a "dumb ass" was not defamatory because it was a statement of opinion and could not be proven true or false.

During the 2006-07 academic year, the University of Minnesota Duluth banned student-athletes from using popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. The University asked students to stop using the sites after an online posting resulted in disciplinary action.

After the 2006-07 academic year, the University lifted the ban and replaced it with a Student-Athlete Conduct Policy that athletes were required to sign. The policy does not completely ban participation in any social networking sites, but it does prohibit "the posting on any internet web site of any remarks that can be considered as inflammatory, degrading or in poor taste toward any other UMD student, student-athlete, coach, faculty or staff member."

It does not appear that any disciplinary action has been taken against individual students in relation to this policy.

Dublin-based alternative medicine practitioner Dr. Joseph Chikelue Obi sent a cease-and-desist letter through his "adviser" to Netcetera, the web hosting company for Dr. Andy Lewis (a.k.a Le Canard Noir), who provides skeptical commentary on alternative medicine on his Quackometer blog. The letter complainted about two posts -- "Right Royal College of Pompous Quackery" published September 28, 2006, and "Ethical Quackery, the Monarchy and Kate Moss" published October 12, 2006.  These posts were critical of Obi and the Royal College of Alternative Medicine, of which Obi is the provost.

Obi alleged that the posts defamed him and the Royal College. The letter threatened to seek one million pounds per day in damages if Netcetera refused to take the offending posts down. The basis for this large sum of damages was not specified.

Netcetera complied with Obi's demands, but the articles have been reposted by other internet users at various locations, including No Nonsense!  Fellow skeptical blogger Orac is also calling for readers to repost the items.

A similar course of events played out three months earlier, when the Society of Homeopaths successfully demanded that one of Lewis's articles be taken down from Quackometer. See the CMLP database entry, Society of Homeopaths v. Netcetera. Lewis now says that he is looking for a new web hosting company.

Founded in 2006, BlockShopper.com is a start-up local online real estate news service covering Chicago, South Florida, Las Vegas, and St. Louis. Its reporting staff is made up of ex-print journalists who collect public real estate sales data, then use information in the public domain (e.g. company web sites) to write news stories about recent transactions. BlockShopper currently produces upwards of 1,000 stories per month and has produced more than 8,000 since its founding, many of which appear in print newspapers as part of content-sharing partnerships with companies like Tribune. Three of those stories, all on BlockShopper's Chicago web site, reported the real estate transactions of partners and associates from Jones Day, the large international law firm.

Jones Day sued BlockShopper.com on Aug. 12, 2008 in federal court in Illinois. The complaint alleges that Blockshopper.com infringed and diluted the firm's service mark and violated state trademark and unfair competition laws by using the word "Jones Day" when referring to the real estate transactions of Jones Day attorneys, linking to its site and using lawyers’ photos from its site. The firm contends that these activities creates the false impression that Jones Day is affiliated with or sponsors BlockShopper.com.

Jones Day sought a temporary restraining order preventing BlockShopper from writing about its lawyers or linking to its web site. BlockShopper agreed to take down the three stories temporarily, to avoid the expense of arguing both a TRO and then the complaint itself against a large law firm. Its executives say they believe the suit is frivolous and they plan to fully defend themselves. Jones Day told BlockShopper it would drop the case if BlockShopper paid it $10,000 and agreed to never write about its lawyers' real estate transactions again, according to the National Law Journal. BlockShopper declined the offer.

Trial is set for late February 2009.

Update:

09/19/2008 - BlockShopper and individual defendants Timpone and Weinhaus field a motion to dismiss the complaint. Public Citizen, EFF, Public Knowledge, and Citizen Media Law Project moved for permission to file an amici curiae brief in support of BlockShopper's motion.

09/23/2008 - Jones Day filed a memorandum in opposition to Amici's motion for permission to file an amici curiae brief.

09/24/2009 - Amici filed a reply memorandum in support of their motion for permission to file an amici curiae brief.

11/13/08 - The court granted defendants' motion to dismiss the claims against individual defendants Timpone and Weinhaus, but otherwise denied the motion. The court also denied the motion of EFF, Public Citizen, Public Knowledge, and Citizen Media Law Project for permission to file an amici curiae brief.

02/11/09 - According to Alison Grant, a reporter for The Plain Dealer, the parties have settled - the settlement allows BlockShopper to continue linking to the Jones Day site, so long as it does not use embedded links.

02/13/09 - The parties filed a stipulation of dismissal pursuant to the settlement.

Richard Frenkel authors the Patent Troll Tracker blog, where he comments on lawsuits that in his view abuse the patent system. Eric M. Albritton, a patent lawyer practicing in Texas, sued Frenkel and his employer, Cisco Systems, for defamation. Albritton alleges that Frenkel's post of October 18, 2007 falsely implied that Albritton and a colleague, John Ward, Jr., had conspired with a federal court official to illegally alter court documents.

Frenkel's October 18, 2007 post focused on ESN, LLC v. Cisco Systems, a patent lawsuit brought in the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Texas. He implied that ESN, LLC ("ESN") was a patent troll and claimed that when ESN filed its patent infringement suit against Cisco on October 15, 2007, the patent in question had not yet been issued. If this was the case, the post contended, ESN would have no standing to sue because it had not been injured at the time of the filing. Frenkel identified Eric Albritton and T. John Ward as ESN's local counsel responsible for filing the suit and allegedly altering documents to change the date of filing.

Frenkel operated Patent Troll Tracker anonymously up to the time of this blog post, but he subsequently "outed" himself after Ward sought to take discovery regarding his identity from Google. Albritton filed his original complaint in Texas state court against Frenkel and Cisco. Cisco then removed the action to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Albritton later amended his complaint to name two additional defendants, Mallun Yen and John Noh, both of whom are employees of Cisco. Both Yen and Noh have moved to dismiss the complaint against them for lack of personal jurisdiction.

Ward filed a nearly identical action against Frenkel and Cisco in Texas state court. He later dismissed this action and later refiled his complaint in federal court in Arkansas. By refiling in federal court in Arkansas, Ward may have intended to pre-empt Cisco from removing his case to the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, as it had done with Albritton's case. See our database entry, Ward v. Cisco Systems, Inc., for details.

Update:

11/26/2008 - Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment in federal court.

12/24/2008 - Defendants filed reply in response to motion for summary judgment.

1/6/2009 - Plaintiff filed sur-reply to Defendants' reply.

2/27/09 - Court granted in part the defendants' motion for summary judgment and the plaintiff's cross-motion for summary judgment.   

6/5/09 - Court denies plaintiff's motion to reconsider the granting of defendants' motion in limine. Court also denies defendants' motion to reconsider the denial of the defendants' motion to compel production of documents.

9/22/09 - The case settled after 4 days of trial.