Lisa Krinsky, the former president, chief operating officer, and chairman of the board of SFBC International, Inc., a Florida company, sued ten anonymous defendants over comments about her posted to a Yahoo! message board. According to court papers, the anonymous forum posters made "scathing verbal attacks" against SFBC, Krinsky, and fellow corporate officers. (For juicy details, see Ars Technica's article on the case.)

Krinsky filed a lawsuit in Florida state court in January 2006 (the exact date is uncertain), alleging defamation and intentional interference with contractual relations. She served a subpoena on Yahoo! in California, seeking the identities of the anonymous forum posters. After Yahoo! notified the posters, one of them -- Doe 6 -- filed a motion to quash the subpoena in California state court. The court denied the motion to quash, noting (quite strangely) that Doe 6's conduct "appeared to be similar to federal cases involving "'pump and dump' stock manipulation efforts," although no claim to that effect was in Krinsky's complaint.

In February 2008, a California appellate court reversed the lower court's ruling. It held that Internet users have a First Amendment right to engage in anonymous speech, but this right must be balanced against a plaintiff's legitimate interest in pursuing a valid legal claim based on constitutionally unprotected speech, such as defamation. In striking this balance, the court rejected the "good faith" standard applied in In re Subpoena Duces Tecum to America Online, 2000 WL 1210372 (Vir. Cir. Ct. Jan. 31, 2000), indicating that this test "offers no practical, reliable way to determine the plaintiff's good faith and leaves the speaker with little protection." The court also declined to apply the test devised in Doe v. Cahill, 884 A.2d 451 (Del. 2005), arguing that the "summary judgment" terminology used in that case is "unnecessary and potentially confusing."

Instead, the court adopted a test that requires a plaintiff to make a "prima facie showing" that he or she has a valid legal claim against the anonymous speaker before allowing disclosure of the speaker's identity. The court made it clear that a prima facie showing required Krinsky to bring forward evidence (not just allegations) to support each element of her defamation and interference with contract claims, except for those elements that were beyond her control or dependent on the identity of the defendant.

Applying this standard, the court held that Krinsky had not made a prima facie showing on her defamation claim because the message board comments, viewed in context, constituted opinion protected by the First Amendment rather than statements of fact about Krinsky. The court further held that Krinsky could not make a prima facie showing on her interference with contract claim because this claim was based on the same constitutionally protected opinion.

Nam Tai Electronics, Inc., a Hong Kong-based electronics company, sued 51 "John Doe" defendants in California state court for libel, trade libel, and violations of California's unfair business practices statute.  The lawsuit revolved around negative comments about Nam Tai posted to a Yahoo! message board pertaining to Nam Tai. 

After filing the complaint, Nam Tai obtained a subpoena in California directing Yahoo! to disclose its subscriber data (IP address) for "scovey2," one of the anonymous forum posters.  Based on this information, Nam Tai determined that "scovey2" obtained his Internet access through AOL.   Nam Tai then obtained a "commission" for out-of-state discovery from the California court to depose AOL's custodian of records in Virginia, in order to seek identifying information for "scovey2."  Nam Tai asked a Virginia state trial court to issue a subpoena, and AOL moved to quash the subpoena. 

The trial court denied AOL's motion to quash, concluding that it would enforce the California "commission" and reasoning that First Amendment concerns implicated by the libel and trade libel claims were not implicated by the California unfair business practices claim.  The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed, relying heavily on the principle of "comity" (that is, the respect states extend to the judgments of other states).  

The record is not clear regarding what happened in California court after the poster's identity was revealed.

The Los Angeles Times reported that a federal grand jury in Los Angeles has begun issuing subpoenas in the Megan Meier case, the Missouri teenager who committed suicide after a "boy" she met on MySpace abruptly turned on her and ended their relationship. According to the Los Angeles Times, the boy was allegedly Lori Drew, a neighbor who had pretended to be 16-year-old "Josh Evans" to gain Megan's trust.

According to anonymous sources who spoke to the LATimes:

Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, however, are exploring the possibility of charging Drew with defrauding the MySpace social networking website by allegedly creating the false account, according to the sources, who insisted on anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

The sources said prosecutors are looking at federal wire fraud and cyber fraud statutes as they consider the case. Prosecutors believe they have jurisdiction because MySpace is headquartered in Beverly Hills, the sources said.

Update:

05/15/2008- The grand jury indicted Lori Drew.See the related threat entry, United States v. Drew, for more information.

Susan O'Malley, a Kingsborough Community College/City University New York (KCC/CUNY) English professor and faculty union representative, sued KCC/CUNY emeritus professor Sharad Karkhanis in December 2007 for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Karkhanis allegedly published defamatory statements about O'Malley in his online newsletter, "The Patriot Returns!!" According to O'Malley's complaint, Karkhanis's statements accused her of

being a person of vicious, disreputable, criminal, and 'terrorist' character, who supports "terrorist activities" at the present time in the United States, who actively goes out of her way to help convicted criminals without any regard for the CUNY academic community, . . . who believes in those who preach and practice terrorism or violence and murder and has the ability and influence to secure jobs for criminal and "terrorists" instead of and at the expense of decent, upstanding citizens and law-abiding Americans. (Cpt.¶ 25)

O'Malley wrote to Karkhanis on April 18, 2007, demanding that he retract the defamatory material (see related CMLP database entry, O'Malley v. Karkhanis (Letter)), a demand with which Karkhanis refused to comply. According to Karkhanis, his newsletter is satire. In the lawsuit, O’Malley seeks $2 million in general and punitive damages.

Update:

3/12/2008 - Karkhanis answered O'Malley's complaint. 

6/18/2009 - According to the case information, the preliminary conference was held on January 20, 2009.

03/17/2010 - Inside Higher Ed reports that the parties have settled the case.  As part of the settlement, Karkhanis issued a statement in his newsletter saying that he does not believe O'Malley to be a terrorist. In the comments to the Inside Higher Ed story, Karkhanis' lawyer posted the following clarification: "Sharad's statement is NOT an apology. The word apologize does not appear anywhere in the text, and the substance of the statement is clear that it is essentially an expression of regret if anyone misunderstood anything that had been published in The Patriot Returns."  You can find Karkhanis' statement here. 

West Lafayette High School student Caitlyn Casseday received a one-day in-school suspension on October 5, 2007, for calling assistant principal Ron Shriner an "ass" on Facebook. The criticism was posted in a Facebook group set up to support another West Lafayette student, who was suspended for his involvement in an altercation in the school computer laboratory that was videotaped and posted on Facebook as well.

According to an article about the suspension on the Student Press Law Center:

Rocky Killion, the West Lafayette School Corporation superintendent, could not speak about Casseday's case specifically. But he said the district makes a "case-by-case determination" on when to punish students for off-campus speech.

"There's not a cookbook approach that says 'If you do this we'll do that,'" he said.

Casseday has indicated that she does not intend to sue over the suspension.

The Freecycle Network (TFN) is a nonprofit corporation that acts as a central administrative point for local recycling communities around the United States and operates a website at www.freecycle.org. It had been operating under this name since 2003, and in 2004 submitted a trademark application for the "The Freecycle Network" and "Freecycle" marks.

Tim Oey, a former volunteer at TFN became a vocal critic of TFN's attempt to trademark its name, expressing his view that "freecycle" had become a generic term and thus not an appropriate word to be protected by trademark .

On April 4, 2006, TFN filed a lawsuit against Oey, alleging trademark infringement. TFN argued that Oey's claims in various Yahoo! Groups that TFN did not own the "freecycle" trademark constituted trademark disparagement, and his encouraging others to freely use the term "freecycle" constituted contributory trademark infringement. TFN also sought relief under the Arizona common law actions of injurious falsehood, defamation, and intentional interference with business relationships.

The action caught the attention of academics, which came out to support Oey. Two amici curiae submissions were filed in the U.S. District Court of Arizona arguing in Oey's favor, and academic Eugene Volokh assisted Oey's lawyers as an adviser.

On April 24, 2006, the court granted TFN's request for a preliminary injunction, restraining Oey from communicating about the merits of TFNs claim of trademark ownership of the disputed terms.

Oey appealled to the Ninth Circuit, arguing that the injunction was an "unjustified prior restraint on Oey's constitutional right to speak about TFN's efforts to trademark the word 'freecycle'." Oey's appellate brief also attacked the validity of TFN's trademark claims and common law claims.

On September 26, 2007, the Ninth Circuit overturned the injunction and remanded the case to the district court, holding that TFN's trademark infringement arguments failed on a number of bases, including that Oey's use of the marks was unlikely to constitute "use in commerce." The court also held that Oey was expressing an opinion about a putative trademark, and the Lanham Act does not restrain such behavior. It held further that trademark disparagement was not a valid action under the Lanham Act.

There has been no significant activity in the district court after remand.

Xcentric Ventures, LLC, operates the Bad Business Bureau, which provides a forum in which consumers may accuse companies and individuals of various "rip-off" and "bad business" practices. This forum is located on a website that may be accessed through either of two domain names: ripoffreport.com or badbusinessbureau.com. The site solicits and receives complaints from all over the country and recommends tactics for writing “rip-off reports,” providing sample questions to ask companies, and advice for locating similarly situated consumers on the Internet.

On November 6, 2006, Energy Automated Systems filed a lawsuit against Xcentric and a site administrator, Edward Magedson, alleging defamation, interference with business relations, civil conspiracy, and violations of the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act. More specifically, EAS alleges in its complaint that it was listed on the website’s “Top Rip-Off Links” and has been the subject of various “rip-off reports.” Those reports have included titles, headings and editorial messages that, the plaintiff alleges, were created by the defendants, stating that EAS’s dealerships are a “complete” and “long running” “scam,” that EAS is a “damn scam ripoff business from hell,” that EAS’s Chief Executive Officer and other employees are “crooked” and “crooks,” that “EASI likes to threaten anyone that complains whether dealer or ex-employee” and that EAS has engaged in “fraud.”

On March 26, 2007, Xcentric filed a motion to dismiss for lack for personal jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2). Xcentric also raised the defense that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. sec. 230(c)(1), should mandate dismissal of the claims.

On May 25, 2007, the court held that Xcentric could not raise CDA 230 on a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. The court refused to convert the motion into a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. However, the court stated that CDA 230 could still be used as a defense in a later summary judgment determination.

After the parties proceeded to discovery, the case appears to have settled. On December 12, 2007, the parties filed an Agreed Order of Dismissal.

On December 10, 2007, an investigator with the Kansas University Office of Public Safety delivered a search warrant to the Lawrence Journal-World, a highly regarded newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas, demanding access to the newspaper’s computer servers. The search warrant, issued by Douglas County District Judge Stephen Six, sought information about the identity of an individual who had posted anonymous comments on the newspaper's website, LJWorld.com.

Investigators were seeking the identity of a user who had posted comments on the paper's website under the screen name "a2thek." The pseudonymous user had commented on an article about a Kansas University student who was found dead in a KU dorm room, indicating that the death was heroin-related.

According to the Lawrence World-Journal, the investigator left before executing the warrant:

When presented with the search warrant, the newspaper was given the opportunity to call its attorney [Bernard Rhodes], who contacted the district attorney’s office and the court to object to the search warrant. During that time period, the KU investigator left the Journal-World offices without executing the search warrant and did not return.

Rhodes stated that he believed the search warrant was issued contrary to the federal Privacy Protection Act, which restricts the ability of law enforcement to conduct searches of news-gathering organizations.

On January 6, 2008, after the paper made the search warrant public, a2thek posted a follow-up comment apologizing for providing inaccurate information in his earlier comment:

This infomation [sic] is not 100% correct and I would like to take some time to apologize for any mis-information. The guy that works with me I overheard in the bathrool [sic] making this speculation of what actually happened so I dont [sic] know if it's actual fact or hearsay. I do once again dont [sic] want to draw any lines or conclusions being I really dont know anything about all of it and I think the guy at work was just an aquitance [sic] and went to school with the guy and that's what he heard. I guess when a autopsy is performed that will get you the answers that your looking for. Sorry for all the misleading info once again.

According to an August 6, 2007 article in the iPinions Journal, Dr. Keith Claudius Mitchell, the Prime Minister of Grenada is suing Lloyd Noel, a political columnist at Caribbean Net News and former Attorney General of Grenada, and Caribbean Net Ltd for publishing an article on Caribbean Net News that states that the Prime Minister is an American citizen.

This allegation raises questions about the constitutionality of Dr. Mitchell's appointment as Prime Minister. In his iPinions piece, lawyer and consultant Anthony Livingston Hall says that the key issue is whether or not Dr. Mitchell is able to show that he renounced his US citizenship before being sworn in as Grenada’s prime minister in 1995.

In September 2007, a default judgment was entered against Noel and Caribbean Net News for failure to file a defense within 28 days.  The defendants filed their defense on September 17 and asked that the default judgment be repealed.  They noted that the court was on its annual vacation between August 1 and September 15, and argued that the defense requirement was tolled until the vacation ended.  The court registrar agreed and repealed the default judgment.  On March 5, 2008, the Eastern Carribbean Supreme Court affirmed the registrar's decison.