Allegheney Energy v. Swiger [1]

Allegheney Energy ("AE") fired Clifton Swiger for allegedly posting anonymous criticism of the company and racial epithets on a Yahoo! forum.  AE said the posts were a violation of AE's diversity policy.

In October 2003, AE sued Swiger as a John Doe defendant, but withdrew the lawsuit after it learned Swiger's identity from Yahoo!  (See Allegheney Energy v. Doe [2] for details.)  AE fired Swiger on December 10.

In October 2005, Swiger sued [3] AE and Morgan Lewis & Bockius ("ML&B"), AE's attorneys, for abuse of process, wrongful use of civil proceedings, intrusion of seclusion, and publication of private facts in Pennsylvania federal court.  The defendants moved to dismiss [4] on jurisdictional grounds, arguing that because two of ML&B's partners were U.S. citizens domiciled abroad, Swiger's complaint failed to establish diversity.  The trial court agreed [5] and dismissed the case in February 2007. 

Swiger appealed the decision in March 2007.

Update:

08/25/2008 - The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed [6]the district court's dismissal for failure to establish diversity jurisdiction.