Sethi v. TechCrunch [1]

On February 19, 2009, lawyers representing Sam Sethi, a former employee of TechCrunch [2] and former CEO of now-defunct BlogNation, sent a letter to TechCrunch [3] co-founder Michael Arrington threatening suit "within the jurisdiction of the High Court of England and Wales, at the Royal Courts of Justice (in London, UK)" for libel. 

The basis for the suit is a series of [4] allegedly [5] defamatory [6] posts [7] on CrunchNotes (the TechCrunch blog) which stated, according to the letter, that:

• "[S]ome of [Sethi's] former writers have accused him of fraud and other crimes."
• Sethi "had threatened to kill" one of his former business associates.
• Sethi was "involved in '. . . usury, fraud even'" (quoting from a blog post [4] by Oliver Starr).
• Sethi is "predisposed to making threats of violence and making others feel threatened by him and being thoroughly deceitful."

Sethi is also suing based upon the "posting [of] a confidential (and stolen) termsheet from [BlogNations'] VC funders," which, according to Sethi's lawyers, "seriously jeopardize[d]" the BlogNation's funding.  Sethi is asking TechCrunch to remove all posts that include allegedly false accusations about him, publish an apology, undertake "not to repeat the same or similar libels again," pay his legal costs, and donate damages to a charity or "towards fees of those unpaid editors at Blognation who had remained faithful to the end."

Michael Arrington replied [3] to Sethi's letter through his lawyers, asserting that TechCrunch is "not susceptible to the jurisdiction of English courts" and that an English judgment would not be recognized or enforced by US courts.  He also provided evidence, mostly in the form of blog posts and comments by others, that he believes supports the veracity of the statements made in the CrunchNotes posts at issue.  TechCrunch has also offered Sethi the opportunity [3] to submit a reply "concerning the challenged statements" that would be posted "with equal prominence to [TechCrunch's] previous posts about him."

According to TechCrunch [3], a lawsuit was filed on June 28, 2009. Based on third party reports [8], the lawsuit appears to have been filed in the United Kingdom.