Maxon v. Ottawa Publishing Company [1]

Donald and Janet Maxon served a pre-litigation petition for discovery [2] on Ottawa Publishing Company, the operator of mywebtimes.com [3], a website for The Times, a local newspaper based in Ottawa, IL.  The Maxons sought to force The Times to provide identifying information about persons who they claim posted defamatory comments on the newspaper's website in March and April 2008, under the screen names "FabFive from Ottawa" and "Mary1955."  The petition also included a defamation count against a user identified as "Birdie1," who the Maxons allege is Susan Wren.

According to filings in the case, the Maxons alleged that users of the site posted comments suggesting that they had bribed members of the Ottawa Plan Commission. According to press accounts [4], the Maxons had sought approval from the Commission to add rooms to their house to accommodate a bed and breakfast. Several neighbors opposed their wish and the Maxons eventually gave up their plan after determining they were blocked by city ordinance.

On September 19, 2008, Ottawa Publishing filed a motion to dismiss [5] the petition, arguing that the Maxons had not met their burden of showing that the  commenters' First Amendment right to anonymity should be violated by the disclosure of the information the petition sought.

At a hearing on October 2, 2008, the Maxons' withdrew their request to discover the identity of " Mary1955."  The Court, applying the test for protecting anonymous speech [6] laid out in Dendrite International v. Doe [7], 775 A.2d 756 (N.J. App. Div. 2001), found that the allegedly defamatory statements attributed to "FabFive from Ottawa" were merely statements of opinion and therefore dismissed [8] the Maxons' petition for pre-suit discovery.  The Court also ordered [8] that the Maxons' claim against Wren be severed from the petition for pre-suit discovery. (See our related database entry, Maxon v. Susan Wren [9].)

On October 6, 2008, the Maxons filed a notice of appeal [10] to the Third District Appellate Court of Illinois.

Update:

2/17/09 - Maxons filed their appeal brief [11].

3/24/09 - Ottawa Publishing filed its response brief [12].

3/24/09 - CMLP and other media organizations sought to file an amicus curiae brief [13] in support of the lower court's imposition of the Dendrite standard.

06/01/2010 - The Illinois Appellate Court for the Third District reversed [14] the trial court's order dismissing the Maxon's petition.