Woodhull v. Meinel [1]

Angela Victoria Woodhull sued hacker Carolyn Meinel after Meinel allegedly posted two false and defamatory statements about her on Meinel's website The Happy Hacker [2].  In 2003, Meinel posted on her website an email message from Woodhull entitled "Please contact me" and stating "I have a job for you."  According to the appellate court opinion in the case [3], Meinel then added her own commentary, stating that, when she called Woodhull, Woodhull asked her to hack into a news website that had written unflattering comments about her. 

In 2006, Meinel made a second posting, which recapped the 2003 incident and went on to state that Meinel's only recourse against Woodhull for her alleged unlawful request was "to make fun of her on this website." This posting also contained the content of an email exchange between Meinel and Michael Gimignani, a staff member at The Independent Florida Alligator [4], a student run newspaper at the University of Florida. Gimignani's email discussed a dispute between Woodhull and the newspaper over whether a Woodhull play contained "dancing penises and condoms."  Meinel added more of her own commentary, stating that further research revealed that Woodhull had "been on America's Funniest Home Videos" and "says she is proud to be known as Wedgie Woman."

In January 2007, Woodhull filed a defamation lawsuit against Meinel in New Mexico state court.  Meinel filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that the statute of limitations barred Woodhull's claims, and that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act [5] ("Section 230") immunized her from liability for publishing Gimignani's emails.  The lower court agreed and dismissed the case.

Woodhull appealed, and a New Mexico appellate court reversed.  The appellate court held that, while New Mexico followed the single publication rule [6] for Internet publications, a jury could find that the 2006 posting was sufficiently different from the 2003 posting to constitute a separate publication, resetting the statute of limitations.

The appellate court also held that a jury should decide whether Meinel's use of Gimignani's emails qualified for Section 230 immunity.  The court stated that Meinel meight be an original "information content provider" because she solicited the information from Gimignani for her own stated purpose of "making fun" of Woodhull, and incorporated this material into a overall posting along with her own thoughts.  The court noted, however, that a jury could view Meinel's posting as containing two distinct components -- her statements and Gimignani's statements -- and thus find Section 230 applicable to the component including the Gimignani's statements.