Joyner v. Lazzareschi [1]

Jeffrey Joyner, a California soccer coach, sued Jerry Lazzareschi, the operator of the forum Soccertalk.com, and his domain registrar Domains by Proxy, Inc., after a number of allegedly false and defamatory statements about Joyner appeared on Lazzareschi's forum site.  

Joyner coached two soccer teams for teenage girls, and in 2004 he merged the teams causing what a California appeals court called "parental unrest and heated discussion in the girls' soccer community."  The controversy over the team merger spilled onto the Internet and generated over 2000 posts on Sockertalk.com.  According to court documents, Joyner alleged that some of these posts falsely accused him of "financial improprieties," described him as "a cheater and a thief," and accused him of incompetence and "coach[ing] his . . . team . . . into the ground," among other things.  The statements were largely posted by unregistered users of the forum, but Joyner also alleged that Lazzareschi created forum thread titles and "republished the[] statements" on other websites "to lure viewers to [his] WEBSITE." 

Joyner filed suit against Lazzareschi and Soccertalk.com for defamation, negligence, negligent training/supervision, interference with contractual relations, interference with prospective economic advantage, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.  Joyner's complaint also contained a cause of action for fraud against Domains by Proxy for permitting Lazzareschi to obtain and register his domain name anonymously.  

The defendants moved to strike the complaint under California's anti-SLAPP law (Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16 [2]), and the trial court granted the motion.  On appeal, the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, reversed, finding that the statements did not relate to a matter of public interest within the protection of the anti-SLAPP law.  After the case returned to the trial court, Lazzareschi moved for summary judgment, and the trial court granted the motion and dismissed the case against him, ruling that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act [3] ("Section 230") barred Joyner's claims based on third-party content.  Joyner appealed.

The California Court of Appeal affirmed, holding that Section 230 gave Lazzareschi immunity for publishing the comments of his forum users.  The court concluded that Lazzareschi, as a website operator, qualified as the provider of an "interactive computer service" and that all of Joyner's claims treated him as a "publisher or speaker" of third-party content.  The court also ruled that Joyner's claim that Lazzareschi republished the defamatory content on other websites in order to "advertise" his forum was irrelevant because "the view that actively selected and republished information is no longer 'information provided by another information content provider' under section 230(c)(1) is groundless." 

The court also rejected Joyner's argument that, under the Ninth Circuit's opinion in Roommates.com [4], Lazzareschi lost his immunity by creating forum thread titles and deleting positive posts.  The court indicated that starting threads on topics of interest "is not by itself defamatory" because "positive messages about plaintiff or messages defending him could be and were posted under [the threads]."  The court also found that Joyner produced no evidence that Lazzareschi ever deleted positive messages about him. The court explained that, unlike in the Roommates.com scenario, no evidence -- let alone 'direct and palpable' evidence -- connected defendant to a posting or filtering process that was discriminatory or defamatory against plaintiff."

The case still appears to be pending against Domains by Proxy in the trial court. 

UPDATE: On 08/22/2008, the court granted Domains by Proxy Inc's motion for summary judgement. It appears that the court awarded fees to Domains by Proxy, since Domains submitted a sumary of its court costs on 09/03/2008 and scheduled an examination of judgment debtor on 09/26/2008.