Danks v. Harris [1]

Don Danks, CEO of Imergent, Inc., filed a lawsuit against Stocklemon.com and its operators, Andrew Left, Bill Harris, Alex Waynberg, and Alex Khachaturyan, alleging defamation, tortious interference with economic advantage, and violations of federal and state securities laws.  According to one press account [2], Danks maintained that Stocklemon posted defamatory statements about companies in order to manipulate their stock price for profit.  Danks appears to have been complaining about statements posted by website operators and anonymous users of the site, but the record is not entirely clear.  Barry K. Rothman, Danks's lawyer, said the following about the lawsuit soon after it was filed:

This litigation is intended to be a test case that will make it mandatory for principals of these self-professed consumer watchdog sites to disclose their identities, and the true identities of the fictitious names of the people who post. Most importantly this litigation is intended to be a test case that these websites have a financial motive in publishing the false and negative information they publish and they cannot hide behind Freedom of Speech and 1st Amendment Rights and we intend to have the court impose severe punitive damages against all defendants as a result of the outrageous defamation that has been published "for profit." (source [2])

Andrew left filed a special motion to strike the complaint based on California's anti-SLAPP law [3],  but the record is not clear on the result of that motion. Two appeals were taken during the course of the litigation, but their outcomes are similarly unclear. The trial- and appeals-level dockets for this case indicated that it is closed, but the CMLP has not been able to determine exactly what happened.