Courts Crack Down On Bloggers

[jmiller]

The free-wheeling razor-tounged days of the blogger are coming to a close. More and more, bloggers and forum posters are being taken to court for libel and defamation and losing.

The first case to be ruled against a blogger was in January this year, after a silly, silly man (opinion is protected speech, so silly is okay to say) had a dispute with his lawyer. This silly, silly man blogged that his lawyer was bribing judges on behalf of drug dealers without any proof whatsoever. That cost him $50,000.

Last month, a message board poster who couldn't afford a lawyer or to appear in court was slapped with an $11 million judgment for calling a Florida woman a crook, a fraud, and a con artist. The jury intstituted the penalty, apparently, just to make an example of her.

Read the rest here.

[khurramali]

Its a good start, off with their heads.

[quackerywatch]

There is a key case that is now in the hands of the Supreme Court in California that involves a Canadian physician, Dr. Terry Polevoy, who has been defamed for years by a woman named Ilena Rosenthal. Despite this, the woman has continued to post thousands of Usenet comments about various health issues since the original lawsuit was files six years ago.

A link to the details of the case:

http://www.healthwatcher.net/Quacker...hal/index.html

In this case it would appear that the issues involve malicious and intentional defamation over many years. Her posts are far more serious than the Florida case.

We think that the judges in California will rule on the Polevoy case in a few months.