Woman Wins Libel Suit By Suing Wrong Website

An anonymous reader writes "It appears that Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader Sarah Jones and her lawyer were so upset by a comment on the site TheDirty.com that they missed the 'y' at the end of the name. Instead, they sued the owner of TheDirt.com, whose owner didn't respond to the lawsuit. The end result was a judge awarding $11 million, in part because of the failure to respond. Now, both the owners of TheDirty.com and TheDirt.com are complaining that they're being wrongfully written about in the press — one for not having had any content about Sarah Jones but being told it needs to pay $11 million, and the other for having the content and having the press say it lost a lawsuit, even though no lawsuit was ever actually filed against it."

Cue cheerleader jokes in 3..2..

[elrous0]

It's not her fault. She got the lawyer to do her homework for her.

I don't like this story

[Drakkenmensch]

I'm gonna sue slashdork!

Re:Cue cheerleader jokes in 3..2..

[adamofgreyskull]

Oooohh...you're for it now! Filing lawsuit against "elrous1" in 3, 2, 1....

Re:This week for me!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the great things about being a Judge is never having to be embarrassed by any mistake you make, because you don't make mistakes.

Re:What TheDirt.com should do

[timeOday]

Maybe TheDirt.com should sue Sarah Jones for libel for making false and damaging defamatory statements about them to the courts and to the press.

By analogy, shouldn't they be suing one Sariah Jones? Or Sarah Jonhannes?

The *REAL* WTF

[DoofusOfDeath]

Imagine Skynet's embarassment when the Terminator took out Sarah Jones.

Re:What TheDirt.com should do

[PingSpike]

No worries, us folks over here in the US don't understand it either.

Re:What TheDirt.com should do

[dwillden]

True, I believe we've outsourced the responsibility/ability to understand it to a guy named Bob living on an otherwise deserted island in Micronesia.