Woman Wins Libel Suit By Suing Wrong Website 323
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the close-enough dept.
from the close-enough dept.
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."
Re:What TheDirt.com should do (Score:4, Informative)
this just in (Score:5, Informative)
Default judgements (Score:5, Informative)
These default judgments for absurd amounts of money just show how broken our legal system is. If somebody doesn't show up to a court house for a lawsuit in the millions of dollars, it's probably because they weren't properly notified.
In fact, looking at thedirt.com, there's a posting about it on top of the page. The person seems as baffled and confused as the rest of us. The site looks like a random Wordpress blog tracking celebrity gossip, almost certainly a one-person operation with no budget or staff. The address on file for the domain is that of DomainsByProxy, and notice was probably never delivered to the actual site owner.
Did the judge ever consider that possibility before issuing an $11M default judgment against an individual? By simple inspection, one can see that Thedirt.com is very obviously not the product of a global mega-media-corporation with billions of dollars to sue for.
Why would you ruin someone's life without forcing proper process-serving and making sure the person or a lawyer for them show up? The civil system in the US needs to be torn apart and started again from scratch, or merged into the criminal system like in (some?) European countries.
Re:this just in (Score:3, Informative)
Libel.
Re:11 million? (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you think the judge should be allowed to just ignore the law that says, if a party refuses to defend itself in a lawsuit, they get a judgment against them? Do you think judges should just do what they want even if the law says differently?
If that is a part of the law, it should be changed so the judge has to at least check to see if there's some minimal evidence against the defendant. I mean, if 100 people filed 100 made-up lawsuits against someone, shouldn't the judge(s) at least check to make sure if there's at least some basic evidence before forcing an innocent party to respond or be considered guilty by default if they don't respond to all of them?
Re:Default judgements (Score:2, Informative)
I can sue anyone in the country right now and they will be forced to either come to my local courthouse (even if they live in another state) or pay to send a lawyer to court.
Incorrect. If the forum state does not have personal jurisdiction over the Defendant, the Defendant does not need to appear.
Re:Judge's career (Score:4, Informative)
IANAL, but what will probably happen is this: the $11 million will be set aside regarding this particular defendant, but since they never responded to the suit they'll pay the court costs and some few hundred dollars fine. Then the lawyer for the plaintiff will pay a small fine for filing an improper suit and will file a motion to replace the defendant with the proper defendant. Then the proper defendant will actually show up to court, and a civil trial will actually get under way. That is, if the court doesn't dismiss the case with prejudice for the lawyer being this sloppy in the first place.
In Illinois and Missouri, it is necessary to argue by motion or oral argument at the court that improper defendants be dismissed and proper parties be named. A civil court isn't a criminal court. If you've been summoned to court as a defendant and don't show up, many judges will automatically give the plaintiff default judgement against the defendant. I imagine most other US states have similar rules of the court. In Illinois, a default judgement can be set aside if a successful motion is filed within 30 days of the judgement.
AAMOF, if you fail to appear for a criminal proceeding as a defendant, you may get a bench warrant for your immediate arrest and even be charged (and maybe later found guilty) of an additional crime (FTA for criminal hearings and trials being an actual crime). I've seen judges just let people slide or just pay a small fine if they appear after a first FTA if the initial crime was a minor matter.
e-zine article on FTA [ezinearticles.com]
Illinois Pro Bono page on civil actions [illinoisprobono.org]
I keep referring to Illinois because that's where I live and so it's the jurisdiction that most interests me and is most relevant to me. Your jurisdiction may be different. The jurisdiction for the lawsuit in question is definitely different.
Consult a lawyer if you really need legal advice, but the company that got incorrectly served should be able to get out of the big judgment easily enough.
Re:What TheDirt.com should do (Score:2, Informative)
"Except you don't get court summons delivered by email, facebook, or Twitter. You get them via certified letter, in person, or some other means that is easy to audit."
Not necessarily. It can come by regular mail.
Been there, done that.
A/C
Re:What TheDirt.com should do (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on the jurisdiction. In Washington, if by mail it has to be both by certified letter and first class mail. (at least for what I had to assist filing)
Re:flaw (Score:3, Informative)
Turn it around - someone with a ligitimate complaint would be unable to proceed with it if the defendant stuck his fingers in his ears and went "LA LA LA I can't HEAR YOU"... Default judgments mean that you can't just run away from a suit, you have to face it and deal with it.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation [wikipedia.org]
Re:WHOIS information (Score:1, Informative)
IANAL, but I believe this is common legal information that anyone could look up. Verify your own facts and don't rely on anything I state below:
The article does not mention, but I am very curious to know how the wrong website was served. If you sue a living person you have to serve process in person in most states. The process server literally has to hand the citation directly to the person being sued. In some states you can still serve process by certified mail, but the signature better be the person being sued or else it is improper service of process and a judgment can be thrown out. If a business is sued then all that is required is to serve the registered agent, but even then you have to serve the registered agent (such as for a corporation) in person or by certified mail (receipt signed by the registered agent).
There are other ways to serve process. For example, in Texas you can serve process by publication if you cannot locate the defendent, but there is a cavaet: If the person finds out that a judgment was entered against them by default after service by publication and failure to appear, the defendent has a window of time to call for a re-trail. But, in this case the plaintiff must cover all of the defendent's legal expenses.
To sum it up, suing the wrong person or serving process incorrectly can be a costly mistake. To then try to collect on a judgment when the plaintiff knew they sued the wrong person could give the defendent an opportunity to sue for fraud, for which the court can award TRIPLE damages. Most likely, the plaintiff will send the wrong defendent an apology and not attempt to collect.
Re:"Justice" (Score:3, Informative)
Reimbursement for attorney's fees to the defendant does not prevent the lawyer from getting paid. In fact, the availability of such reimbursement increases, all other things being equal, the amoun the lawyer can charge (and get paid) for services in such a case, and therefore supports the idea of "the lawyers get paid", so even if your cynical view was completely accurate, it would not be a basis for arguing against the point at issue.
As I recall, a fairly common standard for the award of attorney's fees against a plaintiff is approximately that the complaint filed was such that, with reasonable diligence, the plaintiff would have known the essential facts alleged necessary to support the defendant's liability were unsupported by the evidence. That would seem to apply, in spades, in this case.
Re:Default judgements (Score:5, Informative)
These default judgments for absurd amounts of money just show how broken our legal system is. If somebody doesn't show up to a court house for a lawsuit in the millions of dollars, it's probably because they weren't properly notified.
Improper notification is an allowable defense to get the judgment overturned. Normally before a judge renders a summary judgment, they ask whether the defendant was notified. Now if the plaintiff lies then they are in more trouble than an overturned verdict. Assuming that TheDirt.com was not properly notified, then a judge will hear the case again.
Re:"Justice" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This week for me! (Score:1, Informative)
It's possible this was done by a low-end paralegal, to whom most of this work has slowly shifted in recent years. These guys are of varying capability, paid ~35K per year, with a certificate from paralegal school or some such. Or fresh college grads.
Attorneys don't have the time to verify, and assume the paralegal did their job and ship off these initial threat / settlement letters before initiating lawsuit.
Also, many of these lawyers are in their 40-50's and don't know jack about internet or Whois, especially libel lawyers who are more in touch with the publishing world than the blog world. Lawyers with technical skill who know what "whois" is tend to gravitate towards the more lucrative patent fields.
These elderly libel lawyers probably trust their 20 something "hip" paralegals with the "internet" stuff. And probably a good idea since the paralegal would actually know more than the old guy.
Re:Default judgements (Score:3, Informative)
So your anecdote about your neighbors junk mail is irrelevant to this discussion.
thedirt.com got served in error, ignored the papers, and this is what happens when you ignore court papers. This is fixed easily enough by showing up to court now and correcting the error.
The court system works just fine, thedirt.com sitting on their ass and not correcting the error in the beginning is the problem. They would have been able to recover whatever it cost them to respond from the plaintiff that erroneously served them.