Larue/Tucker v. Brown

Larue/Tucker v. Brown

STATUS: Appellate Court rules that republication of defamatory content restarts clock for filing a lawsuit.

Ariz. App.: Republication on Internet of Alleged Defamation Restarts Clock on Lawsuit Deadline
The Republic
A new appellate court ruling says republication on the Internet of an alleged defamation restarts Arizona's deadline for filing a lawsuit within one year of publication.
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/0a50c90132064822a2c74410129b0e21/AZ--Internet-Defamation

Opinion:
http://www.azcourts.gov/Portals/0/OpinionFiles/Div1/2014/1%20CA-CV13-0138.pdf

Shepard v. The Huffington Post

UPDATE:  A federal appeals court holds that there was no libel.

8th.Cir.: HuffPo Smearing of Candidate Not Libel, Says Court
Lawyers.com
A federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit accusing the Huffington Post of libeling a former U.S. Senate candidate from Minnesota by calling him an arsonist in a story headline.
http://blogs.lawyers.com/2013/06/huffpo-smearing-of-senate-candidate-not-libel-court-says/

Opinion:
http://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/13/06/124036U.pdf


Shepard v. The Huffington Post (June 2012)

STATUS: District Court dismissed the claims with prejudice after finding that it was barred by the statute of limitations.

D.Minn.: HuffPo Cleared for IDing Candidate as Arsonist
Courthouse News
A former Congressional candidate waited too long to sue the Huffington Post over an article that labels him an "arsonist", a federal judge.

Order: Shepard v. The Huffington Post
 https://www.courthousenews.com/2012/11/27/huffpo.pdf

Wolk v. Olson

UPDATE (1/18/2011)

STATUS: Appellant filed Emergency Motion to Seal Portions of Court Filings on Jan 17, 2010

3d Cir. : Lawyer Seeking Order That "Will Compel . . . Volokh to Remove His . . . Blog [Post]"

The Volokh Conspiracy
Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Marc Randazza (Legal Satyricon), Ed Whelan (National Review Online), and I [Eugene Volokh] signed an amicus brief supporting Overlawyered’s position in the appeal. Wolk’s lawyers then filed a response in opposition to the motion for leave to file that amicus brief. That response, filed on Wolk’s behalf by his lawyers, made a false assertion about a post of mine on incest law . . . Wolk has now asked the Third Circuit to retroactively seal parts of his response, apparently including the passages that my blog post criticized. . . If lawyers may compel a blogger to remove publications by retroactively sealing the court documents that those publications quoted, they could equally do the same to other online publishers, including newspapers, magazines, and more.
http://volokh.com/2011/01/17/lawyer-seeking-order-that-will-compel-volokh-to-remove-his-blog-post/

--Appellant's Emergency Motion to Seal Portions of Court Filings: Wolk v. Olson
http://cdn.volokh.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/wolkmotiontoseal.pdf


STATUS: Defendant's Motion to Dismiss granted on Aug 2, 2010

E.D. Pa.: Discovery Rule for Libel Doesn't Apply to Blogs, Says Federal Judge

Legal Intelligencer

Aviation lawyer and seasoned pilot Arthur Alan Wolk ... may have learned something new this week about the blogosphere when a federal judge tossed out his libel suit against the bloggers at Overlawyered.com. As U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin sees it, a blog is legally the same as any other "mass media," meaning that any libel lawsuit filed against a blog in Pennsylvania must make its way to court within one year.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202464319845

-- Decision: Wolk v. Olson: http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/10D0758P.pdf

Steinbach v. Cutler, Civil No. 05-00970 (D.D.C. filed May 16, 2005).
Status: Motion to dismiss denied in part (April 4, 2006); case stayed due to defendant’s bankruptcy.

In May 2004, Captial Hill aide Jessica Culter published a pseudonymous blog (washingtonienne.blogspot.com; no longer existent, but archived at washingtoniennearchive.blogspot.com) detailing her sexual escapades, identifying several men only by their initials.

Cutler's blog became a widespread story after it was publicized on another blog, wonkette.com, and Cutler was fired.

Robert Steinbach filed suit on May 18, 2005, saying that he was one of the men whose initials were given in the blog, but that other identifying information was included. Ruling on a motion to dismiss, the court held that the one-year statute of limitations on in the District of Columbia applied, and that this barred claims for all but one of the blog postings. Steinbach’s effort to add Ann Marie Cox, operator of the Wonkette site, as a defendant was rejected by the court in May 2007.

In May 2007 Cutler filed for bankruptcy, which is pending. See In re: Jessica Cutler, No. 07-31459-5 (Bankr. N.D. N.Y. filed May 30, 2007). Steinbach then filed a claim with the bankruptcy court. He also filed a separate suit in Arkansas over a book based on the blog.

Links and Court Documents:
http://www.nylj.com/nylawyer/news/09/06/061609c.html
http://www.calicocat.com/jessica_cutler_washingtonienne.htm
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/robert-steinbuch/index.php
http://www.privsecblog.com/archives/blogging-steinbuch-v-cutler-when-is-a-personal-blog-considered-publicity.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070516/ap_on_go_ot/sex_blog_lawsuit_1
Complaint at http://files.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/torts/steinbuchvcutler51805cmp.pdf

Atkinson v. McLaughlin, Civil No. 03-91 (D. N.D. settled 2007).
Status: Settled (payment, if any, unknown)

Defendants are former volunteers at God’s Child Project charitable organization’s work in Guatemala who were removed from their positions. They then sent various e-mails and letters alleging that God’s Child Project founder Patrick Atkinson was untrustworthy, and making other allegations; they repeated some of these allegations on a web site they created in 1998, www.guatemalanchildren.org. Atkinson sued in 2003. In 2006, the court dismissed some of the claims in the suit, saying that North Dakota’s two-year statute of limitations on defamation barred most of the claims over what was posted to the site prior to 2001. But the court ruled that issues about postings since 2001 could proceed to trial. On May 15, 2007, the lawsuit was dismissed pursuant to a settlement between the parties.

Links and Court Documents:
Ruling: http://www.ndd.uscourts.gov/dndopinions/html/1-03-cv-91-126.htm
Docket available via https://ecf.ndd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/iqquerymenu.pl?920 (PACER log in required)

Woodhull v. Meinel, No. D-202-CV-200700346 (N.M. Dist. Ct. filed Jan. 11, 2007)
Status: Trial court grant of summary judgment reversed, No. 27,959 (N.M. App. Oct. 24, 2008).

Plaintiff sued over a statement about her posted on defendant’s web site, www.happyhacker.org, on Oct. 14, 2003, alleging that the plaintiff had solicited defendant to hack into the website of the University of Florida student newspaper’s web site and remove a particular article, but that defendant had told plaintiff that doing so would be illegal. Defendant repeated and summarized the same alleged incident in a new post on Jan. 6, 2006, which also included an e-mail from the editor of the newspaper. Plaintiff sued for defamation on Jan. 11, 2007. The trial court granted summary judgment, holding that claims against the first posting was barred by New Mexico’s three-year statute of limitations on defamation claims; that claims from the second posting were also barred by the statute of limitations and the “single publication rule;” and that the suit was barred by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

On appeal, the appeals court reversed the summary judgment as to the second posting, saying that the second posting was sufficiently different so that the “single publication rule” did not apply, and that whether the Communications Decency Act applies is a question of fact for a jury.

Links and Court Documents:
Case information and documents: http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/woodhull-v-meinel