AutoAdmit Commenter Asks To Be Dropped From Lawsuit
Date : 09 04 2008 Category : Business
Techdirt
We've covered the bizarre AutoAdmit lawsuit for a while now, but the story just keeps getting more ridiculous. If you don't recall, AutoAdmit was a forum site used by law students to discuss all sorts of things -- some of which were crude and potentially offensive. Two women law students who got upset about how they were portrayed on the site ended up filing a bunch of lawsuits over the site, and some of those who were included in the lawsuit sued back (what do you expect with a bunch of law students?). Honestly, it sounds like the whole thing was blown completely out of proportion. Yes, anonymous idiots on message boards say all sorts of stupid stuff, but it's difficult to see how any of it rose to the level of being legally actionable. In fact, calling attention to it seems much more likely to damage the reputations of the women suing than fleeting immature sophomoric comments from a bunch of idiots. Almost anyone reading those original threads would be hard pressed to take any of the comments seriously. But seeing someone overreact and sue over those comments is something worth noting as a character reference.
Already, one of the defendants sued by the women had the case dropped, and now another one is asking a judge to drop him from the case as well. He admits that he made two crude comments on the site (anonymously, at the time), suggesting that he would like to have sex with one of the women, but that's not against the law. He's also complaining that the womens' lawyers don't seem to want to actually serve the lawsuit on him or explain what's actionable about his comments, noting: Mariner has been trying to proceed with this litigation for months. However in an attempt to execute a strategy so Byzantine that Kafka himself would be dumbfounded, Plaintiffs' counsel has failed to include any allegations that would support a cause of action, refused Mariner's counsel's offer to accept service and refused to simply dismiss Mariner. It appears Plaintiff's plan is to keep a lawsuit pending for as long as possible without actually prosecuting it. While I keep hearing lawyers claim that this AutoAdmit case will be important in establishing "boundaries" for what is and what is not acceptable online forum banter, so far, the case can only be described as a huge mess of angry lawyers suing each other.
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Already, one of the defendants sued by the women had the case dropped, and now another one is asking a judge to drop him from the case as well. He admits that he made two crude comments on the site (anonymously, at the time), suggesting that he would like to have sex with one of the women, but that's not against the law. He's also complaining that the womens' lawyers don't seem to want to actually serve the lawsuit on him or explain what's actionable about his comments, noting: Mariner has been trying to proceed with this litigation for months. However in an attempt to execute a strategy so Byzantine that Kafka himself would be dumbfounded, Plaintiffs' counsel has failed to include any allegations that would support a cause of action, refused Mariner's counsel's offer to accept service and refused to simply dismiss Mariner. It appears Plaintiff's plan is to keep a lawsuit pending for as long as possible without actually prosecuting it. While I keep hearing lawyers claim that this AutoAdmit case will be important in establishing "boundaries" for what is and what is not acceptable online forum banter, so far, the case can only be described as a huge mess of angry lawyers suing each other.
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