[ News Article ]
Pittsburgh Attorney's Attempt To Shut Down Web Site Fails
By Gina Passarella
April 10, 2007
The Legal Intelligencer
Ladies, don't fret. Thanks to a court ruling last week, dirt on potential suitors will still be available online, at least for now.
An Allegheny County Common Pleas judge ruled the court did not have jurisdiction over a Pittsburgh attorney's defamation claims against the Miami-based Web site www.DontDateHimGirl.com.
Pittsburgh criminal defense attorney Todd J. Hollis sued Tasha C. Joseph individually and as the owner and operator of www.DontDateHimGirl.com, a Web site that allows women to post pictures and profiles of men who have allegedly cheated or made some other serious dating faux pas. The site gives the subject of the complaint a chance to respond.
Hollis said there were several false postings that mentioned him by name. Some of the comments listed on those various postings included that he had multiple children, had herpes and transmitted a sexually transmitted disease to another person, was either gay or bisexual, wears dirty clothes and complains about paying child support for his children, according to the complaint.
Joseph refused to remove the comments from the Web site after Hollis informed her that they were false, according to the complaint.
Hollis filed the case in Allegheny County, where it was handled by Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr.
Joseph submitted preliminary objections to Hollis' complaint on both jurisdictional grounds as well as issues regarding freedom of speech under the Communications Decency Act.
Her attorney, Robert L. Byer of Duane Morris, said he focused on both topics in his brief.
"The judge made it clear that he wanted to try to rule on jurisdiction without considering the application of the Communications Decency Act," Byer said.
Wettick ruled in Hollis v. Joseph that Pennsylvania's Long-Arm Act did not bring the Web site under the commonwealth's jurisdiction, relying on a 2002 Superior Court decision in Efford v. Jockey Club.
In Efford, the court found that a Web site that allowed visitors simply to register was not directed to any particular state and was not enough to establish general jurisdiction.
"In the present case, the Joseph defendants do not perform a significant amount of commercial business over the Internet," Wettick said. "Thus, the Web site is insufficient to establish general personal jurisdiction 'because it [is] simply general advertising with the added convenience of an online registry.'"
He sustained Joseph's preliminary objections raising a lack of personal jurisdiction.
John R. Orie Jr. of Orie & Zivic in Pittsburgh represented Hollis in the case. He was out of the office and unavailable for comment by the time of publication.
Byer said he hasn't heard of any planned appeals, but there are unresolved claims from a defendant who allegedly made posts on Hollis' profile. Byer does not represent that defendant.
He said she initiated a counterclaim against Hollis for abuse of process because he had the sheriff serve her at her work and allegedly arranged for camera crews to be there at the same time. Hollis filed a preliminary objection to the counterclaim, but it has not been resolved yet, Byer said. He said that might hold up any immediate appeal of Wettick's ruling.
While some judges choose to offer their opinion on matters made moot by their ruling, Byer said Wettick held off on examining the issues presented by the Communications Decency Act.
Robert C. Clothier, a First Amendment attorney at Fox Rothschild (who has represented The Legal in certain matters) said when the case was filed that Hollis' chances for success in the case really hinged on whether Joseph was classified as an interactive computer service provider or a publisher.
Clothier said the Communications Decency Act, as it was amended in 1996, has been pretty clear as far as the protections for those who simply provide a conduit for others to post information on the Internet.
"The Communications Decency Act really provides fairly substantial protections," Clothier said. "The more the Web site operator does to put content on or to edit content, the greater the risk."
Byer said he based his defense on U.S. Code Title 47, Section 230(c)1, which states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
That section also states that no state law may interfere with the enforcement of the section.
Clothier said the law is still unclear as to whether the courts can force the operator to divulge the identities of the anonymous posters, assuming the site has knowledge of the posters' identities.
There were two known posters named as defendants in the case and five unknown defendants.
This article originally appeared in The Legal Intelligencer and is republished here with permission from law.com.