Judge To Order Lohud To Name Posters
Westchester County Judge Rory Bellantoni will issue an order to LoHud.com to release information to identify "SAVE10543," "hadenough," and "aoxomoxoa" for comments they made about former Rep. Richard Ottinger and his wife, June Ottinger.
The couple has been embroiled in a legal dispute with several of their Mamaroneck neighbors over construction of a house in the Orienta waterfront community. The couple claim the writers falsely accused them of filing a fraudulent document and bribing public officials so they could build the home.
The couple argued that they can't bring a defamation suit against the three without their identities, and subpoenaed the newspaper. Ottinger represented the 20th Congressional District for 10 years before retiring in 1984, while his wife is a former village trustee and former chairwoman of the village's Harbor and Coastal Zone Management Commission.
"The anonymous blogger statements are harmful enough when viewed in isolation," the couple said in legal papers filed by their lawyer, Russell Ippolitio. "Taken together, however, they create a mosaic by which the reading public will see these anonymous bloggers' statements as true facts."
The Journal News unsuccessfully tried to quash the subpoena. The decision is the first time the newspaper has been ordered to release identifying information about people who post comments under pseudonyms on its Internet site.
"We'll comply with the order to the extent we have identifying information," Community Conversation/Editorial Page Editor Herb Pinder said yesterday.
Mark Fowler, an attorney for The Journal News, said the newspaper fought to protect the movie posters identities, noting that other Web sites routinely hand over registration information on their anonymous posters when subpoenaed.
"The newspaper went the extra mile - the extra 10 miles - to protect the right of anonymous speech here," he said.
Fowler said Bellantoni applied a legal standard for identifying anonymous posters that was set in 2001 by a New Jersey appellate court. In that case, a corporation had to identify the exact statements it thought were defamatory so the court could balance the First Amendment right of anonymous free speech against the strength of the libel case.
The corporation also had to tell the writers that they were the subject of a subpoena, by posting a notice on the message board where the statements appeared, so they could choose to fight the exposure.
The Ottingers posted a notice on LoHud.com's Mamaroneck and Westchester forums on May 30, listing the screen names of the three writers and inviting anyone who did not want their identities disclosed to appear, or have legal representatives appear, before Bellantoni on Wednesday. No one did.
Even though Bellantoni allowed the subpoena to go forward, Fowler said, the standard the judge set may reinforce the right to speak anonymously on the Internet by making the plaintiffs prove their case.
June 27, 2008
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