A Tale of Two Spokeos
The Supreme Court provided important guidance about Article III standing, especially what constitutes an injury sufficient to satisfy Article III, in the Spokeo v. Robins ruling from May 2016. At the time, it was unclear whether the ruling was more…
Want An Enforceable Online Contract? Don’t Use A Footer Link Called “Reference”–Zajac v. Walker
This lawsuit involves the purchase of items I don’t understand. Let’s just call them “thingies.” The buyer Zajac needed thingies with an appropriate rating. It bought the thingies from a distributor, Walker, then realized the thingies didn’t have the appropriate…
Priceline Avoids Liability For Resort Fees Due To Its Onsite Disclosures–Singer v. Priceline
This is a lawsuit alleging that Priceline improperly failed to disclose “resort fees” in connection with its Name Your Own Price service. The service allowed consumers to name a price (bid a dollar amount) for a hotel in a given…
Blogger Doing Investigative Research Defeats Personal Jurisdiction–FireClean v. Tuohy
FireClean sells an eponymous cleaning oil, FIREClean, “advertised to reduce carbon residue buildup in firearms.” Andrew Tuohy blogs about firearms at the Vuurwapen blog (Dutch for “firearms”). Allegations swirled that FIREClean was just Crisco. Tuohy worked with a University of…
Search Engine Snippets Protected By Section 230–O’Kroley v. Fastcase
The plaintiff’s vanity Google search results included the following snippet: “indecency with a child in Trial Court Cause N . . . Colin O’Kroley v Pringle.” The linked result (to Google Book’s indexing of Texas Advance Sheet–see image) contained a…
Message Board Operator May Be Liable For Moderator’s Content–Enigma v. Bleeping
It’s been a brutal year for Section 230 jurisprudence, and the hits keep coming. In today’s case, the parties ran into a judge who seemed unshakably determined–for reasons I can’t determine–to deny the motion to dismiss. This produces an outlier…
Sideloading Service Defeats Copyright Infringement Claims–BWP v. Polyvore
BWP Media is a celebrity photo agency and a repeat online copyright plaintiff. Polyvore is…well, I don’t really get what they do. They say the site “is a new way to discover and shop for things you love in fashion,…
Was Melania Trump’s Plagiarism Also Copyright Infringement? (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa The first night of the Republican National Convention generated quite a bit of controversy, as Melania Trump was accused of plagiarizing a key passage in her speech from a similar passage in Michelle Obama’s speech…
Internet Troll’s “Political Shenanigans” Are Protected Speech–State v. Hirschman (Guest Blog Post)
By guest blogger Prof. Jane Bambauer, University of Arizona James E. Rodgers College of Law Aaron Hirschman, a self-proclaimed “Internet troll,” posted the following message on Craigslist: Wanna make an easy $20 for voting? (Downtown Bend) Are you interested in…
Twitter May Be Liable for Sending Texts to Recycled Cellphone Numbers–Nunes v. Twitter
This is a TCPA lawsuit against Twitter. The claims are based on text messages sent to phone numbers where the subscriber was a Twitter user and signed up to receive text updates but later the phone number got recycled to…