Judge Balks At Section 230 Protection For Email Forwarding–Samsel v. DeSoto County School District
Today’s blog post covers a very long opinion (70 pages!) involving a school principal effectively firing a successful football coach in football-crazed northern Mississippi. If you want a taste of how much angst that can create, try to wade through…
Constitution Protects Publication of Politicians’ Home Address/Phone Number–Publius v. Boyer-Vine
Doe Publius (nice alias) runs the “The Real Write Winger” blog, hosted by WordPress. He was unhappy about California’s ammunition purchase registry, which publishes “the driver’s license information, residential address and telephone number, and date of birth for anyone who…
New Essay: Understanding the Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016
I’ve posted a new essay, Understanding the Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016, to SSRN. It will be published later this year in the Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review (MTTLR). I trust most of you already know about the…
Section 230 Protects Grindr From Harrassed User’s Claims–Herrick v. Grindr
This is a well-constructed and thoughtful Section 230 ruling. If this case keeps going in the same direction, it has the potential to become a major Section 230 precedent. Herrick claims that ex-boyfriend JC used Grindr to launch a vicious…
Illinois Anti-SLAPP Law Doesn’t Apply To Law Firm Blog Posts–Bock & Hatch v. McGuireWoods
We’re revisiting the important and entirely self-referential issue of defamation liability for blogging about judicial opinions. As I’ve discussed before (this post is perhaps my most heartfelt), blogging about judicial opinions is automatically risky because at least one side has…
Ellen DeGeneres Defeats Lawsuit Over Breast Pun–TiTi Pierce v. Warner Bros
The Ellen Show, featuring Ellen DeGeneres, runs a periodic segment called “What’s Wrong with These Signs? Signs.” In Feb. 2016, the segment included a sign for “Nipple Convalescent Home” followed by the plaintiff’s real estate yard sign, displaying her name…
University Rejection of Students’ Marijuana-Themed T-Shirt Violates First Amendment–Gerlich v. Leath
Iowa State (ISU) officially recognizes a student chapter for NORML, a marijuana advocacy group. All ISU student groups can use ISU trademarks on merchandise if they comply with the “Guidelines for University Trademark Use by Student and Campus Organizations,” as…
First Amendment Protects Google’s De-Indexing of “Pure Spam” Websites–e-ventures v. Google
e-ventures does SEO. Google determined that e-ventures “egregiously” violated its webspam guidelines. As a result, Google de-indexed all of e-ventures’ sites. e-ventures claims Google had bad motivations for the de-indexing decisions. The evidence didn’t support this claim: “e-ventures’ own consultant…
Melania Loses Defamation Lawsuit on Jurisdiction Grounds–Trump v. Tarpley
As we know, our president frequently threatens defamation lawsuits, only occasionally delivers on those threats (remember the guarantee to sue the women who accused him of sexual assault?), sometimes brings SLAPPs when he does actually sue for defamation (remember when…
Trump Can’t Commit Twibel Because He Routinely ‘Deflects Serious Consideration’–Jacobus v. Trump
A confession: I do not follow @RealDonaldTrump at Twitter because I have a strict policy against following trolls. Life is too short. As we all know, Trump regularly engages in many disfavored tweeting practices: ad hominen attacks; self-promotion; dissemination of…