Murrieta man sues local blog site

By: JOHN HALL - Staff Writer
Experts say such a defamation lawsuit is an uphill battle for variety of reasons | Thursday, March 6, 2008 11:49 PM PST ∞

MURRIETA ---- Saying that comments posted on a local blog have defamed him, a Murrieta man filed a civil lawsuit Thursday in what his attorney calls "a novel legal issue."

Roy Holmgren claims in his lawsuit that statements made about him on murrietaopinion.blogspot.com have exposed him to "hatred, ridicule, contempt and disgrace."

Holmgren is suing the operator of the blog as well as those who have posted the comments about him.

But, so far, neither he nor his attorney, Richard Ackerman, know who specifically they are suing.

"... the defendants hide behind the veil of the Internet to cover up their nefarious and tortious activities," the lawsuit states.

Ackerman said Thursday that he has tried to find out who runs the blog from the host of the site, blogspot.com, but they have yet to cooperate.

"Whoever they are, they don't have the right to publish defamatory material," Ackerman said.

The lawsuit lists what it calls "false statements or general assertions" about Holmgren made on the blog.

According to the suit, bloggers said he was a stalker, that he is married to an illegal alien, that he has committed crimes that destroyed property, illegally gained credit report information, vandalized a blogger's sport utility vehicle, and that he begs for money on the side of the road.

One blogger called Holmgren "a danger to this community" and wrote that he has mental and emotional problems he can't control, according to the lawsuit.

No one associated with the Murrieta Opinion blog could be found or reached for comment for this article.

Holmgren is seeking monetary damages along with a court injunction forcing the blog site to remove any information about him deemed to be false.

Two legal experts said Thursday they believe Holmgren has an uphill battle in his lawsuit against the operator of the blog site. It might be a little easier to go after the people who wrote the comments, but even that will be difficult, they said.

Los Angeles-based corporate and business attorney Douglas Mirell said that because blogs are relatively new, case law surrounding what he calls the "phenomenon" of blogs is still developing.

Mirell, president of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, has expertise in First Amendment litigation, entertainment lawsuits and new media issues.

"This boils down to, for the most part, being an issue of old wine in new bottles," Mirell said.

"The law of defamation hasn't changed," he said. The way people can be defamed has, however.

It is increasingly possible to be defamed on a blog than the more traditional way on the pages of a newspaper, Mirell said.

Those who choose to say things about someone else on a blog need to be careful, he warns.

"People who think they can blog anonymously are wrong," Mirell said.

There is also the issue, once someone is defamed on the Internet, of how to repair the damage that was done because it is so far-reaching and often impossible to have postings retracted.

"A person may never be able to undo the damage that has been done," Mirell said.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition and a graduate of Harvard Law School, said there is a section of the Federal Communications Decency Act that provides protection and "very broad immunity" to those who operate blogs or similar sites.

While the authors of the blog comments can have liability, Scheer said they also have some strong defenses.

"One defense can be that the things they wrote were not to be taken as facts, but pure opinion," Scheer said.

But the hard part is being able to find who made the comments in question, he said. The operator of the blog site may not even know who a specific comment came from, Scheer said.

"You have to go through some big hoops" to get that sort of information, especially in California, Scheer said.

"You have to show you have a case and that the case is pretty strong ... and that you can't get the relief you are entitled to without this information," he said.

It is possible to track someone who posts on a blog site through what is called an Internet Protocol address, which is a unique online fingerprint.

However, Scheer said, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment to the Constitution protects a person's right to anonymous speech. But he quickly added that right of protection of free speech originated back in the days of the country's Founding Fathers.

"People think being anonymous gives them the freedom to say irresponsible things," Scheer said.

"Freedom of speech is the freedom to say what you are willing to own up to," he added.

Contact staff writer John Hall at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2628, or jhall@californian.com.

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