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Last week, the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio, Texas upheld the trial court's dismissal of Clark High School vice-principal Anna Draker's lawsuit against two students and their parents over a fake MySpace profile. Benjamin Schreiber and Ryan Todd allegedly created a fake MySpace page for Draker in 2006, which contained her name, photo, place of employment, and explicit and graphic sexual references implying that she was a lesbian. After learning about the fake profile, Draker contacted MySpace, which promptly removed the page.

Not content to stop there, Draker sued Schreiber, Todd, and their parents, asserting claims for defamation, negligent supervision, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.  On a motion for summary judgment, the Texas trial court dismissed the defamation claim, ruling that the statements appearing in the fake profile were not defamatory as a matter of law because they asserted no facts that could be objectively verified.  The district court ruled on a separate motion that Draker's intentional infliction of emotional distress claim failed because it repackaged the same allegations as the defamation claim. Draker appealed this latter ruling only. 

The tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress may be less familiar to our readers than defamation. There are four elements of an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim:   read more »