Subpoenas

LoHud.com, an online news site operated by The Journal News that focuses on New York's Lower Hudson Valley, reported on Friday that a Westchester County judge has ruled that it must turn over the names of three pseudonymous posters to former House Representative Richard Ottinger and his wife, June Ottinger. According to the report, Ottinger and his wife subpoenaed The Journal News asking for identifying information for posters to the site's Westchester and Mamaroneck community forums going by the psuedonyms "SAVE10543," "hadenough," and "aoxomoxoa." The posters allegedly made statements accusing the Ottingers of unsavory conduct in the course of a neighborhood dispute over their construction of a house in the Orienta, NY waterfront community. 

The Journal News moved to quash the subpoena,  but the court ruled that the newspaper had to turn over the requested information.  Although the details are still sketchy, the court appears to have applied the standard for protecting the First Amendment right to anonymous speech set forth in Dendrite v. Doe, 775 A.2d 756 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2001). We are trying to get the underlying court documents, and we'll update this post and our database entry, Ottinger v. The Journal News, when we have more information.    read more »

A federal magistrate judge in New Hampshire has sanctioned Clifford Shoemaker, a Virginia attorney, for abusing the legal process by issuing a subpoena to Kathleen Seidel. Seidel publishes the blog Neurodiversity, where she writes about autism issues. In February 2008, she wrote about a lawsuit against various vaccine manufacturers, Sykes v. Bayer, in which the plaintiffs Lisa and Seth Sykes sought to link exposure to mercury to their son's autism. (For more on her statements about the lawsuit, see my previous post: Blogger Kathleen Seidel Fights Subpoena Seeking Information About Vaccine Litigation.)   read more »

Eclipse Aviation, a manufacturer of "affordable" jets, recently sent a subpoena to Google seeking to uncover the identities of 28 users who posted on Eclipse Aviation Critic NG, a blog that Google hosts on its Blogger service.

The subpoena, which includes a colorful list of pseudonyms such as "Turn-and-Burn," "Bill E. Goat," and "Niner Zulu," does not state why the information is necessary. AINonline, an aviation news site, gives us a bit more insight:   read more »

A federal magistrate judge in New Hampshire has quashed the subpoena issued to Kathleen Seidel. Seidel publishes the blog Neurodiversity, where she writes about autism issues. In February 2008, she wrote about a lawsuit against various vaccine manufacturers, Sykes v. Bayer, in which the plaintiffs Lisa and Seth Sykes seek to link exposure to mercury to their son's autism. (For more on her statements about the lawsuit, see my previous post: Blogger Kathleen Seidel Fights Subpoena Seeking Information About Vaccine Litigation.)

On March 24, 2008, Clifford Shoemaker, an attorney for the Sykes, served Seidel with a subpoena in connection with the Sykes v. Bayer lawsuit. The subpoena demanded that Seidel appear for a deposition on April 30, 2008, and that she produce a shockingly broad collection of information, including her bank statements, tax returns, communications with religious organizations, and personal correspondence with other bloggers.

On April 21, magistrate judge Muirhead granted Seidel's well argued motion to quash the subpoena. In so doing, the judge also ordered Shoemaker   read more »

We've been following the subpoena issued to Kathleen Seidel in the Citizen Media Law Project's Legal Threats Database, but thought it was time to throw our support behind Seidel and post about this egregious attempt to chill online speech.

Seidel publishes the blog Neurodiversity, where she writes about autism issues. In February 2008, she wrote about a lawsuit against various vaccine manufacturers, Sykes v. Bayer, in which the plaintiffs, Lisa and Seth Sykes, seek to link exposure to mercury to their son's autism.

Seidel's post mainly focused on developments in the lawsuit, but some of her language was critical of the Sykes and their case. For example, she indicated that the Sykes have "aggressively promoted the overwhelmingly discredited scientific hypothesis that autism is a consequence of mercury poisoning" and called their lawsuit "a hydra-headed quest for revenge, for compensation, and for judicial validation of autism causation theories roundly rejected by the greater scientific community, by numerous courts, and by a great number of individuals and families whose interests they purport to represent."

Apparently as a result of this post, the Sykes served her with a subpoena in connection with the Sykes v. Bayer lawsuit. The subpoena demands that Seidel appear for a deposition on April 30, 2008 and that she produce a breathtaking array of documents. Seidel summarizes the subpoena's demands as follows:   read more »

This is the third in a series of posts calling attention to some of the topics covered in the Citizen Media Legal Guide we published in January. As we roll out new sections of the guide each month, we will highlight some of the more important topics in blog posts.

In the first two posts we discussed choosing a business form for your online activities and the issues associated with selecting a platform for online speech. In this post we discuss the legal and practical issues you should consider if you wish to engage in anonymous speech online.

Putting aside the possible legal challenges to anonymity for the time being, there are some practical considerations that you should think about before deciding to carry out your online publishing activities anonymously or pseudonymously.   read more »