Grijalva and Committee for Safety of Foreign Exchange Students (CSFES), a website which reports fraud and abuse committed against foreign exchange students, filed a lawsuit against ASSE International, Inc. (ASSE); Helga Brandt; and Josef Motycka, claiming defamation and unfair business practices for allegedly sending emails critical of CSFES to the parents of foreign exchange students.

Plantiffs alleged in their complaint that "ASSE . . . set out to malign CSFES  and . . . Grijalva with an intentional and false campaign directed to the parents of students. . . ." Opinion at 4. Grijalva asserted that in its email campaign againts her, ASSE falsely accused her of the following:

• "conducting her website and agency with a 'commercial purpose'"
• "'manipulating facts'"
• "'not portraying a clear picture'"
• "'isn't interested in the welfare of the students'"
• "'threatening' to send information on exchange agencies but 'if got [sic] a contribution doesn't send anything,'"
• "'represent[ing] herself as a federal agent,'"
• "'performs background checks,'"
• "[b]eing a 'liar,'" and
• "[m]aking 'false statements'[.]'"

Id. 

ASSE and Brandt filed an anti-SLAPP motion seeking to dismiss the complaint. In the motion, ASSE and Brandt claimed that plaintiffs' lawsuit was filed in retaliation for ASSE's participating in a separate lawsuit against Grijalva then pending in North Carolina. The trial judge granted defendants' motion. Plaintiffs appealed. The appeals court reversed the trial judge's ruling and remanded the case to San Diego Superior Court. 

The grounds for reversal was that ASSE's and Brandt's allegations that plaintiffs filed the lawsuit a "mere one month" after ASSE intervened in the North Carolina suit was not sufficient to demonstrate that plaintiffs' claims arose from ASSE's participation in the suit.  The court further found that ASSE's and Brandt's claim that the lawsuit was filed in retaliation for ASSE's participation in the North Carolina suit was irrelevant to application of the anti-SLAPP statute. The court held that a complaint filed with a retaliatory motive was not barred by the anti-SLAPP statute, so long as the claims in the complaint arose from statements or conduct independent of ASSE's participation in the North Carolina litigation.  

In 1999, Brett Bezzant, then-owner of the American Fork Citizen New Utah!, a local newspaper, published a political advertisement prepared and paid for by Bill Jacob, which claimed that an American Fork City ordinance barred two men from running for City Council, despite a legal opinion from the city's attorneys that said otherwise. Jacob's name was not on the flier. After the two candidates complained to Bezzant, he paid for and published an "Urgent Election Notice" that apologized to the two men, named Jacob as the author of the political advertisement, and called it a "classic example of negative campaigning." Bezzant distributed the notice by mail to American Fork residents and posted it on the newspaper's website.

Jacob filed a lawsuit against Bezzant, claiming the notice contained defamatory language and portrayed him in a false light. Bezzant filed a counterclaim under Utah's Citizen Participation in Government Act, also known as the Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) Act.  The trial court dismissed Jacob's defamation claims and granted Bezzant attorney's fees under the Anti-SLAPP Act and a federal civil rights statute (42 U.S.C. § 1988(b)).

On appeal, the Utah Supreme Court held in a June 2009 opinion that dismissal of Jacob's defamation suit and awarding of attorney's fees was inappropriate under the Anti-SLAPP Act because Bezzant's election notice was not "participati[on] in the process of government."  Utah Code Ann. § 78B-6-1403(1) (2008).  However, the Utah Supreme Court upheld the trial court's dismissal of the defamation suit as lacking legal merit and the award of partial attorney's fees under the civil rights statute.  The court declined to address the issue, raised by Jacobs for the first time on appeal, of whether Utah's Anti-SLAPP Act is unconstitutional under the Utah Constitution.

New Jersey police Chief Charles "Ken" Zisahas filed suit against an elementary school teacher in New Jersey state court, asserting that she made defamatory comments about him on a NJ.com, a local news website and forum.  According to news reports, the suit claims Deborah Labrosse stated that Zisa runs his police department by "Gestapo rules" and that she made other comments allegedly intended to damage Zisa's reputation. Labrosse has told the press that she thinks Zisa filed the suit to intimidate her and stifle her criticism.

Labrosse filed a counterclaim against Zisa, asserting that he violated her First Amendment right to free speech and tampered with her forum posts, according to news reports. In her counterclaim, Labrosse also asserts Zisa subjected her to improper surveillance. 

According to news reports, Labrosse filed motions for dismissal and summary judgment on April 17, 2009, but the judge said he lacked enough information to grant the motions so early on in the litigation. 

Jeffrey Joyner, a California soccer coach, sued Jerry Lazzareschi, the operator of the forum Soccertalk.com, and his domain registrar Domains by Proxy, Inc., after a number of allegedly false and defamatory statements about Joyner appeared on Lazzareschi's forum site.  

Joyner coached two soccer teams for teenage girls, and in 2004 he merged the teams causing what a California appeals court called "parental unrest and heated discussion in the girls' soccer community."  The controversy over the team merger spilled onto the Internet and generated over 2000 posts on Sockertalk.com.  According to court documents, Joyner alleged that some of these posts falsely accused him of "financial improprieties," described him as "a cheater and a thief," and accused him of incompetence and "coach[ing] his . . . team . . . into the ground," among other things.  The statements were largely posted by unregistered users of the forum, but Joyner also alleged that Lazzareschi created forum thread titles and "republished the[] statements" on other websites "to lure viewers to [his] WEBSITE." 

Joyner filed suit against Lazzareschi and Soccertalk.com for defamation, negligence, negligent training/supervision, interference with contractual relations, interference with prospective economic advantage, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.  Joyner's complaint also contained a cause of action for fraud against Domains by Proxy for permitting Lazzareschi to obtain and register his domain name anonymously.  

The defendants moved to strike the complaint under California's anti-SLAPP law (Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16), and the trial court granted the motion.  On appeal, the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, reversed, finding that the statements did not relate to a matter of public interest within the protection of the anti-SLAPP law.  After the case returned to the trial court, Lazzareschi moved for summary judgment, and the trial court granted the motion and dismissed the case against him, ruling that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("Section 230") barred Joyner's claims based on third-party content.  Joyner appealed.

The California Court of Appeal affirmed, holding that Section 230 gave Lazzareschi immunity for publishing the comments of his forum users.  The court concluded that Lazzareschi, as a website operator, qualified as the provider of an "interactive computer service" and that all of Joyner's claims treated him as a "publisher or speaker" of third-party content.  The court also ruled that Joyner's claim that Lazzareschi republished the defamatory content on other websites in order to "advertise" his forum was irrelevant because "the view that actively selected and republished information is no longer 'information provided by another information content provider' under section 230(c)(1) is groundless." 

The court also rejected Joyner's argument that, under the Ninth Circuit's opinion in Roommates.com, Lazzareschi lost his immunity by creating forum thread titles and deleting positive posts.  The court indicated that starting threads on topics of interest "is not by itself defamatory" because "positive messages about plaintiff or messages defending him could be and were posted under [the threads]."  The court also found that Joyner produced no evidence that Lazzareschi ever deleted positive messages about him. The court explained that, unlike in the Roommates.com scenario, no evidence -- let alone 'direct and palpable' evidence -- connected defendant to a posting or filtering process that was discriminatory or defamatory against plaintiff."

The case still appears to be pending against Domains by Proxy in the trial court. 

UPDATE: On 08/22/2008, the court granted Domains by Proxy Inc's motion for summary judgement. It appears that the court awarded fees to Domains by Proxy, since Domains submitted a sumary of its court costs on 09/03/2008 and scheduled an examination of judgment debtor on 09/26/2008.

First Cash Financial Services, a Texas-based company operating a chain of pawn shops and cash checking services, obtained a subpoena from a California state court requiring Yahoo to provide identifying information for an individual who posted anonymous comments to Fast Cash's Yahoo! Finance message board.  Fast Cash sought the information in order to identify the John Doe defendant in a breach of contract action it had previously filed in Texas state court.  (For details, see the related database entry, First Cash Financial Services v. Doe.)  The anonymous poster intervened and filed a special motion to strike the action (including the subpoena) under California's anti-SLAPP statute.  According to EFF, the California court denied the motion to strike, presumably allowing the subpoena to be enforced.

On May 22, 2002, Diane Fineran and The Traditional Cat Association (TTCA), filed a lawsuit against Laura Gilbreath, Lee Zimmerman, Randi Briggs, John Herold, Diane Dunaway, and Traditional Cat Association (TCA), claiming unfair competition, defamation, and conversion. 

The individuals in this case are all cat enthusiasts who held leadership positions in defendant organization TCA.  In 1998, a dispute led Fineran to leave TCA and found her own organization, TTCA.  Fineran then commenced a series of lawsuits against the defendants related to the dispute and her departure.  In response to these lawsuits, in 1998 defendant Herold created a website named "The Diane Fineran Response Web Site," which purported to report the status of this litigation. 

On May 22, 2002, Fineran filed suit again, claiming that Herold's website was defamatory, and also claiming unfair competition and conversion.  According to her complaint, Herold's website falsely stated that a jury had found Fineran guilty of defamation, and falsely stated that she had admitted that she did not found TCA.  According to the complaint, the website also stated that Fineran uses "intimidation" tactics, is a "dictator," and engages in "misrepresentations," "half truths" and "whole cloth invention."

The defendants moved to strike the complaint under California's anti-SLAPP statute.  The Superior Court denied the motion, finding that a statute of limitations defense will not support relief under the anti-SLAPP statute.  The California Court of Appeals for the Fourth District, Division One reversed the lower court and dismissed the defamation claim.  The court rejected the plaintiffs' argument that the statute of limitations renewed continuously as long as the website was running, applying California's single-publication rule to websites.  The appellate court found that the defendants had not unambiguously challenged the unfair competition claim in their motion to strike, so this claim remained intact.

In January, 2005, the parties settled.  Plaintiffs Fineran and TTCA agreed to pay $24,647.28 in attorney's fees and costs to the defendants.  Defendant organization TCA, now known as Traditional and Classic Cat International, agreed to change their numbering system for registering cats and kittens to be dissimilar from TTCA.  "The Diane Fineran Response Web Site" is no longer available.

The Atlanta Humane Society (AHS) and its director, Bill Garrett, sued Kathi Mills for allegedly defamatory statements made on an Internet bulletin board.  In 2001, an Atlanta television station aired a "Whistleblower 2" series investigating AHS, which criticized AHS's management of county animal control, particularly its euthanasia policies, its failure to place animals for adoption, and its failure to assist in investigating animal cruelty cases.  Garrett was interviewed for the series.  In response to the television series, Mills, an animal rights advocate and publisher of the Kitty Village website, posted critical statements about Garrett and AHS on a Yahoo! group chat room for people in the local rescue community.

After AHS and Garrett filed suit, Mills moved to strike the complaint under Georgia's anti-SLAPP statute and also moved for summary judgment.  The trial court denied the motion to strike, granted summary judgment against AHS, and denied summary judgment against Garrett.  On appeal, the Court of Appeal of Georgia reversed the trial court, holding that it should have granted Mills' anti-SLAPP motion because it found that Mills had been commenting on a matter of public concern.  The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed and remanded for further consideration of whether the plaintiffs' complaint was falsely verified. 

On remand, the Court of Appeals of Georgia put aside the anti-SLAPP issue and ruled that the trial court had properly granted summary judgment against AHS because it was a governmental entity unable to sue for defamation.  It also ruled that the trial court should have granted summary judgment against Garrett because he was a limited-purpose public figure and had not produced evidence of actual malice.  In particular, the court explained that Mills was entitled to rely on the content of news reports:

Private citizens are not required to investigate the investigators to ensure that programs aired by a major television station are accurate and correct before making comments based on those programs, and failure to do so does not amount to malice in a constitutional sense.

Atlanta Humane Soc'y v. Mills, 618 S.E.2d 18, 26 (Ga. Ct. App. 2005). The appellate court therefore reversed the trial court insofar as it had denied summary judgment against Garrett and dismissed the case in its entirety. 

In July 2008, Union Square Partnership (USP), the nonprofit business improvement district for New York's Union Square neighborhood, sued Savitri Durkee for copyright infringement in New York federal court after she created a website that parodied the official USP website.  (Durkee is an activist who wants to preserve Union Square as a public gathering place and prevent it from being commercialized.)  In August 2008, USP also filed an administrative complaint with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), seeking to have the parody site's domain names (www.unionsquarepartnership.com and www.unionsquarepartnership.org) transferred to it.

Durkee failed to respond to the WIPO proceeding in a timely manner, and on October 22, 2008, the WIPO arbitration panel ordered that her site's domain names be transferred to USP.  On November 18, Durkee filed an answer and counterclaims in the federal court action, seeking a declaration that her domain names did not infringe USP's trademark or constitute cybersquatting.  Durkee also claimed that fair use excused any copyright infringement and that USP's lawsuit violated New York's anti-SLAPP laws.

The parties settled in January 2009.  Durkee agreed to transfer the domain names www.unionsquarepartnership.org and www.unionsquarepartnership.com to USP and to include a disclaimer on her site stating that the site is not affiliated with USP.   The parties also set out certain domain names that Durkee could not attempt to register or use.  Durkee now operates her new website at www.unionsquarepartnershipsucks.org.