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.

Riad Hamad, founder of the Palestine Children's Welfare Fund (PCWF), filed a defamation suit against the editor and publisher of online publication FrontPage Magazine and several other defendants.  Hamad alleged that a FrontPage article accused Hamad and PCWF of funneling money to terrorists, called Hamad an anti-Semite, and otherwise disparaged him and his organization.

Hamad's original complaint brought approximately 15 legal claims against FrontPage editor David Horowitz and publisher Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC) and asked for $80 million in damages.  Hamad subsequently amended his complaint five times, progressively adding more defendants and legal claims related to the FrontPage article and postings from other sites. These claims included business disparagement, tortious interference, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, negligence, and trademark dilution, among others.

The district court dismissed all of Hamad's claims in three 2006 and 2007 orders. Each claim was dismissed in part because the one-year statute of limitations for defamation actions had run -- Hamad had filed suit in 2006, while the articles were published in 2003 and 2004.  In finding that the statute of limitations had passed, the court applied the single publication rule: it determined that the statue of limitations began running when each article was first published online.

In the three orders, the court also dismissed most of Hamad's claims on alternative grounds, such as lack of personal jurisdiction, failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, and immunity under CDA 230 (with respect to Dotster, Inc., a domain registrar).

In the second of the three orders, the court sanctioned Hamad for repeatedly amending his complaint without permission and for failing to heed a court warning that he would face sanctions if he did not voluntarily dismiss his complaint.  The court ordered him to pay $3,000 in sanctions.

Rather than voluntarily dismissing his suit following the sanctions, Hamad filed for default judgment as to some of the parties.  As a result, the third and final court order dismissed Hamad's remaining claims and ordered him to pay $9,000 in sanctions and more than $50,000 in defendants' fees and costs.  Hamad appealed.

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment, relying primarily on the statute of limitations.  The court also granted defendants' request for fees arising from Hamad's "frivolous" appeal, amounting to more than $30,000.

All told, Hamad was ordered to pay more than $92,000 in sanctions, fees, and costs.

Kimball Bradley, an executive at Reunion Industries, Inc., a publicly traded manufacturing company, sued Herbert Conner, an attorney who previously represented Reunion, over posts Conner allegedly made on a Yahoo! Finance Message Board that Bradley believed defamed him and cast him in a false light.

According to allegations in the complaint and other filings in the case, beginning in August 2005 and continuing through March 2006, Conner, using the alias “pun2dex,” posted numerous messages on the Yahoo! Finance Message Board designated for Reunion. Bradley alleges that Connor posted the following statements:

• On August 10, 2005, pun2dex stated: “As badly as this company is run, there is no shutdown. Richard Conway (of Lc Capital Masters) is in and will be heard. The company has fresh cash and is buying raw material. It will show an operating profit this quarter primarily due to the sales in China by its CPI sub. So long as the bond holders sit still, there could be some upside.”


• On September 1, 2005: “[Reunion] operates with a lockbox. It has no choice but to pay down the Bank debt. The Bondholders are stuck. The Bank takes all the excess cash and leaves only enough to buy material for production. Leadership is lacking, but well paid anyway. Check the identity of majority ownership in relation to the CEO and COO. I do not know how the outside directors sleep. There is a large lawsuit looming if someone should have the energy to file it.”


• On September 20, 2005: “Richard Conway is running Reunion. At last someone with an IQ. He paid hard cash. The banks have been backed off and RUN will report around 20 cents, if it so chooses in October, not from operations, but debt reduction. They can now buy raw steel and make product. The Oneida division will be sold and the cylinder and pressure vessel business will be advanced. Conway will have a $4.00 stock in 18 months.”


• On September 21, 2005: “I have followed the company for a very long time and read the filings. The Board is becoming concerned since Worldcom, in light of Sarbox, and well they should. . . .Kimball Bradley [Plaintiff] is still called COO, C E Bradley is still CEO, but the latter is CEO in paycheck only, and will soon be resigning at the request of Mr. Conway. The only way out for [Reunion] is to do what Conway suggests. Look for him to buy the junk bonds, reduce and control the debt and spur the growth of the profitable divisions. Check LC Capital Masters and Lampe, Conway Fund Group. Run (sic) needs management with a higher IQ than club handicap, with Conway, they get one, even if K. Bradley stays in as COO or even moves to CEO. He will not be calling the shots, except on the Golf Course.”


• On January 1, 2006: “. . .the story is all of failure since the young Bradley took over and will not stop until he is long gone. Until that day, this company and this stock will bounce a little, but is going nowhere.” On January 24, 2006: “If you are intent on paying salaries, you must sell something in the context of this company. Check the President, who is a member of the YPO. That means he was unable to be employed anywhere else, so his father made him president of this company so he could hang out with other young guys who were born on third base and think they hit a triple. This company is going nowhere. The next big thing will be a revolt of the bondholders or the banks. The shareholders will not be happy.”


• On January 25, 2006: “Our leader will never consider stepping aside to allow someone with the drive and intellect to run the company, so long as he has no other job prospects and strong cash needs. Instead of figuring out a way to make the company profitable, he sells assets to keep his check coming in. Go to GHIN.COM in Pennsylvania for Kimball Bradley and you will quickly see where the energy of management is spent, and only a small fraction of the rounds are posted so as not to upset his father. What a waste. The bondholders would be well advised to call his bluff, take control and get someone in who will put the company right. There are only a few assets left to sell, and at Kimball’s age he will need to sell them all just to pay his caddies.”


• On February 10, 2006: “The market cap on RUN is $9,500,000.00. Check what the company was worth when currect [sic] management took over. Even at that number you could not sell the stock and hold the current stock price. What a waste. How do those people sleep at night? Subtract the debt from a reasonable enterprise evaluation and you are below zero. A monkey could do better.”


• On February 22, 2006: “There is a [sic] apparent disconnect between blind optimism and business sense. A manager should get out of his office and go to customers, visit the plants and find new markets, new products and new businesses to bring a company above the profit line. He does not refinance a sea of debt over a five year reign, sell the divisions that earn a profit, add no new ones, shrink the revenue and raise his own salary, while buying a stadium box for his personal use with company funds, leave the office by 3:00 pm every weekday, work no weekends or evenings and pine for a job that makes ‘real money.’ This guy is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, and only on a part time basis at that, while he works on his golfing handicap. We write in the hope that the board will wakeup and find a real CEO. Will recognize that it has a duty to the shareholders and not to an incompetnat [sic] young boy who cannot find a job on his own. . . .At Worldcom each boardmember was required to pay 20% of his personal net worth to the shareholders because they ignored guys like me. It will happen again.”


• On March 9, 2006: “This is just more rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic. K. Bradley probably thinks he did something meriting a huge bonus or perhaps a pay increase, but look at what has happened since he became COO. Straight down for revenues, profits and share price. I agree he probably can’t sleep at night, but he should still put in a full day, although with his ability, the company would do better without him. Still, Dad likes him, so he gets promoted, GO Figure. After all the comments about YPO, I did some research and have concluded that they are circle of jerks or a circle jerk. Our Boy fits right in.”

Based on these statements, Bradley asserted claims under Pennsylvania law for defamation, including defamation per se, and for false light.

In October 2007, Connor removed the case from Pennsylvania state court to federal court and filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that the claims were barred under Pennsylvania's one-year statute of limitations.

On November 29, 2007, the district court agreed and dismissed the lawsuit, rejecting the plaintiff's assertion that the "discovery rule" should have tolled the statute of limitations.