Lawyer Sues Yahoo for Message Board Name-Calling

Yardboy writes "Yahoo! News has a story concerning one Stephen Galton who has filed a class-action lawsuit against Yahoo claiming the company 'unfairly protected people who post negative messages on its bulletin boards and falsely advertised that it prevents such abusive messages.' Seems he was subjected to name-calling (such as shyster) when he signed up under the username 'stephengalton' in order to respond to a negative post about an unidentified client. As other users chimed in with negative remarks, Galton filed suit against them (it's not clear from the story for what) and sought their personal information from Yahoo via a subpoena. The lawsuit seeks restitution, a permanent injunction and other forms of relief. What's really interesting is all the message board posts relating to the story have been deleted."

Comments

Information

[panxerox]

That's the trouble with the internet and it's rapid and massive stream of information, some of it your not going to like. Find other ways than litigation to deal with it, as litigation just shines a 10 billion candlepower light on it for all the world to see.

Re:Information

[Brightest Light]

"...still have his right to care about his reputation and not be publicy ridiculized by a bunch of people who has not grown (sometimes mentally) up yet. Your freedom to say things about him stops exactly at the start of his rights to a fair treatment and to not be humiliated."

What the hell are you talking about, exactly? "Rights to not be humiliated"? What nation do you live in that gives its citizens a right to not be humiliated? The same with a "rights to a fair treatment". Here in America, where I'm from and whose laws I'm basing my statements from; you have a right to state your opinion about somebody or something, as long as its not slanderous or libelous, which only a judge in a courtroom can decide.
For example, I will now state my opinion that you are an asscandle. That is a pretty fair statement, I think. That statement is not slander, because it was not spoken; nor is it libelous unless a judge decides that I had knowledge that you are in fact not an asscandle, and I made that statment maliciously.

I know of no "right to care about one's reputation" either, but I will agree with you that people generally expect to be able to defend their reputation. The gentleman in question was at one point called a "shyster". Let's see what dictionary.com has to say about that:

shyster n. Slang: An unethical, unscrupulous practitioner, especially of law.

It is my opinion that filing lawsuits against a message board because some of its members said things you didn't like to hear is the action of a shyster lawyer. Despite what you seem to think, people (at least here in America) do have a right to state their opinion, which generally includes ridiculing people, most especially when their actions are deserving of ridicule. Unless its slanderous or libelous (which only a judge can decide), at which point they're open to legal action.

Your freedom to say things about him stops exactly at the start of his rights to a fair treatment and to not be humiliated.
It is my opinion that you sir, are an asscandle. Possibly a fucktable as well, depending on your reaction to this post.
So sue me.

Protected speech

[BWJones]

Yo Stephen! There is this little thing called the First Amendment to the Constitution that has something to do with another something called free speech. Grow up and learn how to deal with the kids on the playground.

Re:Protected speech

[AK Marc]

Yes, I've heard of them. Yahoo didn't engage in them. So what's your point?

Re:Protected speech

[B747SP]

Google and Yahoo can get away with passing the information on without editing,

Right up until the bit where they set themselves up as editors. Deleting the 'offending' posts, if in fact they have done that, constitutes an edit. Now, they're not intermediaries any more, they're active participants, and they're editors. They put them selves in the sights of some dodgy lawyer as a result.

this is the single biggest problem that I have with all forms of censorship. Even the stuff that your boss installs to block pr0n and warez and b00bies from the office web proxy. Apart from the fact that those tools fundamentally do not work, he's setting himself up for the one day when poor sensitive Mrs Jones over in accounts catches a glipse of a goatse man or a tubgirl that the filter somehow missed. The shyste^W^W^W^W^W^Wlawyers words go something along the lines of "You undertook to protect Mrs Jones from such horrors when you installed the content filter, and you failed your duty to Mrs Jones when she saw tubgirl. J00 15 ownz3d. Giz bulk cash!".

Filtering or editing in any commercial and/or public context is just plain dumb.

Suing for namecalling? He is a shyster.

[OldSchoolNapster]

Seriously pal, your not doing your profession any favors here.

You missed the point

[nasor]

He isn't claiming that the critical comments on yahoo aren't protected speech under the first amendment; he's claiming that yahoo failed to fulfill their promise to prevent abusive postings, which doesn't have anything to do with the first amendment.

Illustrates a huge problem with our legal system

[theLOUDroom]

See the problem here is that this lawyer can file total bullshit suits like this with no fear of reprisal.

This waste the other party's time AND the government's time costing us all money.

What should happen here is that the first judge to see that paperwork should call him a "stupid crybaby" and fine him several thousand dollars.
It a shame we can't deal with baseless legal threats the same way we deal with threats of physical violence.
These types of threats really do hurt people, and the system should take that into account.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. This is why we have bullshit lawsuits about this like "one click" shopping and the fucking ALT key.
The end result is that both parties spend a bunch of money on litigation. We as taxpayers spend our money as well, and a couple lawyers who knew full well the suit was bullshit get rich.
It's bad for everyone but the fucking lawyers. FUCK LAWYERS.

Are you a "good" lawyer? Then do something about it! Purge the assholes from your ranks!
Do you think doctors would tolerate this type of behavior within THEIR ranks? You're supposed to be fricking professionals.