Appeals Court Tosses $11M Spamhaus Judgement

Panaqqa writes "In a not unexpected move, the US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the $11 million awarded to e360 Insight and vacated a permanent injunction against Spamhaus requiring them to stop listing e360 Insight as a spammer. However, the ruling (PDF) does not set aside the default judgement, meaning that Spamhaus has still lost its opportunity to argue the case. The original judge could still impose a monetary judgement, after taking evidence from the spammer as to how much Spamhaus's block had cost them. This is unfortunate considering the legal leverage the recent ruling concerning spyware might have provided for Spamhaus."

Comments

Re:Oh yeah?

[nickname225]

The court would have had a hard time justifying throwing the case out completely. It's probably true that the court initially didn't have jurisdiction, but according to the article, Spamhaus made an initial appearance in the case. Generally, if you make an appearance, you have submitted to the jurisdiction of the court. It's not quite the catch-22 it seems, since you can make an appearance SOLELY for the purpose of challenging jurisdiction without submitting to the jurisdiction of the court. So - basically Spamhaus' attorney messed up and their client has to live with the consequences. Btw - I am an attorney.

Re:I don't get it

[DaleGlass]

Why is it so hard to effectively explain to the courts that Spamhaus has nothing to do with whether e360's messages get through or not, other than responding to a query from the receiving end asking if Spamhaus believes they are a spammer?

Because Spamhaus didn't show up in court to explain it. From Wikipedia:

Spamhaus initially succeeded in moving the case from state to federal court, but then stopped defending itself against the lawsuit, because it is based in the United Kingdom and outside the jurisdiction of United States courts. The American court had no choice but to award e360 a default judgment totaling $11,715,000 in damages. Spamhaus subsequently announced that it would ignore the judgment.

Re:Oh yeah?

[tinkerghost]

It's probably true that the court initially didn't have jurisdiction, but according to the article, Spamhaus made an initial appearance in the case. Generally, if you make an appearance, you have submitted to the jurisdiction of the court.

FWIR, Spamhause showed up in state court & said, 'you have no jurisdiction, the US court system has no jurisdiction & even if it did, it would have to be a Federal court'. The state judge threw it out properly judging that with no presense or assets in his district, he didn't have jurisdiction. 360 then went to a Federal Judge to redo the case & Spamhause's lawyers in the UK rightly asserted that "fuck the US court system, they have no jurisdiction, don't waste your money." or words to that effect. The problem is that the Federal Judge forgot that US law applies in the US not the world and ruled that being in another country doing things that are perfectly legal & not tortable (is that a word?) in that country is no reason that US law shouldn't be applied to them. In accordance with the new ruling on spyware, 360's case isn't actionable in the US anymore either, but that didn't seem to bother the appeals judge at all in denying the appeal of the ruling.

Sort of

[www.sorehands.com]

Spamshaus came into Court and filed an answer that in part said, You didn't serve properly and you have no jurisidiction. Then they said, we are not going to play this game, we want to withdraw our answer.

If you don't answer at all, a default is entered. This is what happened.

Re:Satisfied customer

[asuffield]

They can be blocked from continuing to do business in that jurisdiction. Not that it is enforceable in this age of the Internet.

As a donation-funded non-profit organisation based in the UK and Switzerland, they don't do business in the US at present, never have, and are not particularly likely to do so in the future. They don't even have a tax-exempt status in the US. A US court cannot prohibit US citizens from donating to them, nor can they confiscate those donations. There really isn't anything that a US court can do to them.