Woman Wins Libel Suit By Suing Wrong Website

An anonymous reader writes "It appears that Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader Sarah Jones and her lawyer were so upset by a comment on the site TheDirty.com that they missed the 'y' at the end of the name. Instead, they sued the owner of TheDirt.com, whose owner didn't respond to the lawsuit. The end result was a judge awarding $11 million, in part because of the failure to respond. Now, both the owners of TheDirty.com and TheDirt.com are complaining that they're being wrongfully written about in the press — one for not having had any content about Sarah Jones but being told it needs to pay $11 million, and the other for having the content and having the press say it lost a lawsuit, even though no lawsuit was ever actually filed against it."

Comments

What TheDirt.com should do

[Sonny Yatsen]

Maybe TheDirt.com should sue Sarah Jones for libel for making false and damaging defamatory statements about them to the courts and to the press.

Re:What TheDirt.com should do

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, thedirt.com may never have received the complaint if it was delivered to the address for thedirty.com

They definitely have a lot of room to appeal this.

Re:What TheDirt.com should do

[tophermeyer]

True, it will probably be really easy to appeal.

But they shouldn't have to. This is an area of out Justice system that sucks. Even though it's an easy win, they still have to pay a lawyer to go into court. Hopefully they will get their expenses reimbursed by the crack legal team that misspelled the word "Dirty".

Re:What TheDirt.com should do

[coryking]

Except you don't get court summons delivered by email, facebook, or Twitter. You get them via certified letter, in person, or some other means that is easy to audit.

Either the summons went to the wrong mail address (Whois for thedirty.com) or it went to the right address and right defendant. It sounds like it went to the wrong name & address.

Once this gets overturned and they presumably go after the correct party, I susped the plaintiff will have a hard time explaining why she didn't notice the mistake. The lawyer would have at least gone to the website with her in person. If she cared that much about some nasty comment in a website, you think she would notice that the lawyer was on the wrong site, wouldn't you?

My bet is this fuck up will cost her the real case. If you are pissed about some website, you don't exactly forget what the website looked like!

Re:What TheDirt.com should do

[AK Marc]

They were so incompetent as to file the suit against the wrong company. What makes you think they properly served the company that had the judgment made against it?

Re:I don't like this story

[MaskedSlacker]

Which we would ALL appreciate.

American "Justice" System?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof again that America no longer has a Justice system.
What it does have instead, is merely a "Legal" system.

Re:American "Justice" System?

[Digital Vomit]

I prefer the term "Litigation Industry".

Re:"Justice"

[coryking]

If you get a court summons, you should not ignore it. Even if they sent it to the wrong guy (you), you could at least call the plaintiff and say "yeah, I got this summons, but I think you got the wrong website).

If you just ignore the thing and hope it goes away, guess what... By not showing up in court the judge doesn't have to examine the evidence. They just assume since you didn't respond and didn't show up, you don't mind entering into a default judgement.

It isn't a fucked up justice system... It is an idiot who ignored a court summons. Can he wiggle out of it? Yes. But now it will cost him a whole lot more time, money, and hassle than if he had just picked up the phone and said "WTF is this summons about?"

Re:"Justice"

[Quiet_Desperation]

Maybe it was an error in judgment, but is it an $11 million error? That's sick.

What's even sicker is the legal wonks sitting around scratching their goatees and blathering "Well, teh laws am teh laws." This is a horrific result.

Then the lawyer could have done his diligence and filed against the proper party.

How about the lawyer do his due diligence BEFORE all this happens? You people... seriously... there needs to be more crotches punched in this world. You're all sleepwalking zombies.

Re:"Justice"

[mr_mischief]

You're right. He should have filed against the proper party in the first place. He was acting on the faulty recollection, likely enough, of his client. He still should have double-checked who the proper party was.

The company that got served would have had the plaintiff's lawyer's contact information and contact information for the court. They could have sent affidavits to both for a few dollars for the notary (if they don't employ anyone who is a notary) and a few dollars for certified postage that they had never written anything about the plaintiff and that they were not the proper party to sue. If the judge still ordered them to appear, they could have spent a few hours on local representation for someone to show up and argue for dismissal against the wrong defendant and naming of the proper defendant, then easily been reimbursed for that attorney's fees.

You do realize that this happens often enough -- that the wrong person or company gets served -- that there are established court procedures for dealing with it?

Re:"Justice"

[Dishevel]

You do realize that this happens often enough -- that the wrong person or company gets served -- that there are established court procedures for dealing with it?

All of them requiring time, money and effort on the part of those who did no wrong. Ignoring something like this IS the right thing to do. The problem is the fucked up laws do not see it that way.