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Woman Wins Libel Suit By Suing Wrong Website

Posted by samzenpus on from the close-enough dept.

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."

7 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. What TheDirt.com should do by Sonny+Yatsen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
    1. Re:What TheDirt.com should do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:What TheDirt.com should do by tophermeyer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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".

    3. Re:What TheDirt.com should do by coryking · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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!

  2. Re:I don't like this story by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Which we would ALL appreciate.

  3. Re:"Justice" by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:American "Justice" System? by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I prefer the term "Litigation Industry".

    --
    Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.