With Anonymous Posters, it is Essential to Move Quickly

Move Quickly with Your Internet Defamation Action
We were just able to help a client dodge a bullet, and the fact pattern provides a cautionary tale for all.

If you or your business is the victim of Internet defamation by an anonymous poster, and you decide to go after that person, you have many hoops to jump through to get the necessary information. Say you are being trashed on WeTrashPeople.com by an unknown person. (I just made up that name, but I’m sure someone will snatch up the URL.) Unless the site is one of the few that displays the IP address of the poster, you may have to go through three rounds of subpoenas to work your way back to the Internet Service Provider (ISP), such as Cox, Time Warner, or whomever. Complicating things, most ISPs use dynamic IP addresses. In other words, every IP address is used by different subscribers at different times. It is not enough just to know the IP address of the person who posted the lies about you, you must find out who that address was assigned to at the precise time and date the comment was posted.

And that is why you must move quickly. The ISPs all have their own policies on how long they retain that information. If you wait six months to retain counsel to go after the person who is defaming you, by the time the attorney works through the subpoena process, the essential information may be gone.

It appeared that was going to be the case with our client, who waited too long before contacting us. We traced the information all the way back to the ISP, who responded to our subpoena by stating that the information was not retained. With some additional pressing by us, the ISP revised its position and coughed up the information, but that could have been the end of the road for the client’s action.

Bottom line:  If you are the victim of defamation, and you think you want to pursue an action, move quickly. Filing an action does not mean you are committing yourself to going to court. More often than not, once we have identified the defamer, an informal resolution can be reached. On multiple occasions we have discovered that the defamer is a competing business who is posting false reviews. They are more than willing to remove the comments once they have been exposed to the light.

One Response to With Anonymous Posters, it is Essential to Move Quickly

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Aaron Morris
Morris & Stone, LLP
Orchard Technology Park
11 Orchard Road, Suite 106
Lake Forest, CA 92630
(714) 954-0700

Email Aaron Morris
DISCLAIMERS

NOTICE PURSUANT TO BUSINESS & PROFESSIONS CODE SECTION 6158.3: The outcome of any case will depend on the facts specific to that case. Nothing contained in any portion of this web site should be taken as a representation of how your particular case would be concluded, or even that a case with similar facts will have a similar result. The result of any case discussed herein was dependent on the facts of that case, and the results will differ if based on different facts.

This site seeks to present legal issues in a hopefully entertaining manner. Hyperbolic language should not be taken literally. For example, if I refer to myself as the “Sultan of SLAPP” or the “Pharaoh of Free Speech,” it should not be assumed that I am actually a Sultan or a Pharaoh.

Factual summaries are entirely accurate in the sense of establishing the legal scenario, but are changed as necessary to protect the privacy of the clients.