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The Sue Me, Sue You Blues.

By Ann Althouse

George Harrison once sang: "You serve me and I'll serve you/Swing your partners, all get screwed/Bring your lawyer and I'll bring mine/Get together, and we could have a bad time."

If you sue me, I'm going to do my best to figure out how I can sue you. You want to think about that dynamic before you sue somebody.

So, anyway, Anthony Ciolli was sued by 2 Yale law students who were upset about comments on the AutoAdmit website that he used to work on, and now he's suing them and their lawyer ? "seeking at least $50,000 in damages for abuse of process, libel and false light that he alleges cost him a job offer at a Boston law firm."

"This case is not about defending or exonerating anyone for the absolutely reprehensible comments that were made about the female law students on AutoAdmit," [Ciolli's lawyer Mark] Jakubik said. ?It?s about what are the appropriate boundaries for seeking redress for those comments, and we think those boundaries were crossed to Anthony?s great detriment.?...

Federal law immunizes Web site administrators from liability for content posted by others...

The complaint alleges that the law students and their lawyers wrongfully initiated civil proceeding against Ciolli, that the students and a Web site they solicited to help restore their reputations libeled and slandered him and that the publicity they directed toward him placed him in a false light, with the result that he lost his job offer.

This new lawsuit has been filed in state court in Pennsylvania. (Quick, class, why does the court have personal jurisdiction over the Yale law students?) The complaint also uses the real names of the students, who used pseudonyms in the lawsuit against the pseudonymous AutoAdmit commenters.

"There was no real big secret about who they were," [Ciolli's former lawyer Marc] Randazza said.

Unlike the original suit, Ciolli?s complaint contains nothing that would be considered scandalous or would justify withholding the students? names, Jakubik said.

"When folks engage in the kind of conduct that is outlined in the complaint, I?m not sure they should be given the cloak of anonymity," he said.

The decision to file a lawsuit is a momentous one. Think hard and think many steps ahead before you bring the courts into your life. Don't sue angry.

(Link via How Appealing.)

Full post as published by Althouse on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).