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Internet Solutions operates recruiting and Internet advertising businesses, including one called VeriResume. Tabatha Marshall runs a blog and website at www.tabathamarshall.com that monitors "phishing," including dubious job pitches. One section of the blog focused on VeriResume, and the various users posted comments criticizing VeriResume. As the Citizens Media Law Project explains:

One user, who claimed to be a company employee, alleged that the company engages in a "bait-and-switch" routine after applicants submit their information, according to documents attached to the complaint. In an update to her original post, Marshall summarized these user's comments and expounded on the situation.

That's how law blogger and MBA member Robert Ambrogi described this decision, as reported by Sam Bayard:

Last month, the First Circuit Court of Appeals upended the generally accepted notion that U.S. defamation law does not impose [defamation] liability for truthful statements. In Noonan v. Staples, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Boston held that Alan Noonan, a former Staples employee, could hold the company liable for defamation based on a truthful email a superior sent to employees explaining the reason for Noonan's termination, so long as he can prove that the email was sent with "actual malevolent intent or ill will."

Huh? Here's part of Robert's precis:

It was last October that Nomvuyo Mzamane, former headmistress of Oprah Winfrey's South African Leadership Academy for Girls, filed a defamation suit in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court against TV talk show star and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, along with a separate suit against the Huffington Post blogsite and publicity expert and

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Sam Bayard at the Citizen Media Law Project:

In perhaps the most blatant misuse of the subpoena power we've seen since the subpoena served on Kathleen Seidel of Neurodiversity last March, a lawyer for Thomas Garrett of Virginia has served a patently overbroad subpoena on blogger Waldo Jaquith, who publishes cvillenews.com, a community news blog about Charlottesville, Virginia.

New York City has given press identification cards to three bloggers who sued after their passes were revoked, the Associated Press reports.

The bloggers have not withdrawn their lawsuit even though they have been granted press ID’s. David Wallis, founder of Featurewell said, “This is an important first step.” Wallis also said that the City’s system for determining who qualifies for press cards is arbitrary and does not belong in the hands of the NYPD.

A judge has yet to weigh in on the case filed in Manhattan.

The City initially revoked the bloggers’ passes on the grounds that they weren’t full-time professionals and didn’t cover enough breaking news. But one of the bloggers, Ralph Smith, used the credentials to cover everything from parades to breaking news, which he said he covers on a day-to-day basis.

The lawsuit also involved Rafael Martinez-Alequin, a blogger who has been a long-time fixture at City Hall press conferences.

In one of the best-known recent cases involving both social networking and the criminal law, Lori Drew, a 49-year-old mother, was convicted in a Los Angeles federal court last week in on misdemeanor charges of accessing computers without authorization. Drew's sham assumption of the persona of a teenage boy, and subsequent online humiliation of 13 - year - old Megan Meier, led to Meier's hanging herself in response to Drew's increasingly cruel taunting. She was acquitted of murder charges, and the judge will soon be considering sentencing as well as post-trial motions.

Naturally many blogs are carrying discussions of the issues

We know a little about defamation law, but Adrianos Facchetti appears to be the go-to man in the blogosphere, so from now on, ask him! He writes the California Defamation Law Blog, which does not appear to be limited, topically, to California law, and which includes pages called Defamation Basics and Blog Protection 101. Hat tip to Carolyn Elefant via Twitter. (Cross-posted on LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®.)

Knoxnews.com reports:

Unsuccessful state House candidate Roger Byrge is suing Republican Rep. Stacey Campfield for libel.

Byrge, a Democrat who lost his East Tennessee race by fewer than 400 votes, filed the $750,000 lawsuit against Campfield in Jacksboro this week. The lawsuit alleges that Campfield, of Knoxville, falsely wrote on his blog that Byrge had been arrested several times on drug charges. 
Campfield said he has not seen the lawsuit. He said he was only repeating what he had heard about Byrge, and that he was not presenting it as a fact. 


An AP report fleshes out the matter of this "not quite a fact" defense some more:

In the Oct. 12 blog post, Campfield said more attention needed to be paid to the race for the open seat in House District 36.

Andie Schwartz sends along this story concerning your tax dollars at work:

Unsuccessful efforts to uncover the identity of Internet bloggers critical of the Memphis Police Department and its top officers will cost the city $88,000.

The city filed suit in state court in an attempt to identify the people behind a Web site called MPD Enforcer 2.0, but the lawsuit was eventually dropped.

Now Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, a Tennessee blogger himself, has picked up the story, and adds, "Hey, it's not as if budgets are tight or anything," linking to this item reporting:

As Gov. Phil Bredesen's administration begins two weeks of budget hearings next week, the governor says he will ask department heads to cut their budgets by 10 percent or more in the face of tumbling revenues and a financial downturn of indefinite length.

The Citizen Media Law Project joined with Media Bloggers Association, New England Press Association, The Online News Association, and Globe Newspaper Company to submit amici curiae brief arguing that the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP statute applies to all parties. They argue that the law also includes members of the news media and professional Bloggers, who engage in petitioning activities, reports David Ardia of the Media Law Project.

The brief was filed in response to a defamation lawsuit filed against Peter Robbins, author of a blog that appears on a community website, Cape Cod Today. The dispute arose over a March 11, 2008 blog post entitled “Barnstable Harbor” Filling in and falling in” in which he criticized numerous individuals including plaintiffs Joseph Dugas and attorney Paul Revere III who had challenged orders and permits issued by the Town of Barnstable Conservation Commission and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection that authorized dredging in Barnstable Harbor.