Lower Court Proceedings
Stephen Barrett, Terry Polevoy, and attorney Christopher Grell filed suit against Clark, Bolen, Rosenthal, and 100 John Doe defendants in November 2000 before Alameda County Superior Court Judge James A. Richman. The case was originally captioned Barrett v. Clark. Defendants were accused of libel and conspiracy to libel, for publishing or republishing allegedly defamatory statements on the internet.
Rosenthal was represented by an attorney from the California Anti-SLAPP Project. Rosenthal moved to be stricken from the suit, citing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and California's Anti-SLAPP statute. It was uncontested that Rosenthal had published or republished the e-mail on the internet.
The trial court granted her motion, effectively dropping all of the claims against Rosenthal. In an unusually long 27-page written opinion, Judge Richman dismissed the case (against Rosenthal only) under the California anti-SLAPP statute, which is intended to stop lawsuits that are "brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for redress of grievances." The court further ordered that all three plaintiffs pay Rosenthal's attorney's fees.
The appellate court upheld the dismissal against Grell and Barrett, but vacated the decision as against Polevoy. The court held that Section 230 did not protect Rosenthal for one statement she had reposted on two newsgroups, regarding Polevoy's alleged "stalking" of a Canadian talk show host. The court ruled that Rosenthal, as a "distributor", could be held liable under Section 230 for content republished after receiving notice of a potentially defamatory statement, just as vendors of traditional media can be.
Rosenthal petitioned the California Supreme Court to hear the case, and the court granted her petition for review in April 2004.
Read more about this topic: Barrett V. Rosenthal
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