This outing thing is really getting out of hand.
I have been made aware that Ann Bartow considers the comments I made here and here to be defamatory, and she’s asked Jill for my mailing address so that the First Amendment specialist she planned to consult could contact me.
Well, unless I apologize. Though for what, I’m not entirely sure. Because she’s not asking me for an apology, she’s asking Jill to tell me that she wants an apology.
She’s asking Jill, mind you, because she refuses to contact me directly, even though Jill has made it clear that she does not want to be the go-between. This is the same way she informed me that she’d figured out who I was.
And she has. Congratulations, Ann, you guessed right. You know who I am, and where I work. And you’ve been very clear that you don’t like pseudonymity, and you’ve been just as clear that you don’t care for me. You’ve also made it clear that you’re not above threatening to out people you don’t care for when you’re angry. So, what’s your next move?
You could sue me. Of course, as my Civil Procedure professor used to say, “You can always sue. The question is, Can you win?”
So you file suit. Now you have to serve me in another state, which presents certain practical problems since you don’t know my home address. You could try to serve me at work, but security doesn’t let just anybody into the building. This *is* post-9/11 New York, after all, and we’re within spitting distance of a landmark.
Let’s say you get me served. Fine. Then we have the whole in personam jurisdiction issue, because I’ll assume, for shits and giggles, that you’ve filed in a South Carolina court.
Then you have to get over the hurdle of surviving a motion to dismiss, which, let’s just say, you can expect.
And if that happens? Then we get to discovery. Which goes both ways, as I’m sure you know. Anything relevant to your claims, and my defenses, and your damages, will be up for grabs here.
Discovery over, we’ll have dispositive motions, negotiations, the works. Possibly trial.
And what do you hope to recover after all that? A few bucks? A little vindication? Any victory you might have would be singularly Pyrrhic, I would imagine. Your reputation will suffer more from a suit than it would from my comments.
All at a cost of thousands of dollars in legal fees and costs on both sides. More likely tens of thousands of dollars.
And all because you couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to find out who I was. Because it’s pseudonymity that you find so appalling, that you think can be abused.
Bra fucking va, Ann.