AutoAdmit Sued June 12, 2007 Jill This is why it’s probably a bad idea to harass, threaten and defame female law students. Background on AutoAdmit for the newbies: My first post about my run-ins with AutoAdmit The Washington Post covers the story. AutoAdmit director Anthony Ciolli steps down. AutoAdmit returns in response to my post about Duke lacrosse. Anthony Ciolli loses his job. I had nothing to do with it, nor with leaking the story to WSJ.
Wow. Actions have consequences. Imagine that. http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004492.html Not that I’m suggesting you would make this pie, but it does look tasty, doens’t it?
Sweet Schadenfraude! Enough to make a diabetic cry, isn’t it? Still, I’m stunned it took this long. I mean, the U.S. does have libel and slander laws, right?
I too am stunned it took as long as it did. You’d kind of think law students would be afraid of/expect to be sued following behavior like this.
Awesome. Pro bono no less (for some reason I found that especially satisfying). You *would* think law students would know better, but narcissists and psychopaths have especially bad judgment. Them being special and other people being mere objects, and all…hard to imagine any comeuppance for yourself with a worldview like that.
Some entitled guys at top law schools engage in racist and misogynist dialog; they post pictures of women and say nasty things; and it is those women whose career prospects are harmed ….?! Patriarchy.
Christ on a cracker, anyone take a look at those comments? I think most people understand the logic of a bunch of law students suing the crap out of a guy who stole their pictures and did nothing while they were harassed and defamed. I mean, they harassed a bunch of freaking lawyers, what the hell did they think would happen? And obviously these women have a case, since a prominent lawyer and scholar has taken it on pro bono. Between that and the Anthony asshole’s offer being rescinded, it seems apparant that Real Live Lawyers find the situation to be A Very Serious Thing. Yet the comments at the law blog, supposedly frequented by law wonks, is just full of the same kind of feminist trolls that Pandagon gets. Plus, apparently since not every lawyer gets an awesome job, these girls have no right to complain because AutoAdmit probably hurt their chances of getting jobs. The only blog I’ve ever seen that’s worse for incoherence and whiny, off-topic thread derailing is Barbara Ehrenrich’s. WSJ needs some moderators post haste.
WSJ does moderate comments, it just sometimes takes a while for the mods to get to everything. They do have an email address where you can report abusive comments if you’re so inclined.
You’d kind of think law students would be afraid of/expect to be sued following behavior like this. Everything I read about the site and every bit of bullshit defense of it that came up in threads here indicated that the people who run it and/or use it have no understanding of the law.
“Some entitled guys at top law schools engage in racist and misogynist dialog; they post pictures of women and say nasty things; and it is those women whose career prospects are harmed ….?! Patriarchy. ” If they posted under their actual names, it would be easier to point to it and say a lack of real-life blowback is the result of privilege. They all made their defamatory, racist, copyright-violating, and threatening posts under pseudonyms. You’d need more than a cursory legal-name search to link any of that stuff back to the real person who typed it out. As it is, at least one of the guys involved who used his real name has had his career prospects suffer and become internet-infamous for his activities.
First: WOOT! Second: WTF!?!?! at those comments. I’m guessing most of those people hadn’t been around when this first broke, and clearly have no clue as to the concepts of libel and slander. Then again, I wonder if libel and slander only matter when you’re talking about powerful men. Those humorless bitches should just shut up and take what’s coming to them for being humorless bitches /sad attempt at faux-misogyny.
Some lovely comments over there, of course. Wah wah, free speech, etc. I’d like to second that Anne. That WSJ board is populated by a pretty low IQ crowd. How can people who, allegedly, know something about the law think that having freedom of speech somehow makes them immune to the consequences of what they say? And most of their justifications are just the same shallow BS that the those AA pricks offered up — “We have the right to our annonymous slander. Oh yeah, and those bitches need to get a thicker skin.” In my non-expert opinion, it just looks like these AutoAdmit guys and their casual apologists are half-formed human beings.
Yeah, this should be good. Anybody have a link to a copy of the actual complaint, maybe in .pdf? I am an old-school lawyer who likes to dig deep on the details.
It seems that an awful lot of people simply don’t get that “freedoms” apply to interactions between citizens and governments. We are all free to do and say a lot of things without governmental restriction. However, if what we say and do brings harm to fellow citizens, we are not free of accountability. Our fellow citizens have a right to seek retribution where the government may not.
After reading the complaint, the comments on the AutoAdmit site and some cached on google (what I could stomach) and the comments on the WSJ blog, I don’t feel like doing any woots. It still has to be heard and a decision rendered, we’ll see. I don’t feel quite as hopeful. What does encourage me is how women keep fighting back more and more and aren’t stopping. No wonder the wingnuts are all askeered about girls going to school and putting off baby making. They’s startin’ a revolution Maude!
“However, if what we say and do brings harm to fellow citizens, we are not free of accountability. Our fellow citizens have a right to seek retribution where the government may not.” Yes, but only insofar as it is untrue.
Ann Althouse is convinced the suit will be dismissed because she thinks the copyright in this case belongs to the harassers who took the pictures. She misses that the harassers horked the pictures from Facebook etc and do not own the copyright. In some ways, Ann Althouse is clueless. In other ways, she’s mean-spirited. It’s a wonderful combination!
IN Re Althouse — Even if the harrassers had taken the photographs, wouldn’t there still be repercussions because the women photographed were private individuals, not public figures, and had not given permission of reproduction of image? ANd the photographs would be considered to be covered under the blanket of a “news story.”
What does encourage me is how women keep fighting back more and more and aren’t stopping. Oh, oops, you got it wrong, they aren’t ‘fighting’. Didn’t you hear? They just went and cried to Daddy’s lawyer friend until he picked up the case. They’re just flighty emotional girls, don’t you know, because their lawyer is a man. Can’t even defend themselves in the court of law, crazy girls. How are the men supposed to take them seriously NOW? All they had to do was sit quietly but no, just couldn’t. No matter what, we’ll still be wrong. IBTP.
Uhm, you guys are forgetting something. They still have to figure out who all those named defendants are. That’s not a trivial task.
In the latest chapter of the AutoAdmit.com scandal, two female Yale Law School students have sued Anthony Ciolli, the Web site’s former “chief educational director,” and more than two dozen others who allegedly used pseudonyms and posted the students’ photos as well as defamatory and threatening remarks about them on the online law-school discussion forum. posting photos of one of the women without her permission, falsely posing as the women in posts on the site, and engaging in “unreasonable publicity given to another’s life; publicity that places another in a false light before the public; intentional infliction of emotional distress; negligent infliction of emotional distress; and defamation.” The complaint asks for judgment against the defendants for unspecified damages as well as punitive damages in the amount of $245,400. Besides Ciolli, named defendants include individuals with pseudonyms such as “Pauliewalnuts” and “The Ayatollah of Rock-n-Rollah.” “It’s bringing the right to protect yourself against offensive words and images into the 21st century,” said David N. Rosen, a New Haven, Conn.-based attorney for the students and a senior research scholar in law at Yale Law to the Law Blog in an interview. “This is the scummiest kind of sexually offensive tripe,” he said of the postings about the women on AutoAdmit. They had it coming. Maybe sexist, racist abuse on the internet is next.
This is wonderful. It’s really nice to see real-world consequences starting to arise for behaviour such as this; it’s all too easy for men like this to rationalise away their behaviour until reality kicks in and they actually find themselves paying for what they’ve done.
You’d kind of think law students would be afraid of/expect to be sued following behavior like this. Law students almost categorically believe that because they’ve taken classes that let them understand the law, it no longer applies to them. You’ll never find a bigger bunch of self-entitled pricks than in your friendly neighborhood law school.
Autoadmit isn’t being sued, at least not according to the linked article. Ciolli and 16 others who made comments on autoadmit threads are being sued, and a good thing too.
I don’t understand why Ciolli is being sued and Cohen is not. Did Ciolli actually make comments in addition to the moderation he did? Because otherwise it seems like he and Cohen should both be targets of the suit.
You’ll never find a bigger bunch of self-entitled pricks than in your friendly neighborhood law school. Now, now, a bunch of us here (including our esteemed hostess) are law students. I definitely go to school with a bunch of over-entitled twits, but it seems to be far more a function of daddy’s money than the J.D. I must admit, I am curious as to why AutoAdmit and Cohen aren’t defendants. Part of me wonders if Ciolli will have to implead them rather than name them as indispensible parties.
Law students almost categorically believe that because they’ve taken classes that let them understand the law, it no longer applies to them. You’ll never find a bigger bunch of self-entitled pricks than in your friendly neighborhood law school. A law student from the apartment building next door to us once informed us that it was OK for him to shovel snow from his driveway onto our yard because “it’s just water”. At the same time, he was upset that my wife had shovelled the same “water” back into the driveway from whence it came.
preying mantis, they are suing the individuals, and they will get them. The defendants are named by pseuds now, but when they get discovery, they will subpoena the ISPs and track those little shits down. I took a look at the complaint. The liability of the commenters is not shielded by the Communications Decency Act — they are the speakers, not the board or the ISP, and it is not even clear that the board has the same immunity as the ISP (I’m no media lawyer; if you are concerned about blog and board liability for comments, don’t ask me). Further, while people are focused on the photos, the defendants made classic defamatory statements: that Doe 1 had a low LSAT score (159), had bribed her way into Yale, and had an affair with a woman high up in the Yale Law School administration, and that she had herpes. Anyone with even a passing understanding of free speech jurisprudence knows that defamation is a limitation on the right to speak freely; even the media exceptions don’t help them because she’s a private citizen. Truth is a defense, of course. I’ll bet anyone $100 that each of the statements above was both false and made with at a minimum complete indifference to whether it was true. Under those circumstances, even the NYT would be liable, even reporting on a public figure. (And forget the Larry Flynt defense of satire — IIRC, that’s a public-figures-only rule, particularly because the reader needs to know enough about the target to know that the statement is satire rather than truth). Yale is not only the best law school in the country, but also has a tiny class. there just are not a lot of Yale Law students to go around. For a Yale student not to get a 2L summer offer is very unusual — enough so that, plead together with the defamatory statements, it gets her past the motion to dismiss. She gets discovery, and then if there is evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude that the defamation caused her to lose out on offers, the question goes to the jury. I’m a litigator; if it were my case I would expect to get all of the correspondence and memos regarding the decision on whether to hire her, and to take the depositions of the attorneys she interviewed with and possibly the committees that made the decisions. I can’t say how those firms conduct their hiring, but if someone so much as made a margin note on the resume that says, “controversial among peers,” the defendants have a real problem. Any evidence that could reasonably be interpreted as causation between the comments about her and the decision not to give her a job gets her to a jury. Bottom line: the posters of the comments, who are really to blame, will not be able to hide behind their pseuds. They are probably liable; their rich daddies (I’m betting that none of them grew up banging nails, and if I sound like a class antagonist saying that it’s fine with me) will have to get them counsel. They have exposure. The bigger question is one of remedy. Do the plaintiffs want money? Are they trying to extract a pound of flesh, impose debts that these guys can’t pay? (Fine by me!) Or are they looking for some sort of non-monetary remedy — what, an open letter to the Vault 50 from each of these guys that everything they said was untrue and said with malice? I don’t know. Finally, on Althouse. If she has any self respect, she would stop commenting on matters where she doesn’t know the facts. She commented on Diggs-Taylor’s warrantless surveillance decision wihtout ever reading the thing, and now she’s shown her failure to do basic homework on this, too.
Evil Fizz, I suspect that it’s a set-up. Cohen said that he made all the decisions; by suing Ciolli, they force him to implead Cohen and the entity, and then they have the defendants pointing fingers at each other — which eliminates the possibility of Ciolli and Cohen using the same counsel, which multiplies the cost to defend. I guess someone at Keker & Van Nest thought this one through. On behalf of working litigators who admire good sharpshooting, I salute them. Heh.
Evil Fizz, because probably you and I and three other people here actually understand how this works, and because wild speculation is fun, I will expand. If they sued Ciolli, Cohen and the board, all three get the same counsel. They might have an insurance policy (again, these facts are not available and I don’t have a secret source, I’m speculating). Ciolli and Cohen might have a right under contract to get their defense cost paid for by a firm approved by the insurer, which might in turn keep a list. So, say the insurer picks Dewey Cheatem & Howe. They do the work once, and the clients waive the conflicts and defend jointly unless and until one of them decides to get off the bus. Instead, the only sued Ciollli. He may get his defense paid for by insurance or indemnification, but now Dewey Cheatem are his lawyers. He knows it is unfair for him to take the weight alone, but to lay the responsibility on Cohen (who has basically admitted it was his call), Ciolli has to sue him. Now, Ciolli and Cohen are adverse parties. Probably, the same insurer has to pay for Cohen’s lawye, but that’s not going to be Dewey Cheatem. He hires Inveigler & Bastard, and they can probably represent both Cohen and the entity, because you can’t slip a playing card between Cohen’s and the entity’s liability. Inveigler & Bastard have to read all the same shit and show up at all the same appearances, and basically they double the cost of defense, which doubles the pressure to settle.
Speculation gets even more fun with facts: does anyone have an idea whether there is likely to be an insurance policy that covers defamation and copyright claims against Ciolli and Cohen? I’m sort of guessing that’s how it works from how it works in some areas that I am more familiar with.
Thomas, I think the part I’m still unclear on is what AutoAdmit’s status is. I doubt they did anything as formal as incorporate, but if Ciolli’s a law student who passed BA, he should have at least filed the paperwork to become an LLC or an LLP. Partnerships are just too risky. I’m actually really sort of excited that they’re going to force Ciolli to implead. (Woot! Litigation geekery!) That’s going to produce some comical court filings.
EF, if it really is just a shoestring LLC consisting of a kit in a binder on Cohen’s window sill, then they are really in trouble 🙂 No entity, no insurance, nobody to pay defense costs; fees come out of their pockets. Heh. Then the need to pay separate counsel is more than pressure; it’s crippling. Heh. I have a long, long analysis of the complaint stuck in mod.
Thomas, I love your law firm names. My favorite comes from Gravity’s Rainbow: Salitieri, Poore, Nash, de Brutus, and Short.
Althouse also insists (in comments at Patterico’s) that: “But most of the statements are just exaggerated talk about how women look and how the men feel sexual desire for them. How repressive do you want the government to be?”
““But most of the statements are just exaggerated talk about how women look and how the men feel sexual desire for them. How repressive do you want the government to be?” ” Corect me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t this the sitch where boys were posting women’s real world info and telling others to attack them?
And from the bar exam review, a false statement that someone has a loathsome disease (i.e. herpes), unless true, is libel per se, so the damages are presumed – you don’t have to prove them.
BMC, good catch. Libel per se guarantees that, even if the Court were to throw out their actual damages for causation reasons, the plaintiffs still get to a jury. The biggest fight is likely to be with the ISPs, who will probably try to shield the identifying info for the commenters. It seems to me, procedural sharpshooters, that the copyright claim is there to create federal jurisdiction. But why? The Court will apply state law to the defamation claims, so they don’t get different substantive law. Do they get a better jury pool in D.Ct. than in New Haven County? Or are they circumventing the famously phlegmatic Connecticut state court system?
Fascinating analysis, Thomas. Looking forward to reading your take on the complaint. On a totally unrelated note, what is the legal equivalent of getting buggered? No reason I ask. 🙂
I made the mistake of looking to see what althouse had to say about this .. much like a dog returning to its vomit … and I must say, Ann Althouse makes me want to barf.* *to use a word I haven’t for probably about a generation, but which is in keeping with the apparent theme of regurgitation into which I have stumbled (unsurprising that such a theme should arise as one contemplates althouse, no?), as well as the 14-yr-old-boy-speech stylings in which althouse and so many of her commenters express themselves
even if the Court were to throw out their actual damages for causation reasons, the plaintiffs still get to a jury Well, no, it could be thrown out before then. Defamation per se just means that one of the things the plaintiffs have to provde doesn’t include “and we suffered $X damages”. But they will definitely want to prove damages anyway–not much point in going through a lawsuit to get an amount of money equivalent to a pat on the head. The copyright claim is probably there because it’s very easy to prove.
Mythago, what I meant is that even if, as some commentators are now suggesting (Volokh — I’m not linking because he’s already more famous than he deserves), the defendants could get the law firms that refused Doe I for a job to express independent reasons, the per se claim keeps them from getting rid of the defamation claim on a motion. And of course, with varying measures of damages and varying facts, the more claims that the jury gets instructions on, the more there is for them to look at in deciding how much. If, for example, all that survived was the per se defamation and the copyright, the jury might be a lot more sympathetic in calculating copyright damages if they still hear the per se defamatory comments than if the case were a straight copyright case about use of a pic. I really don’t see what goes out on a motion here, though. I don’t know the law of the privacy/false light sort of claims, so maybe there’s a legal standard there and those fail to state a claim for some reason that is not apparent. The defamation claims will be very hard to knock out — to my eyes, they state a claim as to several statements. I don’t know the standard for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, so I can’t tell if they have plead that, but when they talk about sexually assaulting the Does as if they are going to do it and say things about how nasty they are, it really looks like animus, so I expect judges will be sympathetic. The only thing I see that could bounce the whole thing, though, is the copyright claim because it is the sole basis for federal subject matter jurisdiction. I think one of the plaintiffs got the rights to the photos after the misuse occurred; and there’s a threshold standing question as to whether the plaintiff has that claim or if the original photographer is the proper person to assert it. As I said above, I think the copyright claim is only there to get them in federal court, but I don’t know why it was so important to be in US District Court instead of state court.
EF, the complaint bases jurisdiction solely on the copyright claim. And I think the claim raises the most difficult issue, required work to set up (one plaintiff acquired copyright from the creator ahead of the filing — raising a standing question) and probably adds no damages. So … why do all that work to be in Fed court?
Thomas, you’re right. This is what I get for skimming the pleading on jurisdiction. As it is, I’m not sure why federal court, although given the fact that Doe I and II are well-represented, I’m sure there’s something.
The herpes thing would actually be one of the most difficult bits-I forget the stat, but a huge proportion of North America (80%?) has the herpes virus, since it causes cold sores. So, the chances are good that she actually does have it. The defendants would then have to argue that they meant herpes in a non-sexual, non-loathsome, cold sore kind of way, while the plaintiffs would have to argue that they did mean it in a loathsome way. BTW-is loathsome the actual legal word? How is it defined? I wonder if a law firm would be willing to step up and actually say that they didn’t hire one of the women because of this? Or is that un-law-firm-ish?
Volokh thinks that no firm would admit to crediting this crap. I’m not sure. I think they may say, “we didn’t want anyone whose personal life could make them a focus of media attention for something other than legal work, and this looked like it could be a distraction.”
The defendants would then have to argue that they meant herpes in a non-sexual, non-loathsome, cold sore kind of way, while the plaintiffs would have to argue that they did mean it in a loathsome way. I can see it now. “No, no, your honor. I was referring to herpes simplex I, not II. And when I said slut, I was just referring to the fact that she kisses lots of boys and now they all have cold sores!” I would be impressed if the judge didn’t literally throw a gavel at them for that argument.
So … why do all that work to be in Fed court? Well, these are just some guesses (I’m not a litigator), but how about: 1. The e-discovery rules which make it clear that a defendant must retain even inaccessible data. 2. This may be a great test case for the Communications Decency Act. 3. It may be a case of choosing a Court that is more likely to grant personal jurisdiction based on website activity I’m sure there are a million more. Anyone have any insight on the differences between Conn. and Federal courts?
Kristen, those are all good guesses. The second is, in my view, less likely because if that were a central goal they would have sued Cohen directly. Instead, see the discussion above, they appear to be trying a bank-shot to make Ciolli bring him in. Not that they can’t do both, but if they were looking for a CDA test case, why not take the direct route? E-discovery depends on differences from CT procedure that I just am not knowledgable about, but if CT is weaker, then that would be a good reason to go fed; same thing for longarm jurisdiction. New Jersey, for example, will exercise jurisdiction if an atom from a defendant’s prior out-of-state flatulence entered the vicinity of the plaintiff at any time thereafter. But that’s a matter of New Jersey Parochial Law Practice Act, making sure that their courts are full of cases and empty of New York lawyers. I don’t know if CT takes the same approach.
the per se claim keeps them from getting rid of the defamation claim on a motion. They’d probably have a pretty tough time getting it thrown out on a motion, anyway, although I see what you’re saying. If there’s a copyright violation, there’s no reason not to put it in the complaint–especially if it’s something that can be used in settlement negotations.
I sincerely hope the next steps are that the law schools start examining these students who are aiding in the harassment of their peers. There is no reason that they should not be expelled from these universities for their role in making the academic (and home) environments for these students unsafe. Also, there are few things as horrible as Ann Althouse. It disgusts me that she is a law professor at UW because I was considering going there. Not now.