Krinsky v. Doe

6 72 Cal. Rptr. 3d 231 (2008)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Until December 31, 2005, P was the president, chair of the board, and chief operating officer of SFBC International, Inc., a publicly traded “global development drug service company” with offices in Florida. P sued 10 “Doe” defendants in a Florida court alleging that ds had made “defamatory remarks” about her on Yahoo! message boards and other Web sites, using screen names to conceal their identities. Doe 6 was referred to as “Senor_Pinche_Wey,” the screen name he had used in posting on the Yahoo! Finance message board. Ds were accused of intentional interference with a “contractual and/or business employment relationship” between P and SFBC. Nine of the defendants were accused together of libel based on false and misleading Internet statements imputing dishonesty, fraud, improper professional conduct, and criminal activity to P. P served a subpoena on the custodian of records at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, California. Doe 6 then moved in superior court to quash the subpoena on the grounds that (1) P had failed to state a claim sufficient to overcome his First Amendment rights for either defamation or interference with a contractual or business relationship, and (2) P's request for injunctive relief was an invalid prior restraint. The court suggested that Doe 6 was “trying to drive down the price of P's company to manipulate the stock price, sell it short and so forth. The court also expressed the view that “accusing a woman of unchastity” and “calling somebody a crook … saying that they have a fake medical degree, accusing someone of a criminal act, accusing someone-impinging [sic] their integrity to practice in their chosen profession historically have been libel per se.” Doe 6 maintained, that the reference to “crook” was to Seifer, not P and that the use of this term was, in context, mere opinion and therefore protected by the First Amendment. The court found that Doe 6's conduct appeared to be similar to federal cases involving “‘pump and dump’ stock manipulation” efforts. The court refused to quash, and Doe 6 appealed.