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Fla. high court: Nonresidents can be sued over Web posts

By The Associated Press
06.18.10

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Nonresidents can be sued for defamation under Florida law over their Internet postings if that information is accessible and accessed in Florida, the state Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

That applies even to bloggers such as Tabatha Marshall, who lives in Washington state and has no ties to Florida other than taking a vacation in the Sunshine State.

Previous rulings have determined phone calls and e-mails constitute “electronic communications into Florida,” but this is the first time a court has included blogs and other Web site postings.

Lawyers who participated in the case, though, said the ruling has limited precedential value because it did not address constitutional issues, which will be decided in federal court.

Marshall owns and operates a Web site that includes postings by herself and others on consumer-related issues.

Some comments, including those from Internet users in Florida, accused Internet Solutions Corp., an employment and recruiting firm, of criminal activity including “phishing.”

That’s the practice of duping Internet users into providing personal information.

Internet Solutions, which is incorporated in Nevada but claims Orlando as its principal place of business, sued Marshall for defamation in a Florida federal court, which dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction.

Internet Solutions appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which asked the Florida justices to interpret state law as a prelude to deciding the case.

“We conclude that allegedly defamatory material about a Florida resident placed on the Web and accessible in Florida constitutes an ‘electronic communication into Florida’ when the material is accessed (or ‘published’) in Florida,” Justice Barbara Pariente wrote in the unanimous opinion in Internet Solutions Corp. v. Marshall.

The case now returns to the 11th Circuit to decide Marshall’s other arguments that the lawsuit violates her constitutional rights of free expression and due process.

“Our game plan all along has been the constitutional issues, not the ministerial issue,” said her lawyer, Marc J. Randazza of Miami. “This is the scrimmage before the game.”

Greg Beck, a lawyer for the national consumer-advocacy group Public Citizen, said the ruling left a lot of questions unanswered. It did, though, narrow the law’s application to posts read in Florida rather than a broader net sought by Internet Solutions, Beck said.

Public Citizen filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief arguing that nonresidents should not be covered by Florida’s law unless their posts intentionally target someone in the state.

Pariente rejected Marshall’s argument that her acts were completed in Washington and nothing could be received by a Florida computer user without reaching into Washington to retrieve it.

That “ignores the nature of the Web, which is fundamentally different from a telephone call, an e-mail, or a letter,” Pariente wrote, because material posted on a Web site is accessible by anyone in the world.

Laws covering Internet defamation are a patchwork, Randazza said. He said at least five states have amended their “long-arm” laws so nonresidents cannot be sued outside their home states.

A lawyer for Internet Solutions did not return a call seeking comment in time for this story.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=23069