California Court of Appeal

In case involving an anonymous message board participant's scathing verbal attacks on plaintiff, a corporate officer of a Florida company, and where plaintiff served a subpoena on Yahoo! to discover identities of anonymous participants, denial anonymous participant's motion to quash the subpoena is reversed as he has a First Amendment right to speak anonymously on the Internet and his identity should be protected.

Appellate Information

• Decided 02/06/2008
• Published 02/06/2008

Judges

• ELIA, J.

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• The Hoyle Law Firm and Arlene Fickler and Lawrence T. Hoyle, Jr., Steefel, Levitt & Weiss and Barry W. Lee and Amy B. Briggs, San Francisco, for Defendant and Appellant., DeSimone & Huxster and Gerry DeSimone, Agoura Hills, Robert Wayne Pearce, for Respondent.