- Mobilisa, Inc. v. Doe
-
Mobilisa v. Doe[1] was a lawsuit filed in 2005 by Mobilisa Inc.,, a Washington based company that provides wireless and mobile communications to government and military clients. The case against John Doe, the anonymous sender of an email using the service "The Suggestion Box". The case is notable regarding the legal question of what standard should govern requests for discovery of the identity of an anonymous Internet speaker whose speech allegedly violated a plaintiff's rights. While the court originally issued a subpoena requiring The Suggestion Box to disclose the identity of the e-mail's sender, it later vacated this order when The Suggestion Box objected in December 2005.[2]
Contents
Background
The dispute originated with an email originally sent from a company e-mail account by Nelson Ludlow, the founder and chief executive of Mobilisa Inc., to a woman who was not employed by Mobilia but was involved in a personal relationship with Ludlow. This e-mail was forwarded six days later to members of Mobilisa's management team from an anonymous sender with an address hosted at "theanonymousemail.com", a domain managed by The Suggestion Box, Inc. The e-mail contained Ludlow's original e-mail to Shara and subject line was the question "Is this a company you want to work for?".
Initial discovery order
Mobilisa requested that the Arizona Superior Court issue a subpoena compelling The Suggestion Box to disclose the identity of the anonymous sender in August 2005 on the basis that the sender had violated two federal statues that make it illegal to "hack" electronic communications. This request was initially granted by the court.
In December 2005, the discovery order was vacated when The Suggestion Box objected. The court used the standard set out in Doe v. Cahill, 884 A.2d 451 [3] to make this determination. Under this standard an anonymous internet speakers identity should be divulged "(1)if the requesting party makes reasonable efforts to notify the anonymous speaker of the discovery request and that person is afforded a reasonable time to respond, and (2) the requesting party demonstrates its cause of action would survive a motion for summary judgment." While the court found that Mobilisa had not fully satisfied the Cahill standard, it stated the company would be allowed an opportunity to supplement its application. Additionally, the court ordered that The Suggestion Box must notify all account holders of the subpoena request.
Subsequent litigation
On February 23, 2006 the council filled an affidavit stating that, with The Suggestion Box's consent, they would now also be representing the Doe in this matter. Doe, through council, objected to the subpoena request and stated that did not access or obtain the email in question through Mobilisa's computer system.
On February 27 the superior court found that Mobilisa had sufficiently amended their request such that it now meet the standard set forth by Cahill, and as such granted Mobilisa leave to conduct discovery regarding Doe's identity.
Court of Appeals
This decision was appealed by The Suggestion Box and Doe arguing that while the superior court correctly adopted the Cahill standard, it was misapplied in this case. On the other hand, Mobilisa argued that the superior court applied the wrong standard but reached the correct conclusion. In the end the appellate court adopted the standard set fourth in Dendrite International, Inc. v. Doe No. 3, 775 A.2d 756.[4] Under this standard the court must consider not only the "summary judgment" aspect from the Cahill standard, but also "balance the parties’ competing interests is necessary to achieve appropriate rulings in the vast array of factually distinct cases likely to involve anonymous speech." The case was subsequently remanded to district court for consideration of the third point of the standard.
Conclusion
On February 13, 2008 Mobilisa moved to withdraw its subpoena and dismiss the action.
References
Categories:- Lawsuits
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