Craig Adams reports on a case covered here previously:
Buffalo Grove Trustee Lisa Stone did not expect to get the name of HipCheck16 on Wednesday, Nov. 18, despite a judge’s ruling the previous week.
She was so sure it wouldn’t happen she did not go to court that day. “My lawyer and my husband are there,” she said Wednesday morning. “I’m pretty confident he’s asking for an appeal,” she explained. “He doesn’t want his name exposed.”
The lawyer for HipCheck16 did ask the judge for an appeal on Wednesday morning and the judge agreed to stay his ruling until Dec. 18.
[…]
In earlier interviews, Stone indicated she was not sure if she would sue the poster after learning his name. She added that she would like to see Internet speech carry the same weight as talking with someone in person.
“If you would say the same thing to the person face to face, what would the repercussions be?” she asked. “If you won’t say it to someone’s face, it’s kind of wimpy to be saying it behind a phony name.”
Read more in the JournalOnline.
OK, fine, but do we sue every time someone says something to our face that we don’t like or that we feel is defamatory or slanderous? Is this just a way to make the defendant run up huge legal fees as a punishment for saying something you do not intend to sue over? And is it worth the court’s time to hear cases such as this where the plaintiff is not clearly intending to file suit? Using the courts to identify anonymous or pseudoanonymous posters just to learn their names or expose their names seems almost like an abuse of process to me. What do you think?