Georgia Garvey reports:
Buffalo Grove Village Trustee Lisa Stone should be told the name of the man she accuses of making defamatory online comments about her 15-year-old son, a judge ruled Monday in a case being watched for its Internet privacy implications.
Cook County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Lawrence ordered that the identity of a person known online as Hipcheck16 be turned over to Stone.
[…]
The comments were posted online April 9 to a story that ran on the Daily Herald’s Web site on April 6, the day before the election in which Stone won a seat.
When the newspaper’s lawyers said they only had the person’s Internet Protocol address, Stone sought the identity from Comcast, the poster’s Internet provider.
The judge ruled that only Stone and a process server — should she decide to take legal action — may be told the identity of Hipcheck16. Barring an appeal, he said, the court would turn over the information to Stone after another hearing set for Nov. 18.
Michael Furlong, who represents Hipcheck16, known in court documents as “John Doe,” said his client would decide by then whether to appeal.
Read more in the Chicago Tribune.