by Paul Alan Levy Could Donald Trump, who is notorious for his intolerance of public criticism, and who has promised to "open up the libel laws," evade the First Amendment and section 230 stricture on defamation claims by repackaging them under the rubric of the right of publicity? That is the question presented by an […]
Author Archives: Paul Levy
by Paul Alan Levy An announcement from the White House today listed the Consumer Review Fairness Act as one of several bills that President Obama signed into law yesterday. Here is my public statement on the development. And today I learned of a significant development: DC United is breaking with the forces at the headquarters […]
by Paul Alan Levy The Michigan Court of Appeals issued a decision today on the standards for deciding whether a plaintiff claiming to have been wronged by anonymous (or pseudonymous) online speech may compel the host of that speech to provide information that could aid the plaintiff in identifying the speaker so that process could […]
by Paul Alan Levy Now that both houses of Congress have passed the Consumer Review Fairness Act, which invalidates the inclusion of clauses barring consumer reviews in form contracts, and sent the bill to the President for his signature (this happened last Friday), we will be looking for situations in which to apply it. There […]
by Paul Alan Levy Tuesday morning, Judge Jim Jordan of the Texas District Court for the 160th Judicial District heard oral argument on our motion for an award of attorney fees and deterrent sanctions, as provided by the Texas Anti-SLAPP statute, following his decision under that statute to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Prestigious Pets, […]
This article in the New York Times discusses the increasing role of the cell phone number as a key personal identifier and source of credit-related information. Should it receive privacy protection comparable to the Social Security Number?
by Paul Alan Levy Over the past decade, I have had occasion in several separate cases to help consumers in opposing creative ways in which dentists (Stacy Makhnevich, Mitul Patel, Gordon Austin, and others) have tried to insulate themselves from criticism by their customers. So it's about time I had a chance to help a […]
by Paul Alan Levy Profile Defenders, which has been linked to a pattern of defrauding courts to get material removed from the Internet altogether or, at least, suppressed in search engine results, has refused to comment directly on the spate of articles describing its modus operandi. However, a press release issued yesterday suggests the direction […]
BY PAUL ALAN LEVY AND EUGENE VOLOKH There are about 25 court cases throughout the country that have a suspicious profile: All involve allegedly self-represented plaintiffs, yet they have similar snippets of legalese that suggest a common organization behind them. (A few others, having a slightly different profile, involve actual lawyers.) All the ostensible defendants ostensibly […]
by Paul Alan Levy My friends know that one of my main passions outside of work is soccer; I root for various teams abroad, for the US national teams, and especially for my home team, DC United; I even travel to away games (including the World Cups in South Africa and Brazil). So when an […]