Author Archives: Paul Levy

Can a standard clause in a settlement agreement be subject to the Consumer Review Fairness Act?

by Paul Alan Levy After the Freehold Animal Hospital botched the neutering of a consumer’s dog, requiring the consumer to pay thousands of dollars for corrective surgery by a different hospital, the animal hospital agreed to refund the cost of its services as well as covering the expense of the corrective surgery, but only if […]

Should consumers “beware” social media as a trap for the unwary?

by Paul Alan Levy Eugene Volokh has a short article this morning about the brief concurring opinion filed by an appellate judge in Breen v. Holmes , 2017 WL 6133325 (La. App. Dec. 7, 2017). The case concerned statements made on social media about a controversial decision by prosecutors not to pursue charges against someone […]

Sixth Circuit Implicitly Embraces Dendrite Balancing Standard for Protecting Anonymous Speech

by Paul Alan Levy In a decision issued on Tuesday in Signature Management Team v. Doe, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit implicitly adopted the majority rule followed in the state courts that have addressed the issue, holding that a plaintiff seeking to identify an anonymous defendant in order to pursue litigation over […]

Homeland Security Inspector General Pegs Back Misuse of Importation Summons Authority

by Paul Alan Levy Last spring, Twitter received a fair amount of attention for fighting a patently bogus attempt by the Department of Homeland Security to abuse its statutory authority to investigate the importation of goods as the basis for to issuing an administrative summons seeking to identify the owners of a Twitter account  hostile […]

DC Superior Court Ruling on the Facebook Search Warrant: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

by Paul Alan Levy D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Robert Morin has issued his ruling on the pending objections to search warrants served on Facebook by Federal prosecutors seeking the entire contents of the Facebook accounts for the DisruptJ20 Facebook page as well as the personal accounts of two individuals, Lacey MacAuley and Legba Carrefour, […]

Texas Anti-SLAPP Motion Cannot Be Evaded by Voluntary Dismissal

by Paul Alan Levy Prestigious Pets, the Dallas-area pet-sitting company that faced a blizzard of public criticism after it invoked a non-disparagement clause as a basis for suing a husband and wife in small claims court after the wife posted over a mildly critical Yelp review of the company’s procedures and the resulting overfeeding a […]

Use of Search Warrants to Create Trump Enemies List Continues

by Paul Alan Levy In a motion to quash filed today, three Facebook users are challenging search warrants issued by federal prosecutors seeking to rummage through accounts in which they supported protests against the inauguration of Donald Trump on the weekend of January 20. One of the accounts may be the Facebook analogue of the […]

Response to Trump Prosecutors’ Effort to Attack Peaceful Protests

by Paul Alan Levy In my blog post yesterday about developments in the litigation over the search warrant to DreamHost, I recounted the encouraging signs from DC Superior Court Chief Judge Morin’s written order and colloquys with counsel during oral argument  at a hearing this week about his determination to protect the privacy rights of […]

DC Court Narrows Prosecutors Options for Searching Trump Inauguration Protest Web Site

by Paul Alan Levy Late last week, DC Superior Court Chief Judge Robert Morin issued an opinion  explaining his oral ruling at last month’s hearing on a search warrant issued to DreamHost demanding production of its files pertaining to DisruptJ20.org, and rejecting the rival proposed orders filed by the prosecutors and by DreamHost. We were […]