When Bloggers Are Sued

I am a little late to the party, but it seems that Orthomom is being sued. A public official that was criticized on Orthomom's blog is the plaintiff. Here is a clip from Orthomom's blog:

"A LAWRENCE school board member fed up with anonymous kvetching about her on a blog is going to court to stop it from calling her a bigot and an anti-Semite.

Pamela Greenbaum, who serves on the Nassau town's board of education, filed papers against Google over nasty comments posted about her on the Orthomom blog.

In the papers filed Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, Greenbaum said she was "horrified" to discover that she had been labeled a bigot on the Google-owned blog after voting against using public funds for what she called "private school interests."

"I was even more horrified when I discovered the blog reported over 300,000 visitors," Greenbaum said in court papers.

Greenbaum alleges that Orthomom - which focuses on issues of interest to Long Island's Orthodox Jewish communities - slandered her by calling her ugly and an anti-Semite.

Greenbaum, who is Jewish but not Orthodox, seeks to unmask the blogger known only as Orthomom.

"Every day that the defamatory material remains on the Internet for all to see, I continue to be harmed as more such material is posted,"she said in court papers."

I wonder who serves as legal counsel for Ms. Greenbaum as this is most likely going to be a waste of money. There are different standards applied to proving slander/libel for public figures such as Greenbaum. She is going to have a tough time proving that those conditions exist.

300,000 visitors suggests that the blog reaches quite a large audience. However a simple audit will show that this is a number that was achieved over time. It is not a measure of daily traffic. However Greenbaum has done a great job of providing free PR for Orthomom, as well as providing the rest of us with great blog fodder.

In short this is likely to be a big waste of time and money for Greenbaum. Stay tuned to see what happens.

If you are really interested in hearing other opinions you can check in at the Orthomom roundup. If you are too lazy to click around here is an incomplete list:

Canonist
SerandEz
Krum as a Bagel
DovBear
Just Passing Through
Chaim
YidWithLid
Jameel
Jewess
At The Back Of the Hill
Rabbi Without A Cause
Charlie Hall
A Barbaric Yawp
Shimon
Suburban Kvetch
Meryl Yourish
Israel Matzav