A Florida woman has been awarded $11.3 million after she was libelled online.
The award, believed to be the largest verdict of it sort relating to individual postings on bulletin boards or blogs, was handed down by a jury in Broward County, Florida, against a woman from Louisiana. The sum included $5m (£2.7m) in punitive damages
British judges can’t pump up court payouts with punitive damages but it’s worth remembering this case when you’re tempted to get a bit erm, creative in the comments boxes.
With almost two new blogs created every second, and 1.6m postings each day, said the San Francisco site Technorati, the mass of unmediated comment from individuals is changing the face of media law. “This is a growing trend because of the exponential growth in the number of people publishing on the internet who do not have the training or oversight of traditional hardcopy publishers,” said Dave Heller, a lawyer with the New York-based Media Law Resource Center which monitors legal actions arising from the web.
Craig Delsack, a media lawyer in Manhattan, said that many bloggers were publishing first, thinking later: “People are thinking they can say what they want but they don’t realise the long-lasting implications of what they write and that they can be held accountable. Posting is not like having a conversation in the bedroom with your boyfriend.”