Re: 7/12/00 - Credit Suisse sues over Yahoo! message board
Wednesday July 12, 7:51 pm Eastern Time
Credit Suisse sues over Yahoo! message board
NEW YORK, July 12 (Reuters) - Credit Suisse First Boston filed a lawsuit on Wednesday alleging that 11 people posted bogus messages on a Yahoo! Inc. (NasdaqNM:YHOO - news) message board slandering a Credit Suisse analyst and illegally copying the analyst's research.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that the posted messages ``contain false and defamatory statements regarding the integrity and professional and business reputation of CSFB and one of its research analysts.''
Credit Suisse did not name the Internet giant Yahoo! as a defendant in the suit. This filing comes on the heels of last Friday's discovery of false statements made online in the name of US Bancorp analyst Ashok Kumar.
The suit named only one of the 11 people who have posted the insulting messages on Yahoo!'s Finance Message Board, Chuan Chang of Colt's Neck, NJ, who uses the screen name ``binisello88.'' In a sign of the times of Internet ``whispers'' and anonymous online comments, the other ten people charged in the suit are named only by their Yahoo! screen names.
The other defendants are not named in part because Credit Suisse First Boston only knows their screen names at this point, according to a company spokesman.
Chang could not be reached at his New Jersey home Wednesday night.
The suit accuses the message-board writers of committing libel.
"Defendant Chang and defendants DOE I through DOE X used a telecommunications device, in interstate or foreign communications, without disclosing their identity and with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass the persons who received the communications," the filing states.
The Credit Suisse spokesman would not identify the analyst but said that some of the analyst's research was reprinted on the message boards without the analyst's permission.
A Yahoo! spokesperson said that the company does not release message board content except when the information is subpoenaed. Yahoo! can only assure the identity of its message board participants insofar as those people provide information, the spokesperson said.
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