DOCTOR WINS LIBEL LAWSUIT
Internet posting triggered case
Dr. Sam D. Graham Jr. resigned as chairman of the urology department at Emory University School of Medicine in July 1998 after leading the department from probationary status to a reputation as one of the top 20 departments in the country.
"I made it very open and clear that I was leaving on good terms," Graham said of his decision to move to Richmond and go into private practice here.
But a friend told him in February 1999 to check a posting on a Yahoo! message board on the Internet for Grocer Inc.
The message, posted by someone who identified himself only as "fbiinformant," suggested that Graham had taken kickbacks from Urocor after giving the department's pathology business to the Oklahoma-based company.
"This worked out well until the poor SOB got caught with his hand in the cookie jar," the message concluded. "Poor guy had to resign his prestigious position."
Last week, a judge entered a $675,000 judgment against Dr. Jonathan R. Oppenheimer, the pathologist who posted the message.
Graham's attorneys, D. Alan Rudlin and J. Burke McCormick, said they believe the judgment is the first, and certainly the largest, libel verdict based on an anonymous Internet message.
It was the result of a trial before U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams in October. A jury recommended that Oppenheimer and a pathology services corporation he owned pay Graham $325,000 in compensatory damages and $350,000 to punish Oppenheimer for his misconduct.
On Thursday, Williams rejected motions by an attorney for Oppenheimer to set aside the jury's verdict or grant him a new trial. Instead, Williams ordered Oppenheimer to pay the verdict and said he would have to post a $750,000 bond to appeal the case to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Graham recalled his reaction to the message. "I was shocked. Everything I've done in my life was honorable. When I was accused of this, it was terrible."
He responded on the message board that the decision to hire Urocor was for sound medical and business reasons.
"I never personally received a dime for Urocor," he wrote. "What you state in your message is a lie, and I demand that you produce the source of your information."
Williams noted that Oppenheimer had never met Graham and called the anonymous attack "about as despicable as any course of conduct that one could engage in."
Rudlin said the thrust of Oppenheimer's defense was that Internet message boards contain free-wheeling exchanges of information to a very limited audience and that no one takes the messages seriously.
Oppenheimer also contended that Graham hadn't shown any damage in the way of loss of business or harm to his reputation.
Rudlin responded that the law doesn't require him to show such damage because the false information accused him of a crime and attacked him professionally.
McCormick said tracking down the identity of fbiinformant was a time-consuming and expensive task. He filed a suit styled Graham v. John Doe in state court, so that he could issue subpoenas to Yahoo! and then to Internet service providers to try to track down fbiinformant's identity.
Internet companies typically resist identifying users of their systems and respond only to a subpoena or other court order, McCormick said.
Finally, an attorney for Urocor became aware of the litigation and told him that Oppenheimer and fbiinformant were the same person. "I didn't believe it at first," McCormick said.
But Oppenheimer admitted it during the trial, McCormick said, and the duplicity made it much easier to convince the jury that he had acted with reckless disregard for the truth, the legal hurdle that Graham had to clear to win his case.
timesdispatch.com
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