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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Giordano Bruno who wrote (62069)	6/11/1999 8:37:00 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

As a Virginia attorney, may I say that the real meat of the opinion, which is towards the bottom of the article, is, as usual, more substantial and different than the sensational part of the article at the beginning. The Plaintiff lived in Virginia, and sued in federal court under diversity jurisdiction, that is, the Plaintiff and the Defendant live in different states. In diversity cases, state law controls the substance and procedure (broadly speaking). For purposes of establishing whether the Defendant could be forced to come to Virginia to litigate, the Virginia long-arm statute controls. The question is, where did the defamation occur? Under Virginia law, it's where the Plaintiff suffered injury. Because the Plaintiff lived in Virginia, he was injured in Virginia. That's not quite enough. The next question is, was it foreseeable to the Defendant that the Plaintiff would be injured in Virginia? Here is where the opinion treads on what appears to be novel grounds, Judge Ellis says yes, because AOL's servers are in Virginia. But that's no more novel than cases where people have sued Hustler or the New York Times in a state where other than where these national publications were printed, under the theory that the publishers knew that the magazines or newspapers would be distributed nationwide. Here, the Defendants knew that their defamatory acts would be distributed to Virginia. Is that sufficient "minimum contact" with Virginia to satisfy the requirement of due process? I'd have to say yes, but it's just barely sufficient. Just barely enough. Tough call.