Defamation Suit Sent Ex-Boxer
Reeling From Stock-Chat Ring
By JOHN R. EMSHWILLER
Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
For years, Gary Dobry was content to let 200-pound sluggers try to knock him out. Then, he began really living dangerously -- on Internet stock-discussion boards.
The result: The former amateur boxer today sits with a $1 million damages payment hanging over his head, ready to drop if he launches even one wrong word into cyberspace. That threat is the result of a suit, filed in New Hampshire federal court, by an angry business executive claiming that Mr. Dobry and an associate hit him with some low blows in online messages. Mr. Dobry allegedly posted false Internet messages accusing the executive of questionable stock transactions and dealing with "known felons."
As part of settling that suit earlier this month, Mr. Dobry also had to make a public apology that has circulated widely on the Web. Mr. Dobry and the associate "have agreed to keep their mouths shut," says Gregory Martucci, their lawyer.
So it isn't all that surprising that the nearly 6-foot-tall, 250-pound Mr. Dobry has decided that right hooks are less hazardous than left clicks. He says he is renouncing the Internet stock-message world, where during the past three years he has posted thousands of messages. He says he plans to focus on running his Pug's Boxing Gym in Palatine, Ill., and building his career as an artist. An exhibit of his paintings is scheduled for later this year at a Chicago art gallery.
His experience in the world of Web messages and bulletin-board stocks has left him with battle scars and strong opinions. "The whole market" for smallcompany stocks, he contends, "is nothing but organized crime."
Well, a bit of an overstatement, that. But what is clear is that Mr. Dobry is the latest casualty in the burgeoning lawsuit wars being fought in the Internet stockmessage world as companies and individuals fight back against online critics.
The settlement offers a glimpse of how corporations' suits against online critics sometimes get resolved. At least 80 cases have been filed by companies claiming that they or their managers were defamed on Internet message boards. Legal specialists say few ever get to trial, largely because most individual defendants settle out of court.
The terms of these settlements typically are confidential. Megan Gray, a Los Angeles lawyer who defends clients in Internet-libel cases, says such confidentiality is what the suing companies are seeking, adding: "The whole point of these suits is to silence people."
Companies generally say they file these actions to defend their reputations. To ignore malicious postings, they say, is to acknowledge -- at least tacitly -- that they are true.
While most such suits have been filed by small publicly held companies, bigger companies also are joining the fray. Earlier this month, for example, Credit Suisse First Boston, a unit of Switzerland's Credit Suisse Group, filed a federal suit in New York City against 11 individuals for posting "false and defamatory" messages about one of the brokerage firm's analysts.
Unlike the typical Internet lawsuit defendant, the 34-year-old Mr. Dobry built his online reputation as a defender of small companies. Indeed, he had been a vigorous advocate of suing so-called online bashers. That he found himself accused of being a basher is a measure of the topsyturvy nature of the message boards.
Mr. Dobry says he was introduced to the stock-chat world about four years ago while researching a stock tip from someone working out at his gym. When he plugged the stock's name into an Internet search engine, he discovered Silicon Investor, which has since grown into a major online stock-discussion operation. He started reading and got hooked. He began buying some small-company stocks and posting his own messages, usually using the online moniker "Pugs."
"I was naive," he recalls. "I didn't believe people would lie." Mr. Dobry says misplaced trust in one small company cost him about $20,000.
But the stock he most fervently believed in and fought for was a little Las Vegas company called Amazon Natural Treasures Inc., which sold products from the Brazilian rain forest. He even started an Amazon Natural message board.
In defense of Amazon, Mr. Dobry did daily battle with an equally dedicated band of company critics, particularly a well-known Internet poster named Janice Shell. Mr. Dobry argues that Ms. Shell is part of a large and illegal conspiracy aimed at manipulating stock prices.
Ms. Shell denies that charge. But she nevertheless says she "desperately" misses Mr. Dobry's criticisms since he has quit the message boards. "It's hard to go cold turkey," she says. Late Sunday, Ms. Shell said she believed Mr. Dobry posted some new messages under another name -- an assertion Mr. Dobry denies.
It was Mr. Dobry's efforts to root out what he saw as improper trading tactics that got him into his current legal tangle. He posted messages on Silicon Investor and Raging Bull about a British businessman named Michael Zwebner, who is chairman of a Miami video-teleconferencing company called Talk Visual Corp. Mr. Zwebner posts sometimes-tart online responses to critics.
In one such message, Mr. Zwebner promised to deliver "FACTS and the TRUTH, not rumors, lies, innuendo and false allegations."
In his lawsuit, filed in 1998 against Mr. Dobry and others, Mr. Zwebner accused the defendants of spreading "false and defamatory information" about him in connection with alleged short-selling activities and dealings with criminals.
Mr. Dobry says he became interested in Mr. Zwebner because of information from a fellow Internet poster whom he mistakenly believed was trustworthy. While Mr. Dobry previously apologized online for some of his suspicions, he has difficulty pulling his punches. In an April Internet message -- well after the suit was filed -- Mr. Dobry wrote to Mr. Zwebner: "You are truly full of ####."
Mr. Dobry's opponent got in the last blow, though. In settling the suit, Mr. Dobry signed a statement that "totally and absolutely" apologized for the "public humiliation" he caused Mr. Zwebner. Mr. Dobry also agreed to pay $1 million if he ever discusses the business executive.
Mr. Dobry says he settled because he didn't want the dispute to "escalate" into something that threatened him or his business activities. These days, his advice to would-be online stock players is to stay out of the ring. "Find a mutual fund with a good manager," he says.
--Aaron Elstein of WSJ.com contributed to this article.
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