‘Cyber’ Lawyer’s Threats, Intimidation Shut Down Web Site

A Virginia lawyer used intimidation and bullying tactics, including spurious trademark infringement and defamation claims, to shut down a Web site that criticized him, Public Citizen argued today in lawsuit filed against the lawyer and his firm.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, seeks an order that would prevent John Dozier of Dozier Internet Law from pursuing defamation and trademark claims against Ronald Riley, who runs the Web site CyberTrialLawyer-Sucks.com. The suit also asks for attorneys’ fees, court costs and $1,000 in punitive damages.

In the past month, three successive Internet hosting companies have taken down Riley’s Web site after each company received a warning letter from Dozier. Among Dozier’s complaints was that Riley used his firm’s name to link to an unrelated Web site, which Dozier claimed was a trademark infringement. In at least two cases, companies were told that if they didn’t take down CyberTrialLawyer-Sucks.com, they would run the risk of having the Web sites of all their clients shut down.

+ Ronald Riley v. John Dozier documents

Source: Public Citizen

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 and is filed under Censorship, Search News, Technology and Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.