A California appeals court has ruled an anonymous Internet poster does not have to reveal his (or her!) identity after being sued by a former executive at Florida’s SFBC International for “scathing verbal attacks.” SFBC runs human clinical trials for experimental medications, and has had a history of recent problems, including a tuberculosis outbreak at its large Miami facility.
Former XFBC chair and COO Lisa Krinsky filed a lawsuit against “Doe 6,” a placeholder name for an online poster whose online username is a Spanish-language expletive. Krinsky accused Doe 6 and nine other posters to Yahoo’s Finance site of (among other things) libel and fraud for postings they made about her while she was a company officer. Krinsky sough to subpoena Yahoo for the identities of the posters so the suits could move forward.
