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IVIZE at ILTA 2008 The IVIZE Team attended the 2008 ILTA show in Dallas, Texas. “We are very excited and equally honored to have won this award”, John Holland, Senior Vice President leading IVIZE’s Discovery Management Group. “Sustainability is very important to us as a company and this award recognizes that commitment to our industry. IVIZE is very proud of receiving First Place for the ILTA Green Challenge.” IVIZE would like to thank everyone who took the time to visit our booth and the ILTA members and staff for the recognition. The Request for Production You Never Saw Coming: Match.com Profile as Evidence Dating is not always easy. Dating outside of a marriage is just asking for trouble. The key evidence in a recent marriage fraud case was the Defendant’s Match.com profile. Now, there was other substantial evidence in the case, but the evidence the court spent the most time on was a witness from Match.com.[1] The Defendant was a Bulgarian national in the United States on a student visa. The month her visa was to expire, she married a man from Bulgaria. After an investigation by INS, the Defendant was charged with marriage fraud. The Match.com evidence included the following: · An updated profile after the marriage for continued dating; · Profile said “never married;” · Communicated with others on Match.com after “marriage.” The evidence was sufficient to show the Defendant knowingly entered into a fraudulent marriage for the purpose of obtaining immigration benefits. The explosion of online dating, social networking sites and other online activity is fueling a never ending creation of electronically stored information. Effectively using this information is a new challenge for lawyers. For example, if a Match.com or Facebook profile is evidence, how to you capture it? Can a paralegal just print it? Should you save it as a PDF? Do you need an expert to collect the webpage with special software? The answer is: “It depends on the facts.” More importantly, how do you authenticate this electronically stored information? If you do not want a situation where your paralegal may have to testify, an outside expert may be necessary. This person might be a consultant hired to collect the information from the internet or a witness subpoenaed from the website. Many lawyers’ heads spin at the idea of an online personal ad being evidence. However, we live in a world where people post their lives online. The electronically stored information is waiting online; whether or not it is relevant is for lawyers to investigate. A New Level of Competency: Effective Case Pleading for Online Torts Lawyers are charged with a duty of competency to their clients, which require the “legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary” for the representation.[1] This duty takes a new spin when it comes to drafting pleadings in cases arising from online torts. Leser v. Karenkooper.com, 2008 NY Slip Op 50135U ( N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2008 ) highlights the challenges lawyers now face in traditional pleading with cyber-tortfeasing. In Leser, the plaintiff maintained an online store and sued another online store for false claims made online about the Plaintiff. The allegations included using the Plaintiff’s name, photo and e-mail address on the internet, as well as a pornographic website, in order to cast plaintiff in a negative light.[2] Plaintiff’s facts sound like the case you want to take: A woman being wronged, including her image appearing on an adult website, for sinister corporate warfare. Leser ends with most of the Plaintiff’s causes of action being dismissed. What went wrong? The Amended Complaint contained the following Causes of Action: First: statutory identity theft pursuant; Second: intentional infliction of economic damage; Third: tortious interference with prospective economic advantage; Fourth: libel and casting plaintiff in a false light; Fifth: conversion and misappropriation; Sixth: fraud; and Seventh: breach of plaintiff’s right to privacy and right to seclusion. The Defendants moved to dismiss the Amended Complaint with prejudice for failure to state a cause of action. The libel cause of action survived only in part. The Court went through each entity sued and cause of action with a fine legal comb. First, the dot com entity sued (Karencooper.com) was dismissed as a trade name with “no jural existence” that could not be sued independently of its owner. Next, the first cause of action sought a claim under a statute that did not apply to the parties and was accordingly dismissed. The second cause of action was dismissed for a failure to plead special damages and intent. This goes on for each cause of action. The libel cause of action survived on principles of libel per se, because posting photos of a woman on an adult site would impute unchastity to plaintiff. However, the other libel cause of action failed to state, “the particular words complained of” and was also dismissed. One wonders if the plaintiff had been a man if this would have survived, since libel per se’s unchastity provision only apples to women. The Amended Complaint in Leser failed because the lawyers were in new territory: They knew there was a wrong done unto their client online, but didn’t have the experience to apply the law to cyber-facts. A lawyer’s duty of competency should require them to understand the “virtual” facts and technology at work, which statutes and common law claims apply to those facts and plead their case to effectively represent their clients. Cases such as Leser will be more common place and lawyers need to be ready to vindicate their client’s rights. Welcome to the AdVizer |
IVIZE will donate $1 to the Arbor Day Foundation for every “Leaf” it collected during the conference. The completed leaves were attached to the IVIZE tree in the booth which was covered by the end of the conference. IVIZE also gave attendees recycled circuit board key chains and their promotional material was printed on recycled post-consumer waste paper with soy ink. 
