Ramsey v. Harman, — S.E.2d —-, 2008 WL 2415127 (N.C.App. June 17, 2008)

Defendant Harman maintained a blog on which she put up some posts accusing plaintiff Ramsey’s daughter of being a bully. Harman also posted this:

With all the bulling [sic] and harassing that goes on in our school system. Then the trouble that went on Friday at Madison Middle. The first student in that age group that came to mind was [plaintiff]’s daughter. Wasn’t this the student that harassed the Cantrell child? And we wonder why some kids hate to go to school…..

Ramsey apparently took great offense, filing suit against Harman for “stalking” under North Carolina law, and sought a “civil no-contact order” (like a restraining order) against Harman. The trial court granted the no-contact order and Harman sought review with the state appellate court. On appeal, the court reversed.

Harman argued that the lower court erred in finding that she had violated the state’s anti-stalking law (N.C. Gen. Stat. §50C-1(6)). She also argued the order violated her First Amendment rights. Because the court found there was insufficient evidence to support a violation of the statute, it did not need to rule on the constitutional issue.

The main question before the court was whether Harman’s blog posts were intended to cause, and indeed did cause, “substantial emotional distress” to Ramsey and her daughter. The court found there was no such showing. There were no threats of physical harm, and the only evidence as to the effect on the plaintiff’s daughter was that she was “embarrassed” when teachers at school were reading the blog posts. But there was evidence that the school had blocked access to the website, making the claim implausible to begin with. There were no communications directly between the defendant and the plaintiff, and the plaintiff’s daughter’s name was never mentioned. Moreover, there was evidence that the posts were made in retaliation over a disagreement between the Harman and Ramsey which had taken place on a political website, and over an alleged threatening phone call Harman had gotten from some of Ramsey’s family members.

People v. Fernino, — N.Y.S.2d —-, 2008 WL 382348 (N.Y.City Crim.Ct. February 13, 2008)

An order of protection, issued by a New York family court, required that defendant Fernino have no contact with a certain Delgrosso. After Fernino added Delgrosso as a “friend” on MySpace, she was charged with contempt of court for allegedly violating the order of protection.

Fernino moved to dismiss the criminal complaint against her, arguing that even if the allegations were true, the purported “contact” through “friending” Degrosso would not support a conviction on the charges. The court denied the motion to dismiss.

Finding that adding Delgrosso as a friend in the social networking context was prohibited “contact,” the court cited to People v. Kochanowski, 186 Misc.2d 441, 442 (App Term, 2nd Dept 2000) and People v. Johnson, 208 A.D.2d 1051 (3rd Dept 1994). In Kochanowski, the appellate court affirmed the harassment conviction of a defendant who participated in building a bogus Web site containing, among other things, alluring pictures of his ex-girlfriend. In Johnson, the court held that the defendant committed aggravated harassment by responding to a personal ad in the victim’s name, causing the person placing the ad to contact the victim.

In this case, the court observed that even though Delgrosso could have simply denied the friend request, it was still a form of contact. It found that the form of communication was no different from the defendant having a third party say to Delgrosso, “Your former friend wants to communicate with you. Are you interested?”

It should also be noted that the court cited approvingly to Wikipedia for a description of MySpace and to Alexa for information about MySpace’s popularity.

Mark Fass of the New York Law Journal has more on this case here. The MyCrimeSpace blog has its take on the case here.  Also found on MyCrimeSpace is this article from last year about a poor chap in the UK who was found to have violated a restraining order for friending his ex-wife on Facebook.