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DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL HEARING SET IN "ANONYMOUS INTERNET" SPEECH
CASE
September 19, 2000
MIAMI -- The battle to protect anonymous speech on the Internet has moved into the Third District Court of Appeal, as attorneys representing the anonymous critics of former Hvide Marine boss Erik Hvide fight to keep the identities of their clients a secret.
At a hearing scheduled for Wednesday morning, ACLU cooperating attorney Lyrissa Lidsky, a University of Florida Law Professor, along with Christopher Hansen, assistant legal director of the National ACLU, will urge a panel of appellate judges to overturn a MiamiDade Circuit Court decision ordering America Online and Yahoo! to reveal the identities of their clients.
Oral arguments will begin at 9 a.m. September 20 in the Third District Court of Appeal, 2001 SW 117th Ave., in Miami, Florida.
This case, Hvide v. John Does 18, is one of a handful of nationwide Internet libel suits moving through the courts as corporations and their officers sue anonymous online critics. The ACLU's concern in this matter is that disclosure of the identities of anonymous critics violates First Amendment and privacy rights. Hvide, former boss of Hvide Marine, a global marine services company based in Ft. Lauderdale, is suing as many as eight people whose identities he does not yet know for posting allegedly false statements on a financial bulletin board -- a discussion forum where Internet users post comments on publiclytraded companies. He claims the statements led to his ouster as chief executive officer.
The ACLU Foundation of Florida filed a "friend-of-the-court brief" on behalf of Hvide's anonymous critics on February 22, and is now directly representing Hvide's anonymous critics on appeal from Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Eleanor Schockett's May 25th orders requiring America Online and Yahoo! to disclose the identities of Hvide's anonymous critics.
