Nervy lawsuit against William Freund's family.

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First off, when if comes to suits like this, lawyers tend to tell their clients to sue everyone remotely connected to this case in hopes that they can make it stick to someone/anyone. I am surprised that they did not subpoena Alex to find out who his mods where at this time to try to sue them individually for failure to act (and I am sure the Smith family lawyers wanted to).

However, to prove that we caused harm to the Smith family, they would have to prove that we knew for certain he was going to attack (you cannot say that for certain on the internet), he purposely failed to take action (we tried to contact the parents, I tried to find out where he lives to contact the authorities and failed, and we tried to convince him to seek help), not only that but he did not state what he was going to do and to whom so we could not have contacted the family, and that we caused the family harm by our actions. As far as contacting the police, even the Orange County Sheriff's office said that if we did contact them, they were still powerless because Will was an adult.

I feel for the family but I think this suit is going to cause more harm than good. Besides, next time a Will Freund comes up, they may not even say anything. I sure do hope the judge throws out the suit against WP.

So doesn't that prove that people from the website were at least trying to be proactive about what he said?

First off, it's aspies not ret*ds.

Second, I think you have a point. This is an online support group where we don't even know each other's real names, for goodness sake. Even if someone was disturbed to the point that they called the cops on this guy, would the cops have cared? I seriously doubt it. Somone sent my husband pictures of child porn and I had to really work my butt off to find a cop to take it seriously (Before you criticize me - we did delete it, since that it what you do with unwanted child porn. However, we wanted to tell the cops it was happenning since deleting it from my inbox will not stop whoever is hurting the child). This being said, I think WP should countersue for libel. The articles I have seen misrepresent WP as being obligated to report this stuff. We're not shrinks, so we have no obligation. Also, there's no way for us to know who is for real and who is just trying to troll around here. And WP does enforce its troll policy - I've seen several people kicked off.

Not to mention it's hard as hell trying to find out where every member lives, all their contact information, etc.

After that point, WP mods actively helped several members get help, one of whom went into the hospital.

I don't know what suicide/homicide threat policy is here now as I'm no longer a moderator. But I would hope it's the same as when I left, that all threats are taken seriously.

Personally, I don't think WP should be help accountable. First off, the guy did not say he was planning killing others, just doing himself in. If he did say he was going to shoot up alot of people, then yes WP can be sued if there was no attempt to contact the police.

Anyone could be sued. Even the hermit living in backwater Arkansas could be sued if they felt like it. As for whether they'd win, that'd be another story.

But this is not a site made up of mental health professionals who are held by law and the APA and other such organizations to be Mandated Reporters (i.e., must report when someone threatens harm to themselves or others). Therefore, there is no written law holding such a site accountable to my understanding.

It is of course better that WP members and mods attempted to help in what ways they could. But even if they had not, I doubt any such suit would be upheld.

Then again, I'm no lawyer.

Yeah my guess is they know WP has no money and there goal is to simple take control
of it and shut it down. I think thats what happened with Soldier of Fortune magazine when
it was sued for addvertising hired guns(oh I loved that magazine as a kid). My guess if they play hard ball and no one comes to Alex aid he will loose control of WP or several
thousand dollars in legal fees. Which might exceed the value of WP.

The value of Wrong Planet. The profits - minus the value of the work done by Alex
(figure $25 or so and hour) times some multipy like 20 and you likely get a negative
number or a number less than the legal budget.

If themachineis correct, we need a contingency plan in place. Only the admins here have the power for mass emailing.

Please, lets calm down.

First off, there will probably be prelim work while the juridstiction issues are worked out. Then the family will still have to prove that they have a case and that WP did not follow the law.

I do not think the family will be able to do so.

This is all very sad.

I have had someone try to sue me, even though it was a vexatious claim and it didn't get to court, it is still very unpleasant. (In Australia) I don't think there would be any basis of claim in this case and would expect it should be dismissed.

To succed in a claim, you have to have suffered a loss that can have quantifiable damages. That loss has to have been reasonably foreseeable and a duty of care has to have been owed to the person suffering the loss. I don't see how either can be established here.

"Swartz on Torts" is a good readable book about common law for anyone interested. From memory, Swartz is/was a professor at Uni Chicago and would have been a contempory of Milton Friedman.