A 1996 federal law that protects website publishers from being held liable for comments hasn’t been tested in a Connecticut court — and doesn’t necessarily hold weight in a Derby defamation lawsuit.
That’s what attorney William Wynne argues in court filings in Renee Luneau versus Ken Hughes, Christopher Bigelow and Connecticut Local Politics, LLC.
Wynne represents Luneau in the lawsuit, filed in 2009.
Luneau is seeking at least $15,000 in damages over vicious, profane comments attacking her on a Derby political blog. Luneau is a former member of the Derby Board of Education.
The attacks allegedly appeared on the blog the day after Luneau spoke at a Derby Board of Aldermen meeting. It is not clear who actually authored the posts, though court documents mention an anonymous user called “Ansonia Annie.”
Hughes was the blog’s administrator. Bigelow provided space for the blog on CTLocalPolitics.net. Both the Derby blog and its parent blog, CTLocalPolitics.net, are no longer in existence.
Wynne argues in court documents that Hughes and Bigelow should have done more to prevent the comments about Luneau from being published.
Luneau’s lawsuit faces a tall stumbling block. The 1996 Federal Communications Decency Act provides that generally, website publishers are not responsible for comments a reader posts on a website.
However, the times may be changing, Wynne argues.
The “contours” of the 1996 law “have not been defined or applied by any Connecticut court to the set of facts before us in this present case,” Wynne writes.
Furthermore, Wynne argues the Luneau case is different than the norm.
“ … the true inquiry should be what ‘fingerprints’ the defendants had upon the defamatory statements,” Wynne writes. “A careful review of the facts reveals that the defendant’s fingerprints were all over the actions in this case.”
The court filings don’t elaborate on what precisely those fingerprints were — but e‑mails submitted into the record indicate that Hughes and Bigelow traded e‑mails about blog comments around the time Derby resident Mel Thompson started filing lawsuits against various city residents.
Neither Wynne nor Hughes’ attorney returned calls for comment.
Hughes faced a two-hour deposition related to the case Sept. 24, 2010.
In the deposition, Hughes said the Derby blog’s goal was to give people a place on the web to talk about city issues.
“I understood my duties at the time to be to post topics to stimulate discussion among the residents of Derby,” Hughes said in the deposition.
To post comments on the site, a visitor needed to provide an e‑mail. However, the e‑mail did not have to be valid. Comments were not pre-screened before going live on the site.
Hughes said he did not anticipate that the comments on the blog would turn nasty.
The blog was online for about two years. Hughes said the blog went offline after the blog turned ugly.
Both Hughes and Bigelow have filed motions for summary judgment in an attempt to force a ruling in the case and avoid a protracted legal battle. There are no hearings scheduled.
Luneau’s father is Ron Luneau, an employee with the Derby Department of Public Works. Ron Luneau had a long labor battle with the city for the city’s handling of union workers at the Derby transfer station.
