November 13, 2005
For Online Parents' Group, a Legal Scare
By MOTOKO RICH, NY TIMES

LINK

In Park Slope, where strollers rule the sidewalks, parents have come to depend on an online message board where they can swap tips on toilet training, the best place to buy rain boots for toddlers, and how to keep goldfish from dying.

But when a recent question about a preschool prompted a mother and shop owner to recount a bad business encounter with the school's director, the husband of the school's director threatened to sue the board's moderators for defamation.

To 3,000 families that subscribe to the online board, parkslopeparents@yahoogroups.com, this was serious. Some said the threat of a lawsuit endangered their ability to freely express their (often heated) opinions on anything from the quality of restaurants to whether parents should give their nannies drug tests.

Susan Fox founded the message board three years ago as a new mother looking to make connections with other neighborhood parents. Occasionally, she said, if a message seems likely to inflame other members, she or one of five other moderators will send a private e-mail message suggesting that someone "think before you push the send button."

As she prepared cheese omelets on Friday evening for her two daughters, Samantha, 4, and Sabrina, 21 months, Ms. Fox said she never wanted to censor anybody. "My greatest fear is that the list mutates into an overly polite, overly P.C. list that does not speak its mind," she said.

But Ms. Fox and her fellow moderators found themselves threatened with a lawsuit after Lisa Meyer, owner of the Painted Pot, a do-it-yourself pottery store, posted a message last month saying that she sued the preschool, Midwood Montessori, in small-claims court three years ago over an unpaid $350 bill. Edward B. Safran, a lawyer and the husband of the school's director, Harriet Safran, demanded in several e-mail messages that Ms. Fox remove Ms. Meyer's post.

Ms. Fox offered to let Ms. Safran respond to the offending post on the message board. In her rebuttal, Ms. Safran accused Ms. Meyer of defamation and added that the Painted Pot had "failed to deliver what was promised." Ms. Safran and Ms. Meyer agreed in their posts that a judge had ordered the school to pay half the bill. Ms. Meyer, reached by telephone, declined to comment.

In subsequent e-mail messages to Ms. Fox, Mr. Safran said that if Ms. Meyer's post was not deleted from the message board, he would sue its moderators, saying they had published libelous content.

Ms. Fox said she did not want to set a precedent allowing anyone who objected to a post to "bully us" into deleting it.

But as Mr. Safran's threats of a lawsuit continued, the moderators were scared into shutting down the message group's entire archives this month. The action prompted an outpouring of messages from members, many of them angry. David Alquist, a father of two teenage daughters, complained about people who are "trying to intimidate and silence us." He wrote that he did not know what the matter was about, but added that "it is too silly for words."

In an interview, Mr. Alquist said he disregarded many of the critical posts on the list.

"It's hard to imagine how someone could be truly wronged by a random posting by a stranger," he said. "Pretty soon we'll say people aren't allowed to talk to each other in the streets. It's nuts."

But Nancy Workman, one of the board's moderators, acknowledged that she had avoided a local store after reading a negative post. Although she does not advocate censorship, she said, "we have to be careful both as people who post messages and as we read messages to be mindful" of the potential to influence neighbors' behavior.

Last week, a local parent helped recruit Christopher Wolf, chairman of the Internet law group at the law firm Proskauer Rose in Washington, to give pro bono advice to the Park Slope moderators.

Mr. Wolf said that he had told the moderators that under federal law they were not liable for Ms. Meyer's post and that he had called Mr. Safran to tell him he had no case.

Mr. Wolf added that under the federal Communications Decency Act, Internet service providers, Web site operators and bulletin board hosts were exempted from liability for the statements of others. People who post libelous statements can be subject to defamation suits, he said.

Mr. Safran said, "This matter has been settled," later adding that he did not intend to file a lawsuit against the moderators. Ms. Fox said the moderators were waiting for him to sign a letter affirming that.

Ms. Fox said she intended to reopen the parkslopeparents archives this weekend, with Ms. Meyer's post removed. Ms. Fox said she wanted to remind people that they were responsible for their own posts, although she did not want "to put the fear of God in anyone."

But she added, "We are happy to get back to talking about how to get a baby to take a bottle."

Internet Law Library