Instant Noodle wrote:Poetlister wrote:The Garbage Scow wrote:Oh make no mistake, good old Mark knows how Wikipedia works. He's had accounts there almost as long as I have. He's just playing stupid. Well, really not just playing.
Here's
a link to his offer of Pro Bono work for anyone wishing to file a lolsuit.
Presumably the WMF would try to insist that any case is heard in California. Would they get away with that?
No, they might get away with that in the US but not internationally as long as the litigant could reasonably argue that the damage is occurring at least in part in the jurisdiction in which they are suing. IE if someone who lives in Ontario and files a lawsuit against in Wikipedia the court would likely find it has jurisdiction because the damage is occurring in Ontario. However, if someone is venue shopping and is just filing suit in a jurisdiction they don't have strong ties to because they think the laws are favourable then the court might find they don't have jurisdiction. (It depends on the country - UK courts often appear to have been quite willing to allow people with loose ties to the UK to sue parties that have no or loose ties to the UK - hence South Park's "I'll sue you in England" joke.) One could get a judgement against Wikipedia in a court outside the US but the question that would be whether a judgment for damages could be enforced inside the US. Probably not. But if the WMF has any assets in Canada or the UK or another country in which a lawsuit has been filed they could be garnished to satisfy the judgment. If someone got a court order against Wikipedia in a particular country Wikipedia would probably respect that at least by blocking the page in question from appearing in that country (although I think they'd probably take down the page entirely or remove the offending passages if there was a court order in Canada or the EU requiring them to do so.)
In the U.S., when we're not talking about forum selection clauses, the way this usually works is in terms of personal jurisdiction—whether it comports with due process to haul the defendant into that jurisdiction's courts. Few courts in the U.S. have a geographical or territorial dimension to their subject matter jurisdiction. There is also venue, but that's different from forum, and if I recall correctly, not of jurisdictional dimension. Thus, it is possible to litigate something that took place overseas in a U.S. court provided you can get personal jurisdiction over the defendants.
What the location of the incident precipitating the lawsuit can affect is something called "choice of law". For instance, which jurisdiction's laws (including case law) are used to interpret contract provisions? Or to determine whether particular substantive defenses are recognized? The process for figuring out which law applies is complicated; there are whole treatises dedicated to this. This is also an issue with international litigation, where I believe it's called private international law.
What else can happen in U.S. courts is a motion to dismiss for
forum non conveniens, which is basically what you're talking about Instant Noodle: The forum where the suit was filed isn't appropriate for one reason or another, even though the suit isn't jurisdictionally barred, and there's another, more appropriate forum available to hear the suit. This is one possible outcome where someone's trying to litigate with foreign defendants over something that happened overseas.
Forum non conveniens tends to be pretty discretionary, as I recall, so it's not something you like to try for if you can help it. You'd rather get the suit dismissed entirely on jurisdictional grounds or mandatory grounds.
“It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.” United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 68, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J. dissenting).
) I do believe there was a legitimate concern that it would look like the tail was wagging the dog, so to speak, because of the very public blog post over here, but the lack of an actual sockpuppet investigation ever being filed over there.
