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Jurisdiction: A Shot Across the Bow

Comments: 5

An unsurprising U.S. response to the the recent Australian High Court libel ruling. Via dangerousmeta.

U.S. says no to Aussie libel lawsuit
Declan McCullagh, ZDNet

Less than a week after Australia’s high court issued a ruling suggesting that online publishers are fair game for libel suits anywhere their content appears, a U.S. federal court has veered in the opposite direction.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said two Connecticut newspapers could not be sued for libel in a Virginia court on the basis of allegedly defamatory articles posted on their Web sites.

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Posted to General Rants • 2002.12.18 (Wed) • 12:34

Comments

Posted by Jason Cha 2002.12.18, 15:04

I think the comparison between the two cases is inappropriate, given that they decided two completely different issues - personal jurisdiction and choice of law.

The 4th Circuit ruled that based on the facts of this case, that the two newspapers local to Connecticut (at least in terms of hardcopies and subscriptions) had insufficient contacts with the state of Virginia, based solely on their web publishing/web editions, to be found to be subject to personal jurisdiction therein under Virginia’s long arm statutes.

I’m unfamiliar with Australian law on personal jurisdiction, but in the opinion, it appears that Dow Jones chose not to argue challenging the case on the grounds of personal jurisdiction/long-arm jurisdiction provisions. See paragraph 9 of the opinion.

Instead Dow Jones focused on the choice of law issue, on which the High Court of Australia ruled should be Australian law.

It just strikes me as comparing apples to oranges. We’re left not knowing a) how Australia would rule on a personal jurisdiction case, especially one involving facts similar to that of the Connecticut newspapers or b) how a US court would rule on the choice of law where the defamation occured in the US with US residents.

My guess would be that each court faced with the other issue would probably rule in a similar fashion - i.e., that Australia would find a lack of personal jurisdiction and the US would apply US law on defamation occuring in the US.

-Jason

Posted by tomas 2002.12.19, 02:37

This feels weird, but I’ve gotta say I’m with the American court on this one. I mean, if not, every website on the internet would have to comply with all laws of all countries.

Unless, Australia somehow think they’re special and only their laws have to be followed by all content providers of all nations.

If Australia want to censor the inappropriate parts of the internet, like China does, that’s up to them to do, but the rest of the world does not have to comply to their laws. And, while on the topic, the world does not have to comply to American laws, either.

I dunno, the Australian court must have not realized the full extent of what they were doing, or something..

Posted by trim spa 2003.11.24, 03:11