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Gossip Blog 'TheDirty.com' Hit With $11 Million Defamation Judgment

By Bruce Carton

A story today involving a Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader shows the significant hot water bloggers can get into if they ignore the law. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman ordered a gossip blog called TheDirty.com to pay cheerleader Sarah Jones $11 million for libel and defamation resulting from allegedly false accusations that Jones had sex with Bengal football players and had two venereal diseases. TheDirty.com failed to respond to the lawsuit that was filed in February, leading to the court's order which included $10 million in punitive damages. Cincinnati.com reports that Jones, who also works as a high school teacher, filed the lawsuit after the site refused her repeated requests to take down the posts. TheDirty.com is a popular website operated by Hooman Karamian, who writes under the name ?Nik Ritchie.? It also received publicity recently after it was discovered that Dan Quayle's son, Ben Quayle, now a candidate for Congress in Arizona, at one time wrote posts for the site. In her lawsuit, Jones laid out the havoc caused by TheDirty.com's posts about her. Among other things, she says: she had to face fellow teachers and cheerleaders after the post was published and explain that it wasn?t true; her cheerleader...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on August 27, 2010 (boomark / email).