Customizing SMF > Building Your Community and other Forum Advice

Do Forum Owners Need a Lawyer?

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Uhura!:
We only have ~ 780 members so we're not a "Big Board" but my site is growing and we are engaged in several activities: We do contests & giveaways, Guest Articles, we offer Paid Advertising, and we even run free classes about how to use Twitter for marketing from time to time.

For the most part, running my site has been a very good experience; however, there are times when I have dealt with "interesting" personalities who inevitably threaten to sue the site.

Do forum owners get threatened with law suits a lot?

Do you know of any lawsuits against forum owners?

Do I need to retain a lawyer? What is the best way to do this with a limited budget?

ApplianceJunk:
I have never been threatened with a law suite.

I personally would never respond to any type of threat. Doing so would just feed the troll. ;)
I have no idea what happens when one gets sued, but I would guess you would get something official in the mail or served papers.

At that point I would go talk to a lawyer, until then I would just blow it off. :)

ApplianceJunk:
So someone has threatened you with a law suite then?

Uhura!:
In the 5 years I have had my forum, I have been threatened with a law suit three times. Each time was after we banned someone.

The forum is growing and I plan to LLC it, so I am trying to take logical steps.

Here's a recent example (though it doesn't seem to be a direct threat, the person appear to be escalating their behavior & they stated that they are a lawyer and made a few claims about legal liability):

Two people got into a disagreement on another Internet website. One of them, claiming to be a lawyer, posted the other's full name along with private exchanges they had on the other website on my website. The area of my site she posted this to was semi private (access by request / approval only.)

I promptly removed the post and then banned the person. The banned person contacted my site via email to argue that the post should have remained because it was a "warning" to our members that the other person is an "Internet Predator." (It appeared to be a simple disagreement. Nothing sexual, nothing threatening violence, etc.) She claimed that if the other person did anything negative to another member of my site, my site could be held legally liable. The banned person claimed that if the other person contacted her again, my site could be held legally liable (although in the private exchanges the other person stated clearly that they would no longer neither read nor respond to any messages from the banned person.) I responded that the post was removed because it contained personally identifiable information (another member's full name) along with private exchanges without that person's permission - which is a violation of the Registration Agreement and Community Guidelines. The banned person then made PDF copies of some the private exchanges they had with the other person at the other site and sent them via email to my site as "evidence" of the other person's "predatory intentions / behavior with a repeated statement of the claims above.

busterone:
I have experienced something similar, around 3 years ago. One member was posting and also PMing other members claiming that one particular member was a predator. The one accusing lived in the US, the one accused was in the UK. It was obvious that it was just a trolling grudge to me, so I tried editing and deleting posts. He persisted, so I banned him. He returned several times using a proxy and new credentials, threatening a suit. I laughed him off.  He eventually gave up and has not been back in about 2 1/2 years. He did cause a stir and some people actually believed his lies and left the forum, but overall, it was just a bunch of hot air.

I wish you well Uhuha, I really don't think your troublemaker has a leg to stand on either. 

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