Unknown Homeowner v. Madison [1]

Mike Madison and two co-bloggers published Blog-Lebo [2], which covers matters of local interest in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

In September 2007, Madison posted about a neighborhood dispute that arose when a local homeowner re-landscaped his backyard and blocked (or threatened to block) a stone path that was popularly understood to be protected by a recorded easement. Many readers commented on the post. One commenter identified the homeowner by name and another (apparently one of Madison's co-bloggers) commented that the owner, who is a lawyer, should have known better than to buy real estate without checking the record for easements.

Days later, Madison and his co-bloggers received a letter from the lawyer/homeowner demanding that they remove the post or face a lawsuit for defamation. Madison, a lawyer and law professor experienced in Internet law, was willing to stand up against what he saw as legally and factually baseless claims. His co-bloggers had a different reaction altogether -- one wanted to take the post down immediately, and the other withdrew from the blog. (It looks like the second co-blogger also withdrew at some point later.) In a subsequent blog post [3] on his madisonian.net blog, Madison sums up the dilemma he faced as follows:

Blogging lesson number one: All of the noblest rhetoric from Chilling Effects and the EFF and law faculty colleagues is terrific, but it doesn’t mean a lot when your co-blogger turns to jelly. Should lawyers blog with non-lawyers? Maybe not; maybe lawyers simply see the world in a different light. My co-bloggers and I didn’t (and don’t) have a formal co-blogging agreement or liability-shielding arrangement, but even if we had, it’s clear that the dynamic would have played out essentially as it did. We had discussed dealing with hypothetical defamation claims, and I had walked through the immunity analysis under Section 230 of the CDA. All seemed well. But when push came to shove, the non-lawyers got extremely nervous. There was no trust. At that moment, our relative aversion to risk was quite different, and I felt that I couldn’t leave the post up if it meant that my co-blogger would remain frightened.

So down the post came.

Madison not only took down the "offending" post, but ended up suspending [4] Blog-Lebo entirely (see his explanation [5] for the suspension on Pittsblog). The surprise happy ending to the story is that Blog-Lebo's readers clamored for the blog to return, one of Madison's co-bloggers (Joe Polk) rethought the situation, and the blog is back up.