Do you even read the stuff you link to Lat?

AK47 was not outted in the complaint.

The posters are scum, but this whole thing seems wrong.

Also, I believe :D was outted, not AK47.

Ciolli is rolling over on everbody, he's taking all their legal careers down with him!

Lat, you should redact this immediately, as it was :D, not AK47, who was outed in the complaint (maybe ak47 settled and coughed up the info).

uh huh, thats what they all say

I'm surprised Brian Leiter hasn't posted on this yet. Wouldn't it be great if Matthew Ryan turned out to be a law student at UT and posted half of this stuff while sitting in Leiter's class.

AK47 is :D.

HTH.

4:25 , what would Leiter write about? A study ranking the colossal blunders in this case?

4:25 , what would Leiter write about? A study ranking the colossal blunders in this case?

Leiter is notoriously anti-Auto Admit. It has been an ongoing feud for a long time. I figured he'd be salivating over these facts and search for this Defendant and sit on his lawn.

"The posters are scum, but this whole thing seems wrong."

How many times are you going to make this statement? No one feels sorry for you, AutoAdmit Troll; get over it.

AK-FIRST!

People named Matthew should be... er... nevermind.

Guys in my high school used to do backflips watching other people's self esteem getting raped all the time. It was no big deal.

Uh, the names are not even the same. The defendant spells his first name diffrently than the other guy.

If it's not the same Matthew C. Ryan, then why is the UT professor's bio removed from the UT site?

ok, so the caption says "Mathew" and the body of the complaint says "Matthew." I guess the Yale professor on the complaint didn't bother proofing.

The name is spelled the same everywhere in the complaint except the header, the possibility of coincidence on name, city, and profession is unlikely, and the guy's UT profile is removed. I think it's him.

@16:

Because it seems that the Plaintiffs' supporters are just as psychotic as the defendants, and have been harassing the heck out of the innocent professor.

3, what seems wrong is that these AutoAdmit commenters are allowed to remain anonymous.

18: "Header"? Are you a high school or college student?

Wow. First the Michael Vick stuff, now this...the Falcons can't buy a break w/ their QBs, huh?

Falcons should have known better than drafting a washed up QB from UPenn State.

can't wait to see AK47 outed.

:D is totally the UT guy.

Ha. Totally deserved.

I can't wait 'til they get the rest of those guys! At this rate they'll have them all served by 2034.

believe it or not but i met :D and he is not a law prof or otherwise affiliated w the law.

My money says :D is a college kid who lives next door to Prof. Ryan and uses his un-password-protected wireless.

The sincerely held beliefs that :D espoused were certainly coming from a teenager, not a professor.

29 - This sounds possible/likely.

That does seem possible, though it would still seem rather coincidental that a guy who is in trouble for what he posted on a legal site happened to be stealing the wireless of a law professor. It seems more likely that the professor is the guy. Occam's razor?

31 --- Seems reasonable. But there is apparently a math major at UT Austin, now a senior, with the same name. Don't see why a math person in the middle / beginning of college would be on a law board, but it is another possibility. Might suggest that the outing of :D will not ruin a legal career, as Ps hoped.

32 - I think :D started at the college board and "graduated" to the law board.

31: I don't see why, either. However, :D (or at least his online persona) was an undergrad, not a law student.

Oops, meant to direct that at 32, not 31.

--34

Let's make it a legal discussion. How do they get personal jurisdiction over this dude in Austin from their Connecticut forum?

Calder v. Jones

You can find Matthew C Ryan's firm bio on the web, he's a partner at a construction firm in Austin. Considering he graduated from law school over 10 years ago, I find it highly unlikely that he'd be hanging around a site like auto-admit. I think it's much more likely that it's the undergrad.

You can find Matthew C Ryan's firm bio on the web, he's a partner at a construction firm in Austin. Considering he graduated from law school over 10 years ago, I find it highly unlikely that he'd be hanging around a site like auto-admit. I think it's much more likely that it's the undergrad.

The NIED claim seems shaky, unless Connecticut has a very unusual definition. Any CT lawyers care to comment?

But his U. Texas professor bio has been taken down.

If there is an undergrad with the same name, perhaps U. Texas suspended the professor due to miscommunication? A bunch of lawyers at a law school would probably err towards CYA.

-31

My assumption would be that they took the bio down to prevent harassment. Who knows though.

A law student with the name of a law professor, posting these comments while sitting in Leiter's class? Could we all be so lucky?

Good point, or maybe just to try to prevent others from coming to the same incorrect conclusion about one of their faculty members. Who knows.

-31

Calder v. Jones? Sounds familiar, but it must require some intentional directing of D's activities toward the forum state, right? Is it enough that :D's postings were readable and in fact read by people in the forum state? I kind of doubt that's enough of a hook -- "minimum standards of justice and fair play," etc.

If the math student lived in a dorm as a freshman (probably required at UT), then it would be impossible to identify him from his IP address since that would be shared by everyone at the dorm.

45,

I'd think trying to slander someone you know lives in the forum state would cut it.

46,

colleges require students to register their computers in order to use the school's network. the school knows what student is assigned to each ip address at any given time. if somebody subpoenas the records, like the riaa has done on several occasions, it's easy info for the school to turn over.

I went to undergrad at UT and there wasn't any sort of registering laptops or anything on the network. If you used a campus computer you had to log in, but tracing that from years ago would be nearly impossible. Also, UT doesn't make freshman live in dorms, there isn't enough room.

How could anyone mix up AK47 and :D?

AK47 hated "Feminist Jill"

:D actually seems to be sweet on her...

http://hey-d-i-sat-next-to-jill-f-for-an-hour.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=295909&mc=41&forum_id=2

ABA journal says he is a UT student

http://abajournal.com/news/yale_students_start_naming_names_in_suit_over_anomymous_blog_posts/

The speculation can end now.

"Meanwhile, the situation has put an unwelcome spotlight on an entirely different person in Austin with a very similar name, who happens to be a local attorney and adjunct law professor at the University of Texas. He has been receiving some media inquiries.

The Mathew C. Ryan who is a UT student and a defendant in the litigation is not the Matthew C. Ryan who practices as a partner at a local law firm, Lemley has confirmed to ABAJournal.com."

Why is he blaming ATL for the hate mail? What was posted wasn't anything 30 seconds of googling Matthew C. Ryan in Austin Texas didn't turn up.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/courts/entries/2008/08/06/no_not_that_matthew_c_ryan.html?cxntfid=blogs_austin_legal

This will be a classic lawsuit. Lots of media, lots of attorneys fees, ruined reputations on both sides, and no money changing hands between parties. The courtroom will be filled with fools - attorneys, plaintiffs, defendants...all fools.

anyone else think its funny that the this whole mess started b/c someone said "girls name x and y should be raped" and now they release some guy's full name and some other random innocent person with the same name is getting harrasssed.

Why blame the ATL. HMM, going out on a limb here but let's see.

He's probaly upset because the resume was posted on this website without finding out if he was the person actually named in the suit. (he wasn't)

And he's probably upset because people wrote him anonymous ugly emails complaining that he was responsible for writing anonymous ugly emails (despite the fact that he wasn't the person who did so).

Probably, as an innocent wrongly accused, he probably has that he a reputation that spent a lifetime building at stake that he might care about. (as opposed to others who chose to use it as sport)

Finally, he's probably concerned that the standard for posting a comment alleging that law professor and lawyer with a sterling reputation is linked to a heinious act is on the basis of "30 seconds of googling" .

He probably was raised in a place where you aim before you fire and you don't say something unless you know that it is true.

And maybe because the hatemail indicated that they got the information from the comment section of ATL.

Why blame the ATL. HMM, going out on a limb here but let's see.

He's probaly upset because the resume was posted on this website without finding out if he was the person actually named in the suit. (he wasn't)

And he's probably upset because people wrote him anonymous ugly emails complaining that he was responsible for writing anonymous ugly emails (despite the fact that he wasn't the person who did so).

Probably, as an innocent wrongly accused, he probably has that he a reputation that spent a lifetime building at stake that he might care about. (as opposed to others who chose to use it as sport)

Finally, he's probably concerned that the standard for posting a comment alleging that law professor and lawyer with a sterling reputation is linked to a heinious act is on the basis of "30 seconds of googling" .

He probably was raised in a place where you aim before you fire and you don't say something unless you know that it is true.

And maybe because the hatemail indicated that they got the information from the comment section of ATL.

36 - there are dozens, if not hundreds, of cases scattered over virtually every jurisdiction in the country, finding extra-territorial personal jurisdiction based on internet postings, and there have been for at least ten years. Any litigator would know that. The Supreme Court has not taken up the issue, and there are good arguments that lower federal and state courts have gone too far, but the plaintiffs won't have any trouble establishing personal jurisidction at least through the Second Circuit level. In addition (for 37) Calder v. Jones is not about internet contacts and its peculiar "targeting" standard has not been followed by many courts. Calder has been cited quite a bit, but the courts citing it invariably get its standard wrong. Whether the Supreme Court would return to it in an internet contacts case is an interesting and open question. Until the Court shows some interest in reviving the personal jurisdiction standard, however, and it has passed on many chances to do so in the past few years, the issue is largely moot.

53, I think this answers your question a bit more concisely than 56/57's comment:

http://abovethelaw.com/2008/08/cadwalader_applicants_getting_dissed.php#comment-707020

58 said: "there are dozens, if not hundreds, of cases scattered over virtually every jurisdiction in the country, finding extra-territorial personal jurisdiction based on internet postings, and there have been for at least ten years"

I doubt this. Please name one that is vaguely analogous.

36.

We can still speculate as to why the AP reporter was so lazy that he didn't do some basic fact checking.

I really hope that the good Matthew Ryan doesn't take all of this lying down. Somebody needs to sue the girls, KVN, the AP and others for what they have done to this guy.

I mean they chose to release only one name and then it happened to be this one? I don't buy it. What they have done here is much more actionable than the joke of a complaint that they have filed.

First, this AutoAdmit case involves someone completely unrelated to the attorney in Austin. Second, the Austin attorney has a stellar reputation and is a genuinely good person. I hope this blows over... quickly. Third, UT never took the profile down - it's on the extended faculty page.

What a mountain of poop lawsuit...someone called one of the women a "stupid bitch" and said he wanted to repeatedly sodomize her and this is actionable??? Please try to sue the next whack job that says this stuff to you in real life and you will be laughed out of court.

UT? How un-prestigious!

64 is dead-on. How has this sorry excuse for a lawsuit not gotten junked yet?

It would seem a 12(b)6 is all that is needed for most of these anonymous defendants to move on with their lives. However, does anybody know if they can file such without disclosing their identities?

63: They did take the faculty profile down and now have put it back up. I would imagine someone saw this thread and realized that it was sending the wrong message.

This really is a ridiculously unfortunate coincidence for Professor Ryan. What are the odds? I think UT should release a statement, and maybe even put it on their website.

66 - They probably can't file such without disclosing their identities. If you read the KVN memo in opposition to AK47's motion to proceed anonymously, it was spot-on. In fact, it is the only thing KVN has seemed to do right in this whole mess.

Of course, the day that a defendant actually enters an appearance in this matter, they should be able to cut and paste the KVN memo and use the same arguments to strip the does of their anonymity.

This is a statement to local press by attorney Matthew C. Ryan w/ conclusive evidence he IS NOT the named plaintiff:

The lawyer Ryan says he is not the Ryan named in the lawsuit, and he has an e-mail from the plaintiffs’ lawyer to prove it:

“We named Matthew C. Ryan, an undergraduate at the University of Texas, as a defendant in the AutoAdmit complaint. Please be aware that there are other Matthew C. Ryans in Austin, including an attorney, and that they are NOT the defendant in the AutoAdmit case.”

The e-mail is signed Mark Lemley, a Stanford University law professor who is representing the women in the lawsuit. (Lemley confirmed to me that the e-mail is genuine.)

Ryan, a 40-year-old construction attorney with Allensworth and Porter, and an adjunct UT professor in construction law, said he has received hate mail after his resume was posted with news of the lawsuit on Above the Law, a blog that bills itself as a legal tabloid.

He’s also received calls from the ABA Journal, Associated Press and other news outlets.

“You can see how important it is for me to maintain and preserve my reputation and my good name,” he said.

Here is the link http://tinyurl.com/578kty

David, it's one thing to spread gossip...but if it's patently false...fix it!

68: didn't a judge already rule that the does can proceed anonymously? also, the threat of them losing their anonymity isn't exactly a big stick: its not like their identities aren't pretty much out there anyway. their mask is partial, not complete.