Court Rejects Online RICO Claims Based on Ex-Group Members’ Web Site
In an important victory for free expression on the Internet, the Berkman Center Clinical Program in Cyberlaw recently helped to persuade a federal district court in Maine to throw out a racketeering and defamation lawsuit brought by a “spiritual-healing” group against former members of the group. Gentle Wind Project, the plaintiff in Gentle Wind Project v. Garvey, is an organization that manufactures what it characterizes as “healing instruments” based on designs communicated from “the spirit world.” It sued a husband and wife who left the group after seventeen years and started a web site, “Wind of Changes,” in which they recounted their experiences in the group; Gentle Wind also sued various other anti-cult Internet sites that reposted the defendants’ stories or linked to their website. The lawsuit was particularly troubling because it alleged that the defendants’ posting of their experiences and the linking among various web sites relating to them constituted not only defamation under state law but also violated the federal RICO racketeering statute. The federal court’s decision, however, agreed with legal arguments drafted in large part by the Berkman clinical program and ruled that the exchange of e-mails among the defendants and hyperlinks between their respective web sites did not create the necessary racketeering enterprise and “are simply not the type [of relationships] to which RICO applies.” Accordingly it granted summary judgment for the defendants on the RICO claims and dismissed the remaining state-law defamation claims.
Berkman Clinical student David Russcol assisted local