Judge Settles $50M Suit Against Website for Linking ‘Lawmiss’ Comments to Her E-Mail
A judge has settled a $50 million lawsuit that claimed an Ohio newspaper and its website should not have reported that her e-mail account was the source of anonymous online comments about a serial murder case she had been assigned.
The judge, Shirley Strickland Saffold of Cuyahoga County, dropped her suit against the Cleveland Plain Dealer but reached a settlement with Advance Internet, the website used to publish the paper’s online stories, according to the Associated Press and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. An online editor had tracked down the e-mail address.
Saffold was kicked off the case against Anthony Sowell, accused of killing 11 women at his home, after the Plain Dealer ran a story linking the comments from “lawmiss” to her e-mail address.
Saffold has said she didn’t post any comments about her own cases, but her daughter did on a joint family account. Saffold and her daughter had claimed the defendants had violated their website privacy policy and defamed them by the revelations.
Details of the settlement weren’t revealed, but Saffold said Advance Internet would make a charitable donation in her mother’s name to a church choir.
