You can actually be sued for anything. Whether or not you can win is another matter, and it's difficult to recover legal costs for a frivolous lawsuit. The lawyer is probably just hoping for a settlement.

Exactly. People fail to understand this all of the time.

I'd be pretty impressed if they got one court to agree that Google was doing something illegal by failing to comply with an order from another court. Courts are understandably loath to castrate each other like that.

Actually, Google basically fought its way to the first hurdle (the point that the court told them to release personal information) and then said 'yeah, sure, whatever' and coughed up the dough. If they were really concerned about privacy, they would have fought it a long way further, or applied for an appeal before releasing the information, however they didn't. I'm sure this could be grounds for a suit.

Their users have a reasonable expectation of privacy and it'll take a court to decide if Google actually made a reasonable attempt to protect her privacy. Google should have offered to delete the blog and ban the user, but apparently they did neither and went through the motions.

I'm not saying this suit is right, but I'm sure there's definitely grounds for this woman's suit. It wouldn't be one court commenting on another courts decision, it would be one court ruling on Google's inaction on taking it further. The whole reason there are appeals and the supreme court is that a just decision can't necessarily be made by just one judge or jury.

Higher courts often find the lower courts wrong, but from what I understand basically never penalize the corporation for following the offending court's orders. It's obvious why, it would set a terrible precedent.

Corporations don't have a responsibility to take every case to the Supreme Court if they have to. If a court orders them to cough up information and they do, there is virtually 0 chance they will ever be penalized for that by another. Can you name one instance?

I'll ask my IP attorney friends about this, but I remember one expressing similar sentiment about mobile phone corporations before.

Again though, that comes back to my original point: Is it the duty of a corporation to question the direction of the court in decisions of law?

In other words, does google have a moral obligation, as defined by the state, to defend your privacy against the state? To what end? The plaintiff in this case seems intent on establishing a precedent that will effectively elevate corporations to be equal to that of government in enforcing legal constructs.

That doesn't seem like a reality I'd really like to see.

Is there not some office that at least validates the merits of the suit though? Otherwise, the legal system can pretty much be used as a tool for extortion no?

(I'm Canadian here, so excuse my ignorance)

You can file for a summary judgement if there are no material fact in dispute which could cause you to lose the case.

Basically, the judge can say "even if all the plaintiff's allegations are true the defendant will still win, so lets skip the trial." That's probably what will happen here.

No.

The closest you'll get is that very few lawyers will take your case if it completely sucks. And it can get thrown out pretty much off the bat from the the judge

Criminal cases do have grand juries which weigh the merits of a case before going to trial.

So theoretically, an organization with large enough pockets could literally destroy a competing organization with lawsuits designed only to ensure the victim expends large amounts of cash on legal fees, correct?

I'm wondering if this method of "business" has ever been attempted?

When the Golden Gate Bridge was being built, the ferry companies (who would be put out of business by the bridge) tried to sue the bridge to death with something like 2000 trivial lawsuits. While each of these was easily defeated, the only thing that stopped the ferry companies was that the local populace boycotted the ferries until they stopped the lawsuits.

So yes, it's been done before, is probably being done now, and will happen again. You can counter-sue trivial lawsuits to make the plaintiff go away (and stop filing suits against you), but it takes some work and laying out some money to lawyers.

Thanks for the background. This whole thing strikes me as a horrible loophole in the legal system. I'd imagine the same is true in most western countries.

Sadly it is the same in most western countries, however if you sue me because I wore a pink hat (frivolous lawsuit) I have the right to counter-sue you (which would be a non-frivolous lawsuit). Yours would be thrown-out and cost you money and probably a lot to get a lawyer to take it on, mine however would likely be taken on on a no-win-no-fee basis by basically any lawyer because it would be so easy to win. So your suit would cost you money, and mine would likely cost me nothing or make me money.

So yes the loophole is there, but the loophole itself is kind of self destructive for anyone dumb enough to try it.

Yet the example you gave would have been successful had it not been for outraged civilians mounting a boycott.

How many issues are being exploited that don't warrant such public outrage? My guess is more than a few.

That's basically what's happened to my company (the lawsuit is still ongoing).

You're aware of the RIAA's lawsuits against file sharers, correct?

Your comment about using the legal system for extortion is a real problem.

The RIAA, as much as it pains me to say this, is acting within the letter of the law, in that I would not call their suit frivolous. Immoral and unethical sure, but not frivolous.

They've put forward a case that explains that a particular person has broken an existing law and caused them damages of x amount, and the court has agreed with them in most cases.

Theoretically yes but there are some practical issues that can make this complex.

I don't doubt its been tried.