Woman Sues Mayor For Order Demanding She Remove City Links From Her Website
from the abuse-of-power dept
GigaLaw points us to the news of a lawsuit filed by a woman in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, against that city's mayor and other officials for demanding that she remove links to the city's police department from her website. The woman believes that the demand was in response to her own support of an effort to recall the mayor.Apparently, sometime after this effort, the mayor's secretary asked the city attorney if it was legal for the woman to link to the city's police department website from her web design company's website (totally separate from the website about the mayor's recall). The city attorney told the mayor that a link is perfectly legal -- but offered to send a cease-and-desist anyway, which the mayor approved. The woman says she felt threatened in getting a cease-and-desist from the mayor's office and took the link down.
From the facts presented in the article, this certainly sounds like an abuse of power. There's nothing inherently illegal in just linking to someone else's website, and it appears the city attorney even knew this. So it looks like the mayor and the city attorney decided to send the cease-and-desist anyway to intimidate the woman -- which worked (at least temporarily). While it's not clear if this woman will be able to win any damages, it's good to see her fighting back against what appears to be an abuse of power.
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Can You Say.....
"Generally disbarment is imposed as a sanction for conduct indicating that an attorney is not fit to practice law, willfully disregarding the interests of A client, or engaging in fraud which impedes the administration of justice."
At the very least the attorney needs to be SLAPped with sanctions.
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Re: Can You Say.....
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Re: Can You Say.....
Extortion. Demanding Money With Menaces. Malicious abuse of the judicial system. Hell, maybe even perjury if someone calls their bluff.
Need I go on?
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Re: Re: Can You Say.....
Much as you may wish it so, saying "Stop it, or I'll sue" is not illegal.
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Re: Re: Can You Say.....
Just in case your comment is not an attempt at trolling...
1) Do you honestly think there is nothing wrong with a lawyer sending out a cease and desist letter even if the lawyer knows that there is no legal basis for it? If so, you and I have a very different definition of what's right and wrong because this seem to be to be a textbook definition of "wrong".
2) Are you seriously suggesting that because something is "standard practice" that it's not illegal, immoral, or unethical? I think that is the foundation of many of the TD posts, that many practices of organizations like the RIAA are "standard" but are in fact immoral, unethical and probably even illegal.
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Re: Re: Re: Can You Say.....
2) Lawyers have been sending threatening letters since paper was invented. And although you or I may find the practice objectionable, that doesn't make it wrong. It also doesn't make it immoral or unethical. It may violate your ethics, and you may even find it morally offensive, but that still doesn't make it unethical or immoral. And that certainly doesn't make it illegal.
The behavior of the RIAA is somewhat different. Saying "Pay me $3500 or I'll sue," is, in my mind, extortion, and it's also unethical (even by lawyer standards) and immoral. But this C&D wasn't "Pay me or I'll sue" it was "Stop it or I'll sue." Big difference.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Can You Say.....
Here's your quote...
There is nothing illegal, immoral or unethical about attempting to intimidate the opposition by sending a C&D.
Unless you're going to try and say that morality and ethics are different from right and wrong, it certainly looks like you did say that there's nothing wrong with sending out a cease and desist letter even when you know there's no legal foundation for it.
It may violate your ethics, and you may even find it morally offensive, but that still doesn't make it unethical or immoral. And that certainly doesn't make it illegal.
You seem to be making the argument that just because I find something unethical, that it's not necessarilly unethical. Of course ethics and morality are subjective, so if something violates my ethics, but definition, I find it unethical. Do you think that when people say something is unethical, they're really saying that they believe that every human on the planet is in universal agreement that something is wrong? No, it means they think it's unethical.
Besides, I don't think I'm the only one who things that this is wrong. Just because very few people are suprised to hear that many lawyers are sleazebags who will do unethical things like send out unfounded cease and desist letters, it doesn't mean that people think it's right.
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Re: Re: Can You Say.....
In fact, you can get disbarred for sending a C&D after telling your client the target is not breaking any laws.
In fact, it is immoral to intimidate someone you know is doing nothing wrong.
In fact, it is unethical for a lawyer to do both, and for a Mayor who is elected by those people to act against their interests.
You sir, are either a troll or a bad lawyer.
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Re: Re: Re: Can You Say.....
It isn't always about someone doing something "wrong," a very subjective term. It's more often about one party doing something the other party doesn't like -- "right" and "wrong" have little to do with it.
In fact, you can get disbarred for sending a C&D after telling your client the target is not breaking any laws.
There are thousands of cases filed daily, where no law was broken, yet a lawsuit resulted. Often, the lawsuit was preceeded by a cease & desist letter, simply because one party did something the other party didn't like. So while your statement may be true, there's nothing in this article or the linked article that indicates the woman was told she was breaking the law.
If you're my neighbor, and you drive over a small part of my lawn every time you pull into your driveway, is a law being broken? Probably not. But is it offensive to me? Probably. What are my options? I can ask you to stop. If you don't, then I can ask my lawyer to ask you to stop. He'll do so by sending a cease & desist letter, which may threaten a lawsuit, and point out the potential liability that could be incurred as a result.
Yes, it's a threat, and yes, it's intended to intimidate. But it's the ethical responsibility of a lawyer to zealously represent his/her client, so that's not going to change any time soon.
You sir, are either a troll or a bad lawyer.
Neither, but thanks for offering your opinion.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Can You Say.....
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can You Say.....
...or unethical or immoral.
Motown, your version of the analogy is spot on. In AC's version of the analogy, the van driver was doing something illegal. So of course there's nothing wrong with a cease and desist order in the case. But there's nothing illegal with linking to a web site, especially a government web site. The crux of the problem with the cease and desist letter in this case is that the lawyer who wrote it up admits that the linking was legal. So, this has nothing to do with "the ethical responsibility of a lawyer to zealously represent his/her client". It's about how lawyers go about doing this and whether or not they're accountable to a higher authority than the whims of their clients.
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Re: Re: Can You Say.....
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.htaccess
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Re: .htaccess
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Re: Re: .htaccess
Perhaps you would do well to understand something beyond your area of expertise before coming to an issue of law. To inform you, .htaccess files can be configured to deny incoming links from specific sites/ip addresses. There was absolutely no reason to involve the law and an attorney when someone could have just set the web server to deny incoming links from her site. Rather, they went the litigious route. Hope it bites them in their own asses.
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Publicity was required
She should thank the mayor for proving her point on such a large scale.
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Yeah thats what a cease and desist letter is intended to do. I would hope most thinking citizens would know when they are in the right or wrong here, but can easily see how a normal citizen could be so easily intimidated by the government about a technical issue like this. This lady however is supposed to be a "web development profesional" and as such really should not be so easily fooled.
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Re:
Huh. So it is standard for every professional to know the legal ins and outs of their own industry? What a crock. If we did, there would be no need for lawyers. Most working professionals slapped with a C&D would do the same thing... At least the first time.
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At some very basic level I would say yes, it is. This is part of being a "professional", understanding at the least the basics regarding rules, regulations and the standards of your industry.
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When you get right down to it, it seems odd to call it a "civil suit." There's generally nothing civil about it.
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:D
:D
:D
:D
:D
:D
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Surprised?
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Re: Surprised?
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I See Why
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Check this out!!!!!
http://blog.mlive.com/annarbornews/2008/04/dexter_township_trustee_marcia.html
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Unethical
Scaring someone into doing something they don't want to do is unethical. Asking her to stop is one thing, but demanding it is another.
eg. I'm gonna scare you into giving me money, or mowing my lawn, or quiting your job. She felt legally threatened by something that she shouldn't have to because there is nothing illigal about what she did. Also the Mayor's position of power could be itimidating being that even if they couldn't legally persue the issue, they could try to dig up dirt or pull strings to make her life much worse off(If the president told you to stop something even if it wasn't illigal, would you? I sure would with all the abuse of power these days). Someone in a position of power can really mess up your life before someone notices and slaps them on the wrist and tells them to stop.
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Abuse issue . .
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Re: Abuse issue . .
Except that her action was perfectly 100% legal. Especially considering that the public most likely paid for the content.
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What....?
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Utopia
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Re: Utopia
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Re: Re: Utopia
Sure, unethical behavior happens in professions other than the legal one, but at least those other professional have enough sense of decency to lie about it. I think the point that Jim is trying to make is that when a lawyer does something unethical -- such as send a cease and desist letter in regards to something they know to be legal -- it's tolerated moreso than other professions.
I wonder if the lawyer that wrote up that cease and desist letter even gave it a second thought. Maybe he thought it was OK because "everyone else is doing it", not realizing that most people would consider it unethical.
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This lady is an idiot
Plus I think it is perfectly reasonable to request somebody remove a link from their website. If a porn site was linking to a children's school website I bet a bunch of people would be up in arms. If you own your website you should have control over who links to your website. Period.
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Re: This lady is an idiot
You're new to the World Wide Web, right? If not, then you should know that the foundation of the Web is hypertext linking. If you don't like the rules of the Web, don't have a web site. It's that simple.
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Re: This lady is an idiot
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Re: This lady is an idiot
Asking someone to take down a link is reasonable, I suppose. Demanding that they do so is simply unreasonable. And expecting anyone to comply with such a request is wishful thinking at best.
If a porn site was linking to a children's school website I bet a bunch of people would be up in arms.
Not liking something doesn't mean it's illegal, nor does it mean it should be. Plus, the site could be charged with encouraging illegal acts or some such, which makes more sense than charging them for the simple act of linking.
If you own your website you should have control over who links to your website. Period.
Uh, what? Sorry, but the internet doesn't provide that unnecessary level of control, nor should it. Linking to another website is approximately the equivalent of word-of-mouth. If you don't want someone looking at your site, put it behind a password. You are looking for a closed system with plenty of gatekeepers to stifle the flow of information. The internet does not meet your requirements. Sorry.
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Don't you need...
If, as reported, the legal advice was that there was no law against the link, the lawyer did not have a good faith basis on which to send the C&D.
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