- Ahead of the law? In Hidalgo County, Texas, a former sheriff has been sued civilly over allegedly illegal campaign contributions. (He was also criminally convicted of money laundering.) At a civil deposition in the case, a lawyer for the plaintiff attempted to send live tweets from the deposition room. The judge ordered that the live tweets must stop — saying, “Our technology is far outpacing our ability to formulate rules.”
- Fake book. A booking agent in the music industry is using California’s cyberbullying law as a basis for a lawsuit that he filed against a former colleague. The lawsuit claims that the former colleague defamed him by setting up a fake Twitter account in the plaintiff’s name that made him “appear to be foolish, inept and sexually perverted.” The defendant says that although the fake account exists, he had nothing to do with setting it up.
- Principal objections. A New Jersey high school is revising its social media policy after settling a lawsuit brought by a student who was disciplined for tweeting disparaging remarks about the school’s principal. The student’s federal lawsuit claimed that the school violated her First Amendment rights when it punished her for “purely off-campus” speech.
