A pair of experts have declared the lawsuit invalid in the weeks since the initial posts [1, 2], and legal filings have provided very interesting reading (there’s one in particular you won’t want to miss).
Orthomom’s retained Public Citizen’s Paul Alan Levy, the same lawyer who handled the anonymous bloggers’ case when Mordecai Tendler sued to expose Jewish Whistleblower and others. He obviously thinks the suit lacks merit and that plaintiff Pamela Greenbaum could very well end up being ordered to pay Orthomom’s lawyer fees.
The expert opinions come in articles for the Jewish Star and the Nassau Herald.
From the Star:

The heart of the matter, according to Jonathan Ezor, director of the Institute for Business, Law and Technology at the Touro Law Center and an assistant professor there, is that “Unless Google and/or Orthomom actually wrote the allegedly defamatory things in question, federal law immunizes them from lawsuit. That has been repeatedly challenged, and the law remains current.”
[…]
Is Greenbaum’s lawsuit to unmask her likely to succeed? No, according to Ezor. “Anonymous identities are generally protected by the First Amendment,” he said. “Unless there is some legal claim against Orthomom, there wouldn’t be justification for a court to order Google to release her identity.”

From the Herald:

Hofstra University Law Professor Eric M. Freedman said Greenbaum’s action of seeking Orthomom’s identify has little to no chance of moving forward since derogatory language against a public official like a school board member is protected under the first amendment. Professor Freedman, an expert on the First Amendment and other civil liberty issues, said in order to seek the identity to pursue a lawsuit there needs to be a chance that the grievance would be successful which is not the case in Greenbaum’s action.
“If the courts are behaving appropriately this filing will go absolutely nowhere,” said Professor Freedman. “If she knew who Orthomom was and sued her directly it would be thrown out.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Greenbaum’s fellow school board member and political ally Stanley Kopilow — an attorney — supports the suit, telling the Herald “I think she’s absolutely justified…You can’t slander people and stomp on people’s reputation anonymously.”
In an indication of just how toxic the relationship between different communities has gotten in Lawrence over the schooling issue, the Greenbaum-supporting Community Alliance blog posts in support of Orthomom’s legal case, which is reasonable given the legal merits, but includes this line that you’d assume would be beyond the boundaries of normal political discourse: “members of the Orthodox community, who rarely see beyond their own, parochial self-interests.”
On to the legal filings:
* Complete Order To Show Cause and Petition of Pamela Greenbaum, containing more information than earlier files.
* Judge Marcy Friedman’s stipulation of February 22nd, ordering Google to provide the relevant information by April 5th.
* Letter to Judge Marcy Friedman from Orthomom counsel Paul Allan Levy, and if you want to get a laugh while reading a legal filing, this is the one. There’s a lot of insight into the character and lacking legal mind of Greenbaum counsel Alan Feder, who seems not understand those simple Latin terms they used in law school.
As always, please link to the post, not the file.

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