Blogs & Companies’ Criticism: Where Settlement Agreements should be Published?

At its inception, blogs were forums used by individuals to vent personal statements about issues or people; thus far, its evolution is showing an increase of blogs for companies’ agendas. Those companies in the conservative side are using blogs to publish informative and marketing material written by their own staff or customers; other companies, less conservative, are using blogs to criticize their competition. In the United States, this inter-company criticism in blogs has resulted in lawsuits.  Should settlement agreements reached in these lawsuits be published in the same blogs or in the companies’ web sites?  This article provides an example where a Pennsylvania’s district court held that the settlement agreement should be published in the blogs where the disputed statements appeared.

In the case of Cigars Int’l, Inc. v. Famous Smoke Shop, Inc., et al., Civil Action 064752 (Eastern District of Pennsylvania) (2007), plaintiff, Cigars Int’l, Inc., filed a lawsuit against defendants, Famous Smoke Shop, Inc. and others, for derogatory statements published by the later against plaintiffs in two blogs.  These blogs did not appear in defendants’ websites, but in third party blogs.  The parties were called for a settlement agreement; they rendered statements on the terms of this agreement, and a final decision was reached regarding monetary claims.  Yet, the issue of whether this agreement should be published and where it should be published became another matter for the court to solve.

Parties to this lawsuit presented briefs to the court regarding where the terms of the settlement agreement should be published.  Plaintiff claimed the settlement agreement should be published in defendant’s website, while defendants claimed they should be published in the two blogs were the conflicting statements initially appeared.  Plaintiff claimed that the agreement had to be placed in defendants’ website because defendants did not have control over where and how long that agreement could appear in the two blogs where the initial comments appeared.  Yet, publishing the agreement in defendants’ website assured better result for plaintiff’s grievance.      

The Pennsylvania district court held that “since the blogs were the sole source of this issue, the blogs are the obvious place where the conciliatory statement should reside.” Thus, the settlement agreement reached by the parties to this lawsuit concerning derogatory statements in blogs was to be published in the same blogs where they were initially published.  No agreement was to be published in defendant’s web site because the statements were never published in defendants’ site. Additionally, the court ordered that publication of the settlement agreement in the two blogs should include a specific request that the settlement be there for at least 60 days.

This case is an example of how U.S. courts are solving blog grievances between companies as far as publication of settlement agreements is concerned. Still, the question of where these agreements should be published when the derogatory statements have spread among multiple blogs remains to be decided.