Tony La Russa, the famed baseball manager known for his charity work with injured pets, apparently knows when he has a dog on his hands.
The St. Louis Cardinals' skipper has quietly dropped his high-profile and much-maligned lawsuit against Twitter over a snarky impersonator on the microblogging Web site.
In a June 26 court filing (pdf), La Russa's lawyer, Gregory McCoy, wrote that his client was dismissing the case, adding that "No payment was made by Twitter to La Russa in exchange for this dismissal." According to a person familiar with the case, there was no settlement of any kind.
In what appeared to be the first legal challenge to the popular San Francisco startup, La Russa sued Twitter on May 6, alleging that an unknown person had been tastelessly using his name and image, tweeting from an account named "TonyLaRussa." Besides claiming that La Russa's identity had been hijacked, the suit asserted that Twitter was damaging La Russa's trademark rights to his nationally famous name.
Legal observers were skeptical of the merits of the case, quickly pointing out that Twitter should not be liable for the parody because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives Web sites immunity from lawsuits over what their users post online.
"I would say that it looks like saner heads prevailed -- I don't think this lawsuit should've been brought in the first place," said Corynne McSherry, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has followed the case. "I think their legal claims were weak at best."
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Source: Law.com
By: Zusha Elinson
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