WORTH REPEATING Pennsylvania USA Timeshare News: October 26, 2013 WILKES-BARRE: For those of you who are new to this case (or who have gotten tired of reading about it ;) ) let me be make clear why it is IMPORTANT. The court case concerning the Boycott Sundance Vacations Facebook page, Albert Whitehead and Sundance Vacations is more than a simple breach of contract. It is about yours and my First Amendment Rights to post legitimate online criticism/opinions or even our own experiences with a company or individual. There is a page on Facebook called Boycott Sundance Vacations, which I first became aware of in February 2011 when it had a mere 135 Likes. It’s About blurb said: Boycott Sundance Vacations for continuous alleged violations of the Consumer Fraud Acts and violations of the state and federal Do Not Call (DNC) regulations. Sundance rather quickly requested that Facebook remove the page but Facebook refused on the grounds that they found nothing slanderous or libelous on the page, nor did it violate Facebook’s Terms of Service. And there’s where things began to get hinky and Albert Whitehead’s name came to the fore. A little traveling music, please: In 2005 Albert Whitehead and Sundance Vacations had a disagreement concerning employment. Whitehead sued Sundance, their issues were settled out of court, and as part of the settlement Whitehead agreed not to say or write bad things about Sundance. Fast forward to June 2012, when Sundance sued Whitehead for breaching that settlement agreement. They accused him of creating and managing the Boycott Sundance Vacations page on Facebook and of writing slanderous/libelous comments there under various aliases (as well as encouraging others to do so). Whitehead conceded that he had breached the settlement agreement and removed his comments but denied that he had either created or managed the page (a fact that was accepted by the Court as true in a later appearance by Whitehead). That’s important, because as part of Sundance’s petition against Whitehead they demanded that he remove the Facebook page. But Whitehead, though he obeyed the Court’s order to request that Facebook remove the page, had no actual authority to do so and the page remained. If Sundance’s aim was merely to proceed against Whitehead for his breach of a settlement agreement and punish him for it, then his concession should have ended the matter. The Court would have applied sanctions, the case would have been closed. But it became increasingly clear that Sundance’s true agenda was broader, as they used the lawsuit against Whitehead as a springboard to gather information about the people who posted to and/or read the Facebook page (in what seemed to those people to be an attempt to intimidate them), and ultimately to force the removal of that page by any means necessary. As the case dragged on with Sundance continuing to file motion after motion, some people began referring to Sundance’s tactics as a SLAPP action, that being an acronym for strategic lawsuit against public participation. SLAPP is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. In addition to threatening legal action against at least one attorney who posted on the Facebook page, Sundance’s attorneys even succeeded in getting Facebook itself named as a party to the original lawsuit, though after Facebook’s attorneys filed their own forceful objection Sundance quietly dropped that avenue of procedure. It’s worthy of note that Facebook said, in its rebuttal to Sundance: Sundance now asks this Court to order Facebook to delete the Boycott Page in its entirety, including an unknown number of statements (none of which are alleged to be unlawful) by an unknown number of third parties (none of whom are before this Court). In short, Sundance has turned its claim against Whitehead into a vehicle for silencing legitimate online criticism by others. This Court should reject Sundance’s thinly disguised attempt to stifle lawful speech… So you see, it isn’t just me claiming that Sundance is using this lawsuit against an elderly man with cancer (who can’t afford an attorney to defend himself) in order to stifle freedom of speech. And if Sundance is successful in that effort it could well have broad consequences for every blog, forum, news publication, etc. Of course that includes us here at InsideTheGate and The GateHouse blog — and that’s why I’ll stay with this case to the end. And perhaps that end is in sight? The Court has ordered a Settlement Conference to be held on Nov. 21, at which time Sundance and Whitehead will be encouraged to come to some kind of agreement that will put an end to this once and for all. One can only hope… Meanwhile the number of Likes on the Boycott Sundance Vacations page still keeps growing. The number, as of this writing, is 1,588 and seems to currently be growing by about a dozen Likes per week. See more at: insidethegate/gatehouse/2013/10/pennsylvania-usa-timeshare-news-october-26-2013/#comment-1584
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 13:17:36 +0000
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