Thursday, October 5, 2000

2 Instructors Drop Lawsuit Against Web Site That Criticized Them By SCOTT CARLSON Two instructors at City College of San Francisco have agreed to drop a lawsuit against Teacher Review, a Web site that posted anonymous -- and sometimes extremely vulgar -- critiques of their teaching performance. The site reviewed the performance of other City College instructors as well. The two instructors also agreed to pay $10,000 to the site's creator, who was defended by the American Civil Liberties Union. A lawyer representing the site said the settlement was a victory for free speech. Daniel Curzon-Brown, who teaches English, filed the suit in San Francisco Superior Court last October against Ryan Lathouwers, Teacher Review's creator, after negative reviews of Mr. Curzon-Brown's teaching began showing up in droves on the site. Mr. Curzon-Brown, who is openly gay, was often attacked on the site for his sexual orientation; some of the site's more graphic allegations featured descriptions of him sexually assaulting students. Jesse David Wall, who teaches physics, joined the suit in May. He said positive reviews were dropped and negative reviews were added to his Teacher Review profile after he condemned the site at a faculty meeting last spring. Mr. Curzon-Brown and Mr. Wall settled after the A.C.L.U. moved in court to have the case dismissed, charging that the instructors' lawsuit had no factual or legal grounds. Under California law, if the motion had been granted Mr. Curzon-Brown and Mr. Wall could have been charged for Mr. Lathouwers's legal fees, which were more than $100,000. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 gives immunity to Webmasters like Mr. Lathouwers who run open forums online. The instructors believed that Mr. Lathouwers had retaliated against their criticisms by writing bad reviews himself, a scenario that would compromise the immunity granted by the law. However, Mr. Curzon-Brown said that during a meeting with lawyers in the case, Judge David A. Garcia "gave a heavy hint that he wasn't inclined to grant discovery, meaning that we couldn't find out who wrote the reviews." Faced with the prospect of paying heavy legal fees, the instructors agreed to drop the case and to pay Mr. Lathouwers $10,000. "This is outrageous, utter contempt for teaching and the teaching profession," Mr. Curzon-Brown said from his home in San Francisco. "All teachers should cancel their memberships in the American Civil Liberties Union. They have defended anonymous, hate-filled reviews written by people who were never students of these teachers." Throughout the case, the A.C.L.U. argued that Mr. Curzon-Brown and Mr. Wall were trying to squelch legitimate critics. In a statement, Bernard A. Burk, Mr. Lathouwers's lawyer, called the settlement a "victory for free expression on the Internet." "It fulfills the promise Congress made to Internet-site and -service providers in enacting the Communications Decency Act, and the promise the Founders made to everyone in adopting the First Amendment," Mr. Burk said. In an interview, he said that some of the entries on Teacher Review are "disgusting and infantile, but it's constitutionally protected." "The site is not about posting hate speech," Mr. Burk said. "Hate speech is forbidden by the site's guidelines, and it is deleted when discovered." Fans of Teacher Review are certain to relish the victory, if a recent posting about Mr. Curzon-Brown's lawsuit is any indication: "When the creator of this Web site wins his court case, as I'm sure he will, I hope that he will turn around and counter-sue both 'Ole Rectum Breath' Curzon and his worthless attorney for every penny they have," says a posting attributed only to an anonymous Teacher Review user. "Neanderthals like Daniel Brown-Noser-Curzon (a most inferior person) will go the way of the dinosaurs (although in his case, I'm putting my money on AIDS)." Background article from The Chronicle: 2 Instructors Sue a College Over a Web Site's Anonymous Teacher Evaluations (6/16/2000) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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