Zeran v. America Online, Inc.

On April 25, 1995, six days after the Oklahoma City bombing, a message was anonymously posted on the America Online (AOL) "Michigan Military Movement" bulletin board advertising items with slogans glorifying the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. These items included slogans such as, "Visit Oklahoma ... It's a BLAST!!!", "Putting the kids to bed ... Oklahoma 1995", and "McVeigh for President 1996". At this point, Zeran's house was placed under protective surveillance, and he was unable to use his telephone for his home business, as the threatening calls were coming in approximately every two minutes. This continued until at least May 15, by which time the number of calls fell to approximately 15 per day. In addition to a suit against Diamond Broadcasting, Zeran filed a negligence suit against AOL in April 1996. == Lower court ruling ==

At the district court for the Eastern District of Virginia Zeran alleged that as a distributor of media content, AOL was "negligent in failing to respond adequately to the bogus notices on its bulletin board after being made aware of their malicious and fraudulent nature." In this case, since AOL did not dispute its knowledge of the defamatory statements, Zeran claimed to have grounds for alleging AOL's participation in the defamation of his character. In response to this claim, AOL argued that Section 230, which was passed in 1996, preempted the New York ruling, which was issued in 1991 and based on that state's law at the time. which states that "a court must ... determine whether Congress has clearly expressed [a] statute's intended temporal reach." To this question, the court pointed out that in Section 230, Congress clearly stated that "no cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section." It reasons that since "no cause of action may be brought," the timing of the posting of the message is immaterial, and Section 230 must apply retroactively. == Appeals Court ruling ==

Zeran appealed the district court ruling to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. After reviewing the proceedings of the lower court, the Fourth Circuit again granted judgment in favor of AOL. and Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. Such a distinction was made in those rulings, but the court held that Zeran "misapprehends... the significance of that distinction for the legal issue we consider here." == References ==