Opinion ID: 4556814
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Trade Libel Claim

Text: Test Prep alleged in its trade libel claim that Allnurses had published false allegations about Test Prep’s products, services, property, or business. “A plaintiff alleging trade libel must prove publication of a matter derogatory to the plaintiff’s property or business, of a kind designed to prevent others from dealing with him or otherwise to interfere with plaintiff’s relations with others.” Patel v. Soriano, 848 A.2d 803, 834 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2004); see Wilson v. Dubois, 29 N.W. 68, 68 (Minn. 1886) (“False and malicious statements, disparaging an article of property, when followed, as a natural, reasonable, and proximate result, by special damage to the owner, are actionable.”). The published statements must be false. See Patel, 848 A.2d at 835; Wilson, 29 N.W. at 68. Test Prep has not appealed the district court’s determination that the “redundant” and “obsolete” posts by JustBeachyNurse and monkeyhq were statements of opinion and not false statements. Thus, with respect -6- to the trade libel claim, we consider only the posts by Russ and Moeller that Test Prep was under investigation and had been sued by the federal government.4 Test Prep argues that the district court erred in entering judgment on the trade libel claim on the basis of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which “immunizes providers of interactive computer services against liability arising from content created by third parties.” Fair Hous. Council v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157, 1162 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc) (footnote omitted); see 47 U.S.C. § 230(e)(3) (“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.”). The Act provides that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1). Allnurses is a provider of an interactive computer service, Allnurses.com. Test Prep seeks to treat Allnurses as the publisher or speaker of Russ’s and Moeller’s posts. The question presented is whether Test Prep has pleaded facts sufficient to attribute those posts to Allnurses. See Jones v. Dirty World Entm’t Recordings LLC, 755 F.3d 398, 408 (6th Cir. 2014) (“[I]f a website operator is in part responsible for the creation or development of content, then it is an information content provider as to that content—and is not immune from claims predicated on it.”). We conclude that Test Prep has failed to plausibly allege that Allnurses was the “information content provider” of the posts by Russ and Moeller. The Act defines “information content provider” as “any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.” 47 U.S.C. § 230(f)(3). The complaint alleged only that Russ and Moeller were longtime users of Allnurses.com, 4 Test Prep also has not challenged the district court’s conclusion that—even if Dukes’s “like” of monkeyhq’s post were viewed as a republishing, the “like” could not be defamatory because monkeyhq’s post was not a defamatory statement. -7- who frequently posted comments, and that Moeller stopped posting on the website after Test Prep sent a demand letter to Allnurses. The complaint also referred to the solicitation clause in the terms of service, which states that Allnurses may solicit and pay users for articles or other content. Based on these facts, Test Prep claimed that Russ and Moeller were paid to post and were “volunteers, employees, servants, contractors or agents of Allnurses.” We conclude that the sum total of the complaint’s factual allegations pleaded no more than a “sheer possibility” that Allnurses was wholly or partly responsible for creating or developing Russ’s and Moeller’s posts. See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (“The plausibility standard is not akin to a ‘probability requirement,’ but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556)). Test Prep thus has failed to plausibly allege that Allnurses was the “information content provider” with respect to those posts. Compare Huon v. Denton, 841 F.3d 733, 742 (7th Cir. 2016) (reversing the grant of the defendant’s motion to dismiss because “[r]ather than asserting one or two standalone factual allegations concerning [the defendant’s] control over comments, [the] complaint devotes over four pages to detailing [the defendant’s] alleged activities”), with Kimzey v. Yelp! Inc., 836 F.3d 1263, 1269 (9th Cir. 2016) (affirming the grant of the defendant’s motion to dismiss because the plaintiffs had failed “to state the facts plausibly suggesting” that the interactive computer service Yelp “fabricated content under a third party’s identity”).