Court gives professor some leeway
Posted on Saturday, March 8, 2008
A Little Rock law professor must be allowed the opportunity to show that his lawsuit over a sexually explicit book can be heard in Arkansas, a federal appeals court said Thursday.
University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor Robert Steinbuch’s lawsuit accuses the book’s publisher of demeaning him.
In 2004, Robert Steinbuch, worked in Washington, D. C., as counsel to then-Sen. Mike DeWine, D-Ohio, when Jessica Cutler, another staff member in DeWine’s office, created an online sex diary revealing racy details of her sexual romps with him and five other men.
The graphic Web log, of which Steinbuch was unaware until it achieved “particular notoriety” in Washington, didn’t name Steinbuch but referred to him by his initials, “RS,” and at least once by “Rob,” as well as identifying where he worked and Cutler’s belief that he “looks just like George Clooney when he takes his glasses off,” according to Thursday’s opinion from the 8 th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.
Although Steinbuch acknowledged briefly dating Cutler, he denies some of the statements made in the blog about “some of his alleged sexual preferences and practices, including spanking and use of handcuffs,” the opinion said.
In an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit he filed in federal court in Little Rock in May 2006 against Cutler and Hyperion Books, Steinbuch took issue with a 2005 novel, The Washingtonienne, that Cutler wrote based on the blog by the same name.
In addition to Cutler and Hyperion, the book’s publisher, the lawsuit named as defendants Disney Publishing Worldwide, Hyperion’s parent company; Time Warner, of which the distributor was a subsidiary; and Home Box Office, which has secured an option to develop a television series based on the book.
In an order issued Feb. 7, 2007, U. S. District Judge Bill Wilson Jr. dismissed the lawsuit because it lacked ties to Arkansas, which meant his court did not have jurisdiction in the case.
The appeals court affirmed Wilson’s dismissal except where it concerns Hyperion.
“On the basis of the current record which reflects that Steinbuch offered documentary evidence, and not merely speculations or conclusory allegations, about Hyperion’s contacts with Arkansas, the district court should not have dismissed his action against Hyperion without permitting him to take some jurisdictional discovery to establish whether general personal jurisdiction would be justified,” the appellate panel said.
The opinion went on to say that Steinbuch has not yet “shown enough specifics about the quality and quantity of Hyperion’s contacts with the state” to prove that Wilson has jurisdiction over the allegations against the publisher. For that reason, the panel remanded the case to Wilson for the purpose of allowing Steinbuch an opportunity to determine whether the publisher’s contacts with Arkansas “were so continuous and systematic” that the court has jurisdiction.
The opinion noted that the book, as well as others published by Hyperion, were being sold in Arkansas bookstores, although only about 50 copies of The Washingtonienne had been sold to Arkansas wholesalers and resellers at the time of Wilson’s ruling. There was no evidence of a large advertising campaign, Wilson noted in his dismissal order.
In the lawsuit, Steinbuch seeks compensatory and punitive damages, alleging that the book misappropriates his likeness and puts him in a “false light.”
The 8 th Circuit panel consisted of Chief U. S. Circuit Judge James B. Loken of Minneapolis; U. S. Circuit Judge Diana Murphy, also of Minneapolis; and U. S. District Judge John A. Jarvey of the Southern District of Arkansas, sitting by designation.
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