www.charlesjeromeware.com. " Here to make a difference." We fight, you win.
Increasingly in Maryland and other states hostile blogs about parties in lawsuits are being
placed on the Internet. To the victims/subjects of these hostile/biased blogs the major issue
becomes whether these blogs can negatively impact their rights to a fair trial ("day in court").
The most immediate remedy that comes to mind in this type of situation would be a request for
change of venue for the case.
Thus far, to our knowledge, Maryland has not as yet published a decision that deals directly with
this issue. Therefore, looking to other legal jurisdictions that have published decisions on this
issue, we go to Arizona.
A U.S. District Court in Arizona ruled that biased Web blogs that expressed hostility towards the plaintiffs' case did not provide sufficient grounds for change of venue to minimize the chances of jury bias. In particular, the court did not find such blogs to be sufficiently representative of the large
pool of people from which the jury would be drawn, or that the blogs adversely influenced the pool as a whole [ Gotbaum ex rel Gotbaum v. City of Phoenix, Case No. CV-08-0937-PHX-DGC (D. Ariz.,
Oct. 17, 2008) ].
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