Cleveland Cliffs Inc【CLF】株式ニュース

Brazilian Lourenco Goncalves being doxxed on Social Networks. Wishes to disregard U,S. First Amendment Rights.

IMO Goncalves who makes $20,000,000 annually, needs to step down.

Cleveland-Cliffs wants to unmask anonymous critic; legal expert says that raises First Amendment concerns

CLEVELAND, Ohio — For the second time in a year, the Fortune 500 steel giant Cleveland-Cliffs has asked a judge to unmask an anonymous online critic of the company and its chief executive officer, Lourenco Goncalves.

In a lawsuit, lawyers for the company asked a Cuyahoga County judge to order Yahoo Inc. to hand over personal identifying information of an account owner who has posted hundreds of comments in recent months that question Goncalves’ leadership.

The filing, submitted by Jones-Day attorney Kristin Morrison, says the company needs the information so it can pursue a defamation and libel lawsuit against the owner of the account known as Booleansearcher.

The complaint, filed earlier this month, did not specify which comments the company believes amounted to defamation. It also did not spell out exactly how the company’s reputation has been harmed.

Andrew Geronimo leads the First Amendment Law Clinic at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He said that the case raises concerns about the First Amendment’s protections to criticize a public figure anonymously and that it could embolden powerful people to try to stifle criticism.

Geronimo successfully fought to get a similar lawsuit thrown out of court against an anonymous critic who sent emails about Beachwood police officers.

He said there are steps judges should follow in cases where someone seeks the identity of an online critic. First, he said, the plaintiff should identify the comments and then put forth a credible argument that the statements are defamatory. That should be done before a decision can be made to reveal the anonymous critic.

“If they cannot, and if the statements are protected by the First Amendment, then plaintiffs should not be able to use the court processes to strip away this important First Amendment right to speak anonymously,” Geronimo said.

The case was assigned to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Deborah Turner.

A spokeswoman for Cliffs did not respond to a request for comment and questions from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.

Booleansearcher is a prolific commenter on the Yahoo Finance message boards. The profile says the account made more than 3,100 comments on stocks and companies ranging from the online sports betting giant DraftKings and 3M to Cisco and Costco, as well as multiple steel industry companies.

A comment from earlier this month claimed the only reason Cleveland-Cliffs maintained a high public evaluation was “the hope that it will be bought or a better CEO will come in” who will make wholesale changes.

“This can’t be run like a private company for the family wealth,” the post said. “It is a public company so it needs to be managed for shareholders. That just ain’t happening with LG [Goncalves], but many oddly here are so happy that he gets 20 million a year.”

In a post made last year, the user claimed to be a shareholder in the company and questioned whether Goncalves was “really the guy to take this to the next level.”

In the complaint, filed Jan. 16, the company said the comments “include statements without basis and contrary to fact that attack Mr. Goncalves’ business reputation and honesty, including the exercise of his and others at Cliffs’ fiduciary duties to shareholders.” The lawsuit also said the statements are “injurious to Mr. Goncalves’ reputation and the business interests of Cliffs.”

It also said the company sent letters to the email address associated with the account on Jan. 2 and Jan. 8, and both times received bounce-back messages that the inbox was full and could not accept messages.

The company used the same tactic in January 2023 to identify three users who made similarly critical comments. Judge Sherrie Miday granted the request and ordered Yahoo to hand Cliffs the account information to identify the commenters.

The company then filed a defamation and libel lawsuit against the three men. That complaint identified several comments from the men that accused Goncalves of wrongdoing. The defamation lawsuit settled out of court in August.

The company made a similar move in 2015.

Geronimo said that, like the case in Beachwood, Cleveland-Cliffs and Goncalves are public officials so the First Amendment casts broad protections over statements about them.

But this lawsuit differs from the Beachwood case. That’s because the company’s lawyers are using a civil rule that allows people who think they might have a reason to sue somebody to obtain discovery to identify the potential defendant before they actually file the lawsuit.

In Beachwood, lawyers first filed the lawsuit against unnamed defendants, then asked the judge to order an encrypted email server to identify the owner of an anonymous account.

Doing so allows a judge to sign off on the request as long as the plaintiffs show that they don’t know the identity of the person they might sue and that they tried to learn the person’s identity through other means.

Geronimo said he hopes that judges will apply the same standard that Judge Andrew Santoli applied in the Beachwood case to any case in which a public figure wants to learn the identity of an anonymous online critic.

That includes making the person who wants the information show that the statements were false and damaged someone’s reputation.

“Defamation isn’t just ‘you wrote these things, and it made me look bad,’” Geronimo said. “You’re supposed to be able to trace some tangible harm that happened as a result of the comments.”

Geronimo compared the comments about Goncalves to those made about businessman Elon Musk, who has been widely ridiculed after his purchase and rebranding of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

“It’s hard for me to think this CEO of a major company is actually having his reputation affected by comments on a message board,” he said.

https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2024/01/cleveland-cliffs-wants-to-unmask-anonymous-critic-legal-expert-says-that-raises-first-amendment-concerns.html

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