California: Yahoo! Inc. has been sued by an Internet user who claims the company violated his privacy rights by disclosing his identity to his employer, which fired him for posting comments about it on the Web portal. A complaint filed last week in US district court in Los Angeles charges that Yahoo violated the user's constitutional and contractual rights to privacy, among other allegations.The user's name isn't revealed in the suit; the plaintiff is identified as Aquacool-2000, the moniker used by the person to post remarks on a Yahoo message board about AnswerThink Consulting Group Inc. In February, the Miami company sued 12 individuals in Florida federal court for allegedly publishing false and defamatory statements regarding the company on Yahoo.
After it issued a subpoena to Yahoo and obtained the identities of the individuals, AnswerThink filed another suit in March against Gregory P Hackett, an employee at the company. The company said it believed Hackett had illegally published confidential information, but it declined to comment further. Megan Gray, a Los Angeles lawyer representing Aquacool in the suit against Yahoo, wouldn't confirm or deny that Hackett is her client. Gray said her client is seeking monetary damages that could reach "into the millions" of dollars and that the case may expand into a class action.
Hackett, who resides in Ohio, couldn't be reached for comment. A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment on the suit. But she said that in April, Yahoo began notifying individuals if their accounts had become the subject of a subpoena. Separately, Yahoo said it will begin to offer local news from newspaper publisher Knight Ridder Inc.'s editorial operations on its news site, and provide links to various regional Web portals operated byKnightRidder.com (www.knightridder.com), the publisher's Internet unit.
Knight Ridder will offer headlines and abbreviated versions of stories found on Web sites operated by its Real Cities network of 36 regional portals, according to Lem Lloyd, director of business development for KnightRidder.com. Under the terms of the agreement, Mr. Lloyd said, Yahoo users will be able to scan headlines and news briefs that come from KnightRidder.com's portals.If users desire, they will be able to click directly from Yahoo to the KnightRidder.com Web portal containing the full version of the news story. The executive declined to disclose financial terms of the agreement.
The Wall Street Journal
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