Flea’s fall sobering for other bloggers | Boston Globe | 5.31.07
If there was any remaining doubt, the settlement of Natick pediatrician and medical blogger['s]…malpractice trial removed any illusion that blogging could be done anonymously.
Under the name [the] Flea…posted opinions on his case and the plaintiff’s lawyer, described his preparations for it and the defense strategy, and commented on the jurors. Today’s Globe story details how the plaintiff’s lawyer asked him on the stand if he was Flea. The case, which was settled the next day…
Dr. Kevin Pho, a Nashua, NH, internal medicine physician who blogs under his own name on Kevin, M.D., called the situation sobering.
…
Eric Turkewitz, a lawyer who writes the New York Personal Injury Law Blog, posts today that he’d been fascinated by Flea’s blog…”[t]he subject was, simply put, irresistible,”…”I know that I found his activity fascinating, not only for its raw content, but also for the walking-a-high-wire-without-a-net danger of what he was doing.”
…
David E. Williams, says on his Health Business Blog that he won’t debate Lindeman’s case but gives this endorsement[,]‘ “[l]et me just say that Rob is a fantastic pediatrician and a wonderful human being…[i[f you have kids and live anywhere near Natick, MA you should consider choosing him as their physician…”
Dr. Tim Sturgill, an emergency physician in Sacramento…his blog, symtym.
The Flea’s case will be remembered for many reasons. He has earned a place in legal textbooks and the armentarium of discovery and trial tactics. The merits of his case will never be known—no doubt sealed as part of the settlement. His “anonymous” actions, on his blog, gave his opposition suffiicient leverage to threaten character trumping merit before the jury. And the tragedy of a twelve-year-old’s death should never be lost, no matter what the cause. The plaintiff had a victorious day in court because the defendant had his days of fame in the blogosphere.
This case, hopefully, brought about a necessary death in the medical blogosphere—the death to the notion that anonymity and privacy are protected by an anonymous name. Also, death to the notion that removing content or taking down a blog is necessarily protective, see here and here.
