On April 14th I received a registered letter from the Superior Court of California, filled on April 11 2006 by *******, aka ****** on my website , seeking $5000 in damages. The plaintiff claims the defendant (that would be me) owes him the money because:
"He asked me to perform a service then cancelled after I did the work. He also listed derogatory information about me on my High School Web Site (that would be my website of which he speaks, not his) costing me lost business revenue."
Now here's the story:
It's almost laughable, but it's actually happening!!
I run a small website that I setup about 4 years ago for the purpose of having a place where my fellow classmates from high school could get together, make contact with old lost friends and basically enjoy the old days and reconnect. Kind of a mini Classmates.com only this site is free and is run as a labor of love and a hobby by me. No has ever been asked to contribute in any monetary fashion. Several members have offered to help pay the costs of running the site, but I wont accept any donations, like I said, I do this for fun and It makes me feel good.
Last year two of the members volunteered to put together a dinner at a local restaurant. It was a great event with about 20 members and their friends and family showing up. A splendid time was had by all. This year the same two people volunteered to coordinate a second get together dinner. One of the newer members, the one suing me, posted several times that he was not happy with the choice of location for the dinner. He became so adamant about choosing another location that he caused the original planners to back-out in frustration, In an attempt to cool the situation down I asked him to coordinate with the others and try to come up with a compromise, I made it very clear to him that I wanted this to be a joint effort and hoped he would make peace with those who had initiated the event. Instead, he decided he was going to take control and run the whole thing by himself. This was not what I'd asked him to do, so I told him to back off for a while and I closed the Thread where all this was taking place, hoping people would all calm down and reconsider the who thing... Instead, he created a Yahoo Group and began using my site to contact the membership through Private Mails telling them that I was a bad guy and they should move over to his site. I decided I'd had enough of this guy, in a few short weeks he had offended two of the nicest people I ever met and was beginning to create havoc on my website. I deleted his account and wished him well with his new site and tried to move on. I have never said anything bad about him on my site.
Then I get this Law Suit slapped against me!! I can't believe this is happening... I've never been sued for anything but now I'm facing this. I'm actually losing sleep over it. Does this guy have any chance of collecting $5000 from me for not allowing him to plan our dinner?
Any advice on how I should handle this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
John
"He asked me to perform a service then cancelled after I did the work. He also listed derogatory information about me on my High School Web Site (that would be my website of which he speaks, not his) costing me lost business revenue."
Now here's the story:
It's almost laughable, but it's actually happening!!
I run a small website that I setup about 4 years ago for the purpose of having a place where my fellow classmates from high school could get together, make contact with old lost friends and basically enjoy the old days and reconnect. Kind of a mini Classmates.com only this site is free and is run as a labor of love and a hobby by me. No has ever been asked to contribute in any monetary fashion. Several members have offered to help pay the costs of running the site, but I wont accept any donations, like I said, I do this for fun and It makes me feel good.
Last year two of the members volunteered to put together a dinner at a local restaurant. It was a great event with about 20 members and their friends and family showing up. A splendid time was had by all. This year the same two people volunteered to coordinate a second get together dinner. One of the newer members, the one suing me, posted several times that he was not happy with the choice of location for the dinner. He became so adamant about choosing another location that he caused the original planners to back-out in frustration, In an attempt to cool the situation down I asked him to coordinate with the others and try to come up with a compromise, I made it very clear to him that I wanted this to be a joint effort and hoped he would make peace with those who had initiated the event. Instead, he decided he was going to take control and run the whole thing by himself. This was not what I'd asked him to do, so I told him to back off for a while and I closed the Thread where all this was taking place, hoping people would all calm down and reconsider the who thing... Instead, he created a Yahoo Group and began using my site to contact the membership through Private Mails telling them that I was a bad guy and they should move over to his site. I decided I'd had enough of this guy, in a few short weeks he had offended two of the nicest people I ever met and was beginning to create havoc on my website. I deleted his account and wished him well with his new site and tried to move on. I have never said anything bad about him on my site.
Then I get this Law Suit slapped against me!! I can't believe this is happening... I've never been sued for anything but now I'm facing this. I'm actually losing sleep over it. Does this guy have any chance of collecting $5000 from me for not allowing him to plan our dinner?
Any advice on how I should handle this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
John
