2 April 2012

The bloggers have lost the first round in their case.

In New York US district judge John Koeltl ruled on Friday that:

No one forced the plaintiffs to give their work to The Huffington Post for publication and the plaintiffs candidly admit that they did not expect compensation.The principles of equity and good conscience do not justify giving the plaintiffs a piece of the purchase price when they never expected to be paid, repeatedly agreed to the same bargain, and went into the arrangement with eyes wide open...

Plaintiff Jonathan Tasini told Forbes:

Our legal team is studying grounds for appeal. I remind everyone that authors lost the first round in the landmark electronics rights case against The New York Times — indeed, based on a ruling by then-District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor — only to eventually win in the US Supreme Court in 2001. The facts still remain that Arianna Huffington is a robber baron CEO, no different than the people who run Wal-Mart or Goldman Sachs who exploit people for their own wealth and power. Though in fairness to Wal-Mart and Goldman Sachs, they don’t hypocritically pretend to be progressives.