Gunning v. Doe

In this defamation case, the Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the superior court’s dismissal of Marie Gunning’s complaint without prejudice for failure to effect service on the defendants, holding that Gunning was estopped from a prior California judgment from continuing to seek the Does’ identities. Marie Gunning brought suit against the anonymous publisher and writer (collectively, John Doe) of News as Viewed from a Crow’s Nest (Crow's Nest), a publication distributed locally in Freeport, Maine and accessible on the Internet, claiming that Crow’s Nest published defamatory statements about her in several of its issues. During the proceedings, a California court quashed a subpoena that Gunning served on the Crow’s Nest website host seeking to identify Doe. Thereafter, the superior court dismissed Gunning’s complaint without prejudice for failure to effect service on the defendants. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding that because the issue decided by the California court in a final judgment was the same issue that Gunning sought to have a Maine court revisit, and because Gunning had the opportunity and incentive to litigate that issue in California, she was estopped from relitigating it in the Maine action. View "Gunning v. Doe" on Justia Law