Justene Adamec of Calblog is having a hard time shaking off the lawyers for an outfit best known for their dodged purist of small business "listings". These folks use the age old tactic of sending a "renewal" bill and hoping someone pays it. They also use the same tactic via phone. Here is the latest threat.

I've been wondering if, and when, I might hear from lawyers from the Hilton family, so I've been following Justene's case for a while now. I'm not sure there is any litigated history on blog comment sections, but bulletin boards and e-mail discussion lists are the natural corollaries, and there is good precedent there (covered in the links below). The general rule seems to be that you are responsible for your own writing only, not that contained in comments even if you have been notified of the potential issues in a comment. Justene is a lawyer so one would assume that she examined her own posts for libelous statements.

In regards to my exposure to the substantially more expensive Hilton family lawyers, I've not been contacted and I hope to keep it that way, but the legal folks I've contacted agree that I'm on pretty solid footing. Of course given the resources of the Hilton family anything is possible. I'll keep you posted.

Other coverage:

Kevin McGehee has a full listing of Bear Flag League (California bloggers) coverage. An attack against one Bear Flag League member is an attack on all memebers in his book.

Xrlq blogs the legal challenge and reproduces the comments here.

SoCalLawBlog rightly classifies the attorneys and their client as morons.

Jay Solo has a personal account of how the scamming company attempts to get you to signup.