Evony is trying to sue UK blogger in NSW: Can a plaintiff successfully sue a foreign defendant?

Almost everyone has come across the Evony adverts, most of them showing scantily clad women and promising that you can 'play discretely'. One gaming blogger, Bruce Everiss has taken a stand against Evony, mostly for allegedly spamming his forum and using unethical business practices.

The question is whether a NSW plaintiff can sue a UK defendant. The Supreme court in NSW can have jurisdiction to hear a matter concerning a defendant from a foreign jurisdiction. Gutnick v Dow Jones is on point here. Basically the High Court held that Gutnick (an Australian citizen) could sue Dow Jones (based in NY I believe) in Victoria, Australia as the damage to Gutnick’s reputation occurred in Victoria when subscribers in Victoria to the online magazine published by Dow Jones read a defamatory article about Gutnick. Here, the court had jurisdiction to hear the matter as the tort occurred in Victoria.

In NSW, the court have a 'submit and see what happens' approach to service on an overseas defendant. If the defendant fails to appear, the plaintiff then needs to seek the leave of the court to proceed with the litigation, where the court will decide if they are a 'clearly inappropriate forum' to hear the matter and that the claim has some success. There is also a lot of doubt surrounding the enforceability of the judgement (which the court does not take into account here). Without the defendant having assets in the jurisdiction, it may be difficult to enforce any judgement against them.

It will be interesting to see if this progresses, or whether this is simply a scare tactic.

Cyber bully jailed over Facebook death threats

While bullying and harassment has always been traditionally recognised offline, it is interesting to see how bullying online is being dealt with by the law. It appears that in the UK, death threats made using the social networking site Facebook are serious enough to impose imprisonment.

Although it is questionable as to whether the defendants offline actions against the plaintiff were the main contributory factor in the courts decision, along with prior convictions against the defendant, it could be showing that the court is beginning the recognise that traditionally personal, offline offences can also occur online.

It will be interesting to see what the outcome would be should the threats occur entirely online.