Ciolli of Autoadmit sues Reputation Defenders, Lawyers, Law Students…
Since we talked about Reputation Defender a few weeks back I thought that this might be interesting to some people.
Anthony Ciolli (an officer of autoadmit but apparently not a moderator?) has counter-sued Reputation Defender and a bunch of others in state court in Pennsylvania. Complaint available here.
Analysis and more after the jump.
I’ve only briefly read the complaint but the jist of it seems to be two main sets of claims. First he is suing the lawyers that had previously sued him (allegedly without any cause or good faith). Defendants in that action include some big names — Keker & Van Nest, and Prof. Lemley of Stanford Law.
The other set of claims are against Reputation Defender and Irvani & Heller (two of the women who had sued Ciolli and others). The claims there, in addition to libel, slander, and false light also include a claim of tortious interference with contractual relations. In addition to their public comments about Ciolli they apparently also engaged in a letter writing campaign to find out where he was going to work after graduation and then pressured his employer (successfully) into revoking his offer.
Hard to say where all this will play out. It may just be a legal maneuver to counter everything that has happened to him, but on the other hand most of that seems to have run its course and this is the first substantial shot back at Reputation Defender.
As to the web it certainly raises some interesting questions for the approach of a place like Reputation Defender. While they want to be aggressive on behalf of their clients one would think that they should be held to at least the same standard they would want to hold others to when they fight back. One might even be able to say that they should know better since this is their business after all.
Either way, it should be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
So far story is up at:
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