Co-op wins first round in cyber-bullying case

A lesson to all: Don’t cyber-bully the co-op board. A Brooklyn judge has ruled that Coney Island co-op Trump Village can move forward with a libel lawsuit against shareholders who started a blog that badmouthed the co-op board.

Displeased residents started the innocuously named blog, tv4news.org, which names and criticizes building board members, according to Brick Underground.

Somewhat incredibly, besides the creators of the blog, the lawsuit also names two anonymous commenters who go by “Joseph Stalin” and “Aborigen.”

“The judicial system is catching up to cyber-bullying,” Igor Oberman, one of the board members most prominently criticized on the site, told Brick Underground. “You can’t just go and hurt buildings’ reputations with your $9.99 GoDaddy account.”

However, this is just the first step for the lawsuit. It is yet to be seen whether the right to free speech here trumps (no pun intended) a board’s interest in protecting its reputation.  [BU] – Christopher Cameron