East Coast Test Prep LLC v. Allnurses.com, Inc., No. 18-3197 (8th Cir. 2020)
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After unfavorable comments were posted about Test Prep, the company and its owner filed suit against several defendants, including Allnurses and its founder and a user. Test Prep alleged claims sounding in defamation, contract, and fraud, as well as other theories of liability asserting that Allnurses had induced users to post negative comments. The district court granted Allnurses' motion for judgment on the pleadings and dismissed the suit against the user for lack of personal jurisdiction.
The court held that Allnurses was immunized under Section 203 of the Communications Decency Act from liability arising from the posts on the message board. The court held that Test Prep failed to plausibly allege that Allnurses was the "information content provider" of the posts at issue. In this case, the sum total of the complaint's factual allegations pleaded no more than a "sheer possibility" that Allnurses was wholly or partly responsible for creating or developing the posts made by the message board users. Furthermore, in the absence of any contractual relationship between Test Prep and Allnurses, there is no basis for the complaint's allegation that Allnurses had certain obligations to Test Prep including to take down defamatory or libelous posts. The court also held that an individual user plaintiff failed to plead facts sufficient to establish a breach of the terms of the service contract; the district court properly granted judgment in favor of Allnurses on the promissory estoppel claim; claims of fraud and claims based on other theories of liability rejected; the district court did not err in granting the user's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction; and the district court did not err in granting Test Prep's motion to transfer the case.
Court Description: [Wollman, Author, with Colloton and Kelly, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Communications Decency Act. Plaintiff failed to plausibly allege that Allnurses was the information content provider of posts made by message board users on Allnurses' website; the factual allegations in the complaint pleaded no more than a sheer possibility that Allnurses was wholly or partly responsible for creating or developing the posters' comments and thus it was immunized under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from liability arising from the posts; in the absence of any contractual relationship between Allnurses and Test Prep, there was no basis for Test Prep's claims that Allnurses had any obligation to take down certain posts; individual-user plaintiff Olynyk failed to plead facts establishing any breach of the terms of service contract; promissory estoppel argument rejected; fraud and misrepresentation claims rejected; no error in granting defendant Russ's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction or in denying Test Prep's motion to transfer the case to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania where Russ resides.
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