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Aug. 28, 2007 at 8:56am Eastern by Barry Schwartz
Yahoo Asks Court To Dismiss Jailed Chinese Reporter Case
Yahoo to Court: Dismiss Torture Case from the New York Times blog reports that Yahoo is requesting that the court dismiss the lawsuit brought by jailed Chinese reporter.
Chinese reporter Shi Tao was jailed and allegedly tortured by the Chinese government after Yahoo provided evidence against the reporter to the Chinese government. He then sued Yahoo over its involvement in the case and others.
Yahoo, in its filing, argued that this case "has no place in the American courts:"
This is a lawsuit by citizens of China imprisoned for using the Internet in China to express political views in violation of China law. It is a political case challenging the laws and actions of the Chinese government.
Yahoo added:
Yahoo deeply sympathizes with the plaintiffs and their families and does not condone the suppression of their rights and liberty by their government. But Yahoo has no control over the sovereign government of the People’s Republic of China (”PRC”), the laws it passes, and the manner in which it enforces its laws. Neither Yahoo Inc. or YHKL therefore, can be held liable for the independent acts of the PRC just because a former Yahoo subsidiary in China obeyed a lawful government request for the collection of evidence relevant to a pending investigation.
But when the New York Times asked Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA for their opinion, he said:
It is not the Chinese government that is the defendant here. It is Yahoo, for their part in this process. If not for Yahoo, there would have been no abuses. They gave the pieces of information that allowed China to take these actions.
The legal experts feel that Yahoo will ultimately win this case.
More news coverage on this topic can be found at News.com.
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By Barry Schwartz
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See Related Stories In: Legal: Privacy, Yahoo: Legal, Yahoo: Outside US
If you have access to the PACER database, yesterday's filings as well as many others are available via PACER.
Go to the Federal Court, Northern District, CA
https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl
https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/index.html
and login. The case # is:
4:2007cv02151
I have also posted a copy of the docket as of this morning here.
http://tinyurl.com/ypyu6f