Hey, Can You ‘Like’ My Lawsuit?

Last August a federal judge granted two former Gawker Media interns permission to wage their fight for back pay from the company on behalf of former interns. It was a big win for the plaintiffs, but it raised a question: how to find people qualified to join the suit. Traditionally, lawyers track down parties for class actions by mail, but young people working for no pay in New York are unlikely to have fixed addresses. In November, Judge Alison Nathan gave the plaintiffs, Aulistar Mark and Andrew Hudson, permission to use social media, too. “This is a younger generation. They’re more apt to use hashtags,” says Brett Gallaway, a partner with McLaughlin & Stern, who specializes in class actions. “I think it’s almost ingenious.”

Nathan’s ruling has triggered a fierce debate over how far, exactly, Mark and Hudson’s attorneys can trawl online. In a Feb. 17 filing, Gawker’s attorneys raised myriad objections to the specifics of the plaintiffs’ proposed social media plan. Friending ex-interns on Facebook would be “misleading,” they said. Posting notices in Reddit threads about Gawker’s coverage of GamerGate would tie the suit to “unrelated controversies.” “Outreach via social media actually makes good sense, so long as plaintiffs’ lawyers aren’t spamming people or targeting social sites that are unlikely to reach the relevant folks,” says Gawker President and General Counsel Heather Dietrick. Gawker has denied wrongdoing in its intern pay policies.