Revenge-Porn Civil Litigators (and Those Who Are Not)

 Posted on November 08, 2016 in Uncategorized

Lawyers who have gotten civil judgments against people publishing revenge porn:

1. ;Kenton Hutcherson

2. Kyle Bristow;

3. Marc Randazza;

4. Joseph Mathew

Notice something about the CCRI's list of attorneys: None of those lawyers who have successfully litigated revenge-porn suits for victims are on it.

?

While I am certain that penal revenge-porn statutes should and will eventually go the way of the dodo, I don't feel the same way about civil liability for revenge porn. Unlike a criminal judgment, a civil judgment serves to make the victim whole; unlike a criminal judgment, a civil judgment can be calibrated ($1 in damages, or $500,000?) to the wrong done; unlike a criminal judgment, a civil judgment does not destroy the defendant's future. Publishing revenge porn is socially corrosive behavior, and its victims should have a civil remedy for the actual harm done to them.

How do we get to the point where civil judgments are permitted by the First Amendment, but criminal prosecutions for the same speech are explicitly not? I'm not sure we do, but civil cases are procedurally different from criminal cases: A penal statute is more like a prior restraint than it is like a civil judgment. Most civil First Amendment challenges are post judgment and as applied; criminal overbreadth challenges to statutes should be pre judgment and as written.

If we are going to get to the point where revenge porn has civil but not criminal consequences, though, we need competent lawyers in both arenas - criminal-defense lawyers who grok the First Amendment, and civil litigators who are competent and willing to act.

CCRI lists some of the many people talking the talk when it comes to remedies for revenge porn. None appear to have backed their words with action. Whether any of them are competent to do the job of Hutcherson, Bristow, Randazza, or Matthew is doubtful.