By LORRAINE SWANSON
Editor
Freedom of speech prevailed in Uptown when subpoenas seeking ownership information for two anonymous blogs and the identities of anonymous commentators on a message board operated by a block club in Uptown were withdrawn during a court hearing Wednesday afternoon.
In January, attorneys for Wilson Yard developer Peter Holsten subpoenaed Google, asking for Blogger account holder information for two Uptown blogs, Uptown Update and the defunct What the Helen. Both blogs have been highly critical of Holsten and 46thWard Alderman Helen Shiller for their handling of the Wilson Yard retail and housing development at Broadway and Montrose.
A second subpoena targeted the Uptown block club Buena Park Neighbors, seeking the identities of anonymous residents who posted messages to BPN’s message board.
The subpoenas were part of discovery in a lawsuit against Holsten and the City of Chicago filed by Fix Wilson Yard late last year that alleged both violated state laws in the creation and planning of the Wilson Yard TIF District. The case was dismissed in May but the residents group has since filed an appeal.
Neither the bloggers nor BPN are involved in the Fix Wilson Yard lawsuit. Holsten’s attorneys argued that the subpoenas were aimed at statements allegedly made by the six Uptown residents who are named as plaintiffs in the Fix Wilson Yard lawsuit and comments they allegedly made under anonymous blog identities. Motions filed by the defendants claimed the information was necessary to establish that plaintiffs had waited beyond a five-year statute within which parties can file lawsuits challenging TIF projects.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group based in San Francisco that defends the First Amendment rights of those who use the Internet to exercise their freedom of speech, took up the bloggers and BPN’s case pro-bono.
The EFF filed a renewed motion to quash the subpoenas last week, after asking the defendants at least six times to withdraw their subpoenas. In a last-minute response filed earlier this month, Holsten’s attorneys asked the court to continue the subpoenas indefinitely.
“We asked six times for any evidence that our clients [the bloggers and BPN] are the plaintiffs and they couldn’t give me any factual basis for issuing the subpoenas in the first place,” Zimmerman said.
On Wednesday, Holsten’s attorneys with some prompting by Cook County Judge Mary Kathrrine Rochford, according to EFF co-counsel Charles Mudd, withdrew the subpoenas. The judge also attached a protective order to the motion to quash, requiring the defendants’ attorneys to argue their case before issuing similar subpoenas in the future. Still available to the anonymous speakers, the bloggers and Buena Park Neighbors, is the right to ask the court for costs and attorneys’ fees.
“[The defendants] issued their subpoenas and refused to withdraw them until someone stood up to them,” Zimmerman said. “That was our story from the beginning and that was exactly how it played out.”
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