Federal Court Exonerates MySpace in Pete Solis Underaged Girl Case - 2,275 Views, 5 Comments
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We all knew that something reeked when the family of a 14-year-old girl sued MySpace for “failing to protect” the girl from meeting 19-year-old Peter Solis on MySpace - a meeting which lead, they alleged, to a sexual assault. Nevermind that the girl had lied about her age when creating her MySpace account, and that’s the only reason that Pete Solis found her (and believed her to be 18). And we weren’t surprised when the court dismissed the lawsuit against MySpace for failing to protect the 14 year old girl from Pete Solis. And, I doubt that anybody was surprised when the girl’s family appealed the dismissal. Well, that appeal was decided this week by the Federal court, and the results are in: the court has upheld the dismissal, meaning MySpace - 1, greedy litigation-hungry bloodsucking parents - 0. But, even we were surprised at the language which the courts used, which came out this week when the Federal District Court in Texas upheld the dissing..er..I mean dismissing, of the parents’ case against MySpace, and lambasted the parents for failing their own responsiblity to exercise control over their daughter! Here’s the part that we liked best - warning, swallow anything in your mouth before reading this:
THE COURT: I want to get this straight. You have a Yes, your Honor. — That came from the lower court, whose dismissal of the case the appeals court affirmed this week. In short, the family tried to make a Federal case out of it, they had their day in court, and now, well, it’s time to wake up and smell your teenager.
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13- year-old girl who lies, disobeys all of the instructions, later on
disobeys the warning not to give personal information, obviously,
[and] does not communicate with the parent. More important,
the parent does not exercise the parental control over the minor.
The minor gets sexually abused, and you want somebody else to pay for it?
This is the lawsuit that you filed?
Federal Court Exonerates MySpace in Pete Solis Underaged Girl Case
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Read more:
» 14 Year Old Girl and Mom Sue MySpace for $30million for Date Gone Wrong
» MySpace Sued by Four Families for Failing to Protect Their Children from Predators
» Social Networking Site Bans Anyone Over 36 as “Likely Sex Offenders”
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Yep the female is victim 100% of the time stuff has to stop, it does no good to anyone.
Comment by KARMA — 5/22/2008 @ 4:57 pm
This is what you get when you have TO much freedom. There is no way these websites can tell who is who. Right now, you don’t know my age, do you. I could be 12 years old and you would not know it. By the way, I’m 60.
To much freedom can be deadly. Think about it.
Comment by Bob — 5/23/2008 @ 5:59 am
I said in a response to another message earlier this week that parents have to take more responsibility for what they allow their children to do online. It’s way past time the justice system agreed. Hooray for those judges!
Comment by Bryan — 5/23/2008 @ 8:29 am
OK, I’m a father who has highly intelligent children, they pay attention to rules, and yet will run out in traffic (or would watch TV etc that we don’t approve of if they feel like it). So we have a watchful eye on them. The Internet is a massive highway-GET IT! How about people taking responsibility for their parenting for a change instead of always blaming others. This case should have ended at ‘OK-arrest the bum, assault is assault’ and now for your negligence…MAYBE PARENTING LESSONS? Who are the adults here?
Comment by b.msnow@sasktel.net — 5/23/2008 @ 8:36 am
Some people will try anything. 1. I should have been obvious that the girl was underage- Mr Solis should be liable. 2. Her parents have to be responsible, and be held responsible for some of her misdeeds. They should also pay MySpace’s legal costs in this matter.
Comment by Mack — 5/23/2008 @ 9:53 am