2 dentists who tried to muzzle patient for Web disses must pay fees
It will cost two
In a decision that was lost temporarily in the winds of Hurricane Wilma, Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Edward Fine ordered Richard Kaplan of West Palm Beach and Leonard Tolley of Lantana to pay for trying to silence a North Palm Beach woman who started a Web site to blast their dental work.
Fine ruled that the two dentists or their attorneys should have known that Elaine Prentice was well within her constitutional rights to slam them on her Web site. Because they filed a suit to try to stop her from exercising her right to free speech, Fine ordered the two to pay her attorneys' fees.
West Palm Beach lawyer James Green, who with Ralph Nader's Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group Public Citizen, represented Prentice, estimated Monday that Prentice's legal bill came to about $20,000.
Green, who learned of Fine's Oct. 20 decision by mail late
last week, said he warned the dentists' attorneys that the lawsuit was
ill-advised. Roughly six years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the First
Amendment protects Internet rants.
However, it wasn't until August, about nine months after the suit was filed, that the dentists heeded the advice.
Green likened the lawsuit to a slap suit, a term given to a legal ploy well-heeled developers used in the past to try to scare environmentalists and other cash-strapped groups from opposing their projects.
The financial imbalance between the two sides is the same.
"Now professionals who are being criticized on Web sites are filing lawsuits," he said.
"Usually people who do Web sites don't have a lot of money."
But, he said, Fine's decision proves money has its limitations.
"It should remind all citizens like Elaine Prentice
that they can speak freely on the Internet," Green said.