In Grafstein v. Google Inc.,[FOOTNOTE 9] in an action converted to a summary proceeding that sought pre-action disclosure, the court ordered Google to provide plaintiff any information it possessed concerning the identity of the anonymous blogger(s) of the offending statements, after having assumed the truth of plaintiff’s affidavit that the statements accusing him of a crime were untrue.
Plaintiff had requested in its original plenary action that Google remove the comments made on the blog that he contended were defamatory and “to verify that similar [offending statements] were not posted in the future.”
Google opposed the relief sought as overbroad, vague, burdensome and on the ground that, because the court had not concluded that the statements actually constituted defamation, the relief sought constituted “a prior restraint of speech of Google’s users.”
The court held that plaintiff had not demonstrated an entitlement to an injunction ordering Google to remove the comments as “that would require, among other things, a determination that the statements [were] untrue, which [could] only be made in a separate action against the author or authors of the comments.”
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