Woman sues ICANN over expired domains; case gets snarled in Florida bankruptcy case.
An impoverished woman has sued ICANN in Oregon over expired domain names, and now the non-profit finds itself having to file a brief in a Florida bankruptcy court.
Denise Subramaniam sued ICANN in Oregon back in March over domain names she registered for clients that expired. She says the domain registrar became insolvent and that ICANN didn’t do a good enough job enforcing its accreditation requirements for the registrar. (lawsuit pdf)
She’s asking for $5,887,500.
With regards to the Oregon case, ICANN writes:
Plaintiff sued the wrong party, in the wrong jurisdiction, and under the wrong statutes because Oregon lacks personal jurisdiction over ICANN and ICANN has no connection to Plaintiff’s alleged injuries.
The Oregon lawsuit also named the owner of the domain name registrar, who’s now bankrupt. The trustee for the bankrupt party then filed a notice of removal directly to Bankruptcy Court in Florida. So ICANN was forced to file a 20 page plus rationale (pdf) for why the removal to bankruptcy court was wrong all the way across the country.
Ouch.
Acro says
The best asset when filing a lawsuit: having a lawyer.
Dave Zan says
Stupid.