Curis narrows search for "erinG" to government off
Hmmm. Hope they nail this gov't "worker"...
Curis narrows search for "erinG" to government office
2012-07-20 10:21 PT - Street Wire
by Mike Caswell
Curis Resources Ltd. has narrowed its search for Stockhouse poster "erinG" to a person who used a computer at a government office in Pinal County, Arizona. In an application filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on Tuesday, July 17, the company says that it has traced IP addresses for the user to both the government office and to Qwest Communications Company LLC, an Internet service provider. Curis is asking for a court order requesting assistance from U.S. authorities to obtain the user's real name.
Curis is trying to identify "erinG" after posts on Stockhouse questioned a water permit the company was attempting to obtain from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. According to the company, the posts wrongly stated that it had been unable to obtain the permit. Curis claimed that the messages were defamatory and that they led to a 27-per-cent drop in its price.
In Monday's application, the company says it has obtained two IP addresses from Stockhouse that "erinG" used. The first is registered to Qwest Communications, which provides residential Internet service under the name CenturyLink. The second is for a government office in Pinal County, Arizona, which is near the company's flagship Florence copper project. Curis's lawyer has written to both Qwest and to Pinal County requesting records relating to the IP addresses. Both replied that they would require a court order before they would provide any such records.
As a result, Curis is asking that the B.C. court issue a letter to the federal court in Arizona requesting assistance. Specifically, the company is seeking to examine representatives of Qwest Communications and Pinal County under oath. (Such requests, while not common, do appear in cross-border defamation cases. In 2011, Farallon Mining Ltd. was able to use a similar process to identify a Stockhouse user in Scottsdale, Ariz., who the company was suing for defamation.)
Curis's request comes almost two months after the company filed a defamation suit at the Vancouver courthouse over the "erinG" posts. The suit complained about messages that appeared in May, 2012, that were "defamatory and injuriously false." The messages stated that the company had been unable to obtain a water permit for the Florence project and that management had failed to report the rejection.
The first post, dated May 7, stated: "Just last week, Arizona Department of Environmental Quality rejected Curis' most recent application for an APP permit. This is their second failed attempt at securing the much needed permit from ADEQ." Another post, the following day, told readers that the company's permit application was missing "copious amounts of key information" and that management had failed to fully disclose all the details of the application. The post also said that a mining analyst named Brent Cook had begun "dumping the stock."
According to the suit, the posts were grossly defamatory. They appeared in a place where the entire world could view them, and in particular were in a forum read by people with a financial interest in Curis. Moreover, the posts were false or made without regard to their truthfulness.
The company also complained that the posts contributed to a 27-per-cent drop in its price. (The stock had fallen to 66 cents on the date of the final post, down from 90 cents the last trading day before the posts began.)
The suit sought a permanent injunction barring future posts, general and special damages, aggravated damages, punitive damages, plus interest and court costs. Vancouver lawyer Joel Hill of Hakemi & Company filed the suit on the company's behalf.
Curis closed at 44.5 cents Thursday, down 4.5 cents.