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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITYS MOTION TO DISMISS
Plaintiff specifies five (5) causes of action in his Verified
Complaint. In none of these does Plaintiff allege a legally
recognizable cause of action against TTU. Plaintiff describes two
Defendants as faculty members of TTU. See Verified Complaint,
Paragraphs 16-17. Plaintiffs only other reference to Texas Tech again
mentions that TTU recently hired two Defendants and that TTU allowed
those Defendants to use TTU computers. See Verified Complaint,
Paragraphs 40-41. TTU y denies that any alleged defamatory messages in
this case were sent from any TTU omputer. TTU is not identified as
committing any action identified in Counts I-V.
In other words, Sloan never claimed that TTU did anything wrong.
There is nothing illegal about hiring someone who Sloan is suing,
and there is nothing illegal about letting them use a TTU computer
for purposes unrelated to Sloan -- and that's all Sloan claimed.
Sloan did not claim that the alleged defamatory messages were
sent from any TTU omputer -- he only claimed that TTU allowed the
defendants to use TTU computers without specifying what that use
was.
It is well-settled that the Eleventh Amendment deprives a federal
court of jurisdiction to hear a suit against the State of Texas,
regardless of the relief sought, unless sovereign immunity is
expressly waived.
Sovereign immunity: you cannot sue the government witout the governmen's
permission. Texas gives you permission to sue TTU in a Texas court,
but denies you permission to sue TTU in a federal court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soverei...reign_immunity
http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/s103.htm
TTU specifically denies that any alleged defamatory messages in this
case were sent from any TTU computer. Even if such messages were sent
from a TTU computer, any potential claim by Plaintiff against TTU in
this case is barred by the Communications Decency Act of 1996 ("CDA"),
47 U.S.C. � 230, et seq. Section 230 provides that "[n]o provider or
user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the
publisher or speaker of any information provided by another
You can't sue the telephone company for allowing someone to use a
telephone while slandering you. You can't arrest the president
of Ford because he sold a car to someone who used it to rob a bank.
And you can't sue TTU for for allowing someone to use a TTU computer
while slandering you (assuming that such a thing actually happened,
which TTU denies).
This is an important protection. Look at all the stuff that gets
posted to this newsgroup; do we really want people to be able to sue
the owners of every computer that propagates those messages? No.
Any lawsuits must be limited to those who posted the messages.
Otherwise the Internet and the telephone system would both be
shut down to avoid lawsuits.
I am hoping that this will all end with Sloan being convicted of
being a serial abuser of the legal system and barred from filing
any further lawsuits without getting the court's permission first.