According to a report by The Associated Press, Dr. Sam Graham Jr. resigned as chairman of Emory University Medical School’s urology department in July 1998. The following year, he saw a posting on a Yahoo! message board by “FBIinformant” alleging that he was forced to resign because he had given his department’s pathology business to a company in exchange for kickbacks.
Dr. Graham sued the anonymous poster, who was later identified as Dr. Jonathan Oppenheimer, a former staff pathologist at the company in question.
Graham’s lawyers called the verdict the first of its kind, although there have been a number of US defamation cases this year where courts have ordered that the identity of anonymous posters should be revealed. In October, the UK saw its first award of damages in a case of libel by anonymous e-mail.