Terminix backs out of suit against private citizen's web site

After Virga created a Web site critical of Terminix, the company sued her twice, once for libel. Carla won. And once for trademark infringement for using the name Terminix.

 

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Subject:   Consumers Fight Corporations on the Web-----
Date:       Sun, 19 Mar 2000 13:28:58 -0500
From:        Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)

To:     Lyndon Hawkins <hawkins@empm.cdpr.ca.gov>
          Senior Research Scientist
          State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
          Integrated Pest Management

Dear Lyndon, I thought you might like to read a story of a California woman that was financially destroyed by one of your licensed pest control operators, entitled: Consumers fight corporations on Web, but protests costly. 

http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/03/17/online.protests/index.html ". By CNN Technology Correspondent Rick Lockridge, March 17, 2000, Web posted at: 7:20 p.m. EST (0020 GMT).

YUBA CITY, California (CNN) -- A California woman won a bittersweet legal victory this week against an extermination service that pestered her for years after she placed complaints against the company online.

Carla Virga's site is one of more than 1,000 angry consumer protest sites that have cropped up on the Internet, many with unprintable Web addresses. Some have legitimate customer complaints, others random belly aching.

Virga sued Terminix after discovering what she said was $20,000 worth of unreported damage in the walls and floors of her California home.

"We offered to settle for $7,500 so we could avoid litigation. They chose not to take that offer," she said.

After Virga created a Web site critical of Terminix, the company sued her twice, once for libel. Carla won. And once for trademark infringement for using the name Terminix.

Ralph Nader to the rescue

The advocacy group Public Citizen, led by consumer activist Ralph Nader, helped defend Virga against the trademark suit.

"If Ralph Nader's group had not come forward to help me out, along with volunteer law firms, I would have lost by default," Virga said.

Public Citizen attorney Paul Alan Levy called the case a "relatively easy" one.

"If (Terminix) had criticism they didn't like, the response should be to speak to it, to rebut it, and not to prevent people from speaking their piece and getting their communications known to the general public," he said.

Levy said that the company's strong-arm tactics against his client backfired.

"Terminix had a bug about her, you might say. Terminix tried to suppress her before but the more it fought against her, the more interest she took in Terminix and the more she put up about Terminix, and the more other people communicated to her about Terminix."

Terminix's parent company dropped its trademark suit against Virga on March 8.

"Terminix believes in free speech, and we strongly support the ability of anyone to communicate their views on the Internet. This was simply a trademark issue," a company spokesman told CNN.

But what of many other companies that find themselves the targets of disparaging Web sites? Is it unfair that any angry customer who knows how to build a Web page can become a round-the-clock critic, visible worldwide?

Joey Anuff, the co-founder of Suck.com, doesn't think so. "Any company, be it AOL or Microsoft or eBay, that looks at a (protest) site and judges it to be unfair is missing the point," he said.

Anuff's popular Web site focuses on what he calls "sophisticated whining and crybaby journalism," which he calls essential to democracy.

"Our founding fathers were dissatisfied consumers, and there is a great deal of legitimacy to the idea of complaining about things you are dissatisfied with," he said.

Victorious, but financially ruined

As for Virga, she won the Web site war. But her legal fees from the nine-year-long litigation drove her husband and her into bankruptcy.

"It ruined our credit, but other people are losing their homes, their health and we are fortunate that all that happened to us is that we were financially ruined," she said.

Well Lyndon, it is too bad these California people had to go through nine years of agony but, as Carla Virga clearly mentions "they" are the "fortunate ones" - "they" were only financially destroyed by your pest control industry!

Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten

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