The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled Tuesday that Covington Catholic high school students cannot bring harassment claims against comedian Kathy Griffin.
On January 18, 2019, a group of Covington Catholic high school students participated in the annual March for Life rally in Washington, DC. Following the rally, the students were involved in an incident outside the Lincoln Memorial involving Native American Nathan Phillips. Images of the confrontation were quickly disseminated throughout the world via the internet.
Sujana Chandrasekhar, a doctor who lives in New Jersey, tweeted about the event, as did comedian Kathy Griffin. Griffin tweeted multiple times about the incident, including stating that she wanted the names of the students involved.
The parents of the students sued Griffin and Chandrasekhar separately in the Eastern District of Kentucky, alleging civil harassment, harassing communications, menacing, terroristic threats and common law invasion of privacy. The district court dismissed both complaints without prejudice for lack of personal jurisdiction.
On appeal, the court consolidated the cases. The plaintiffs argued that the court was required, from their decision in Gerber v. Riordan, to hold that Griffin waived her personal jurisdiction defense when her lawyer filed a notice of appearance of counsel two weeks prior to moving to dismiss. However, the court found that filing a notice appearance “does not, on its own, cause a defendant to waive her personal jurisdiction defense.” Courts must consider all relevant circumstances and look at situations in context.
The appeals court found that Griffin had not given the plaintiffs a “reasonable expectation that [she] will defend the suit on the merits” because Griffin had not filed any responsive pleading omitting the defense. She also had not participated in any other way “that would lead plaintiffs to conclude that [she] would not assert the defense.” She also did not cause the court to go to efforts that would be wasted if there was no personal jurisdiction.
The court affirmed the district court’s finding that the court had no personal jurisdiction over the defendants because their tweets were not committed “acts” within Kentucky. Because of this, the court affirmed the dismissal of the complaints.
