Florida Man Sues Wikileaks Over The Personal Distress It Caused Him

While the US government is struggling to come up with something (anything!) to bring Julian Assange to court over, one man in Florida has taken matters into his own hands. Slashdot points us to the news that a guy in Florida, David Pitchford, has apparently sued Wikileaks for all the distress it has caused him, claiming that the leaks have resulted in "hypertension," "depression" and "living in fear of being stricken by another heart attack and/or stroke" as a result of living "in fear of being on the brink of another nuclear [sic] WAR."' The full complaint is embedded below, and it's quite amusing. He's also afraid that others must be similarly suffering, and the impact of this will be to "diminish the Medicaid benifits [sic] that the Plainiff [sic] Depennds [sic] apon [sic] for health care in that the United States is Out of money." Mr. Pitchford is demanding (respectfully) $150 million dollars (well, "dollors" according to him).

According to the Superkuh blog, Mr. Pitchford in the past has tried similar tactics in suing Osama bin Laden. Of course, he also threatened to sue Superkuh for distress, after the blogger indicated he did not agree with Pitchford's lawsuits. It appears he likes to sue. Pitchford indicated that he didn't believe "any internet based medium could be a real member of the press." Another amusing bit was when Superkuh pointed out Wikileaks' relationship with various large media organizations such as the Guardian. In the lawsuit complaint, you can see that Pitchford claims that "after exhaustive research" he has determined that Wikileaks and Assange "have no known association with any known jourlism [sic] entity with the exception of that which is self proclaimed." You would think that an association with The Guardian or other major newspapers (including, in the past, the NY Times) would point out the problem with this line of argument. Instead, Pitchford suggested he planned to sue The Guardian too. Oh, and the Associated Press as well, which is guilty of talking about the leaks. In other words, don't expect this lawsuit to get any traction at all.

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