Swiss bank in Wikileaks case abruptly abandons lawsuit

A Swiss bank that successfully sued to yank the Wikileaks.org domain name, and then faced a severe setback in a subsequent court ruling, has given up for now.

Bank Julius Baer filed a brief note with a court in San Francisco Wednesday saying it would voluntarily dismiss its own case, while reserving the right to file it again in the future or pursue it "in an alternate court, jurisdiction, or venue."

BJB's sudden move comes a few days after U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White reversed his earlier ruling (which pulled the plug on the Wikileaks.org domain) and said he was skeptical of the bank's ability to win the suit.

"This dismissal comes in the wake of our private warning to the bank's counsel that, if the case were not dismissed, not only the existing defendants but the intervening defendants such as Public Citizen and the California First Amendment Project could seek attorneys' fees under California law that is designed to protect the exercise of First Amendment rights on matters of public interest against meritless lawsuits such as this one," said Paul Levy, an attorney with Public Citizen who filed a motion to intervene in the case and argued before White last Friday.

After Public Citizen and a host of other groups--including the California First Amendment Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Project on Government Oversight, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation--presented their arguments, White seemed to have a change of heart. His written order dissolving the injunctions said he had concerns about whether the court had jurisdiction over the case and whether the injunction would even be halfway effective. The order said he also had concerns that an injunction could violate the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment.

White's original rulings did two things: First, they ordered the Dynadot domain registrar to suspend the Wikileaks.org registration and prevent the transfer to another registrar. Second, in the order against Wikileaks itself, he said the defendants were "enjoined from displaying, posting, publishing, distributing, linking to, and/or otherwise providing any information" that the Bank Julius Baer considers to be confidential. The bank boasts that it is the "leading dedicated wealth manager in Switzerland."

Wikileaks' summary of the leaked documents centers on Rudolf Elmer, the former chief operating officer of Bank Julius Baer in the Cayman Islands. The summary alleges that the bank supports "ultra-rich's offshore tax avoidance, tax evasion, asset hiding and money laundering."

The bank had said in a statement last week: "The documents in question are protected and prohibited from unauthorized publication under U.S., California, and foreign consumer banking and privacy protection laws. The posting of confidential bank records by anonymous sources significantly harms the privacy rights of all individuals." It also added, referring to Wikileaks' summary: "Julius Baer denies the authenticity of this material and wholly rejects the serious and defamatory allegations which it contains."

[Dalkorian]

Did I miss something?

From the article:

"The bank had said in a statement last week: "The documents in
question are protected and prohibited from unauthorized
publication under U.S., California and foreign consumer banking
and privacy protection laws. The posting of confidential bank
records by anonymous sources significantly harms the privacy
rights of all individuals." It also added, referring to Wikileaks'
summary: "Julius Baer denies the authenticity of this material
and wholly rejects the serious and defamatory allegations which
it contains.""

So, the documents are protected but not authentic?

[George Orwellian]

Re: DID I MISS SOMETHING?

It's standard practice to list a series of reasons either as plaintiff
or defendant starting with the most serious claims/defenses first,
falling back to the weakest.

The "not authentic" claim sounds like defamation.

[obarton]

Quandry

When the bank tried to defend itself I'm sure it had no idea that US free speech rights were somehow involved. I don't blame the bank for trying to defend themselves because anyone can post to a leak site without verification so who knows if the details are actually true. It's somehow unfair that someone can try to hurt a businesses reputation without any proof and due to a judges wrong decision to take the site down leaves a firm without any good way to defend itself. As a patriotic American I like to think that you can have your day in court but it seems that when free speech gets in the mix it's better to just drop it.

[cyxs]

what about crime tip hotlines?

By your logic all crime tips should be disregarded too cause it could be someone that wants to hurt someone else without any proof. This is incorrect. The WikiLeaks site states that they might not be valid, they offer them as is. If people who know of wrongdoing are prevented from doing so because of lawsuits then people would get away with murder and not have anyone accountable. The Wikileak site is designed to allow people with information about businesses doing evil or wrong things to post the information in such a way that people will be able to judge for them selfs without it coming back to them.

Now should you take the documents at face value? No, just like any document that happens to exist you should look at it and see if its true or not. Its like a criminal trial has to have proof of the evidence but to get that proof they got a tip of where to look. Thats what these documents are for.

If I was afraid of voicing my opinion about a topic for fear of what the government or a company would do it wouldn't mean a hell of a lot to be an American now would it? Just because I say something doesn't make it true you have to look at who I am and why I'm saying what I'm saying and what I'm saying. I'm just upset the judge didn't ask these questions the first time this was in front of him. His job is to do a balanced view and he should have been more careful in my opinion.

[dncarac]

Nope - the judge had no choice for the original decision

As I've pointed out before, the owner of the domain did not respond in court. That's a default, and the judge had no choice but to grant the other side what it wanted - to shut down the site. But as I've pointed out in another posting, what the bank really wanted was to know who was behind the wikileaks site and where he was.

DNC

[Mel in Hi]

publicity

Sounds to me that they decided that all the publicity was actually doing the opposite of what they wanted which was to sweep those documents under the rug. Instead, now many many thousands of people who would have never ever heard of them have read them.

[k2dave]

Yes you did, the bank said that

The other side said that law allows the defendants to recover legal expenses for all defendants for merit-less lawsuits that prohibit free speech.

The bank decided to stop their lawsuit, that should tell you how much power their statement really had. And for good reason to, they are going against constitutional law in a very liberal state, they would have better odds having their CEO go one on one against Mike Tyson.

[dncarac]

It was a brilliant tactical move

If we all recall, the Wikileaks site management was kept secret - no one knew who it was or where they were. By filing this suit, the bank could either shut down the site, or flush out the real owner. When the real owner initially did not respond, he lost the site. Then he responded to keep his site, and the bank now knows who he is and where he's at. The bank got what they wanted, which was not the wikileaks domain. Smart lawyering.

DNC

[cyxs]

No they didn't

Alls they got was the owner of the domain. How do they know he didn't register it for someone else?

I am administrator contact on a few domains I have nothing to do with only because people have asked me to.

[John_Sami]

nice article, i opened a swiss bank account at http://open-bank-account.com
and i couldn't be more pleased !!!

[John_Sami]

[url:http://open-bank-account.com]Open a Swiss bank account[/url]