GamePolitics.com is reporting that U.S. District Judge Paul Huck has dismissed anti-video game crusader Jack Thompson's lawsuit against Gawker Media, the publisher of game blog Kotaku. Thompson had claimed that Kotaku and Gawker Media had failed to honor his requests to remove "threatening" comments from several of their blog posts that were critical of his eagerness to blame video games for the tragic Virginia Tech shootings earlier this month.
On Wednesday, Thompson had added the blog-publishing company, which also operates other popular blogs like Gizmodo, Wonkette, and Valleywag, to a list of defendants in a suit he was filing against the Florida Bar and state Supreme Court. Judge Huck threw out the case because it appears that Thompson had failed to follow the proper procedure for amending a complaint to add new defendants.
Thompson himself is an attorney based in Miami. Nevertheless, in response to the judge's dismissal of the case, he pleaded ignorance.
Anti-video game advocate Jack Thompson has sued Gawker Media, the parent company of gaming blog Kotaku, according to GamePolitics. The reason for the suit, which was filed in a federal court in the Southern District of Florida, was a number of reader comments on recent Kotaku posts that Thompson deemed "threatening" and which he claimed Kotaku and Gawker Media declined to remove from the site.
Thompson, a Miami-based attorney, has been a high-profile crusader against video games and their alleged negative influence on children for some time now, but gained new notoriety in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings earlier this month for being quick to point fingers at gaming as a root cause of the massacre. He alleged in the court complaint that the commentary from Kotaku readers began to emerge "within mere minutes" of an appearance he made on the Fox News Channel on the day of the shootings, as the result of a post by editor Brian Crecente that criticized Thompson's opinion.
To clarify, this is not actually a new lawsuit. Thompson had filed a suit against the Florida bar in March, citing a variety of forms of "aggressive left-wing politicking." He then expanded the complaint to encompass all members of Florida's Supreme Court. On Thursday, he formally added Gawker Media to the roster of defendants. The case, consequently, is now John B. Thompson vs. The Florida Bar, R. Fred Lewis, Charles T. Wells, Harry Lee Anstead, Barbara J. Pariente, Peggy A. Quince, Raoul G. Cantero, Kenneth B. Bell, Dava J. Tunis, and Gawker Media.
Kotaku's Crecente has acknowledged the lawsuit.
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