COLIN O’KROLEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. FASTCASE, INC.; GOOGLE, INC.; TEXAS OFFICE OF COURT ADMINISTRATION; 11TH COURT OF APPEALS; YASNI.COM, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 15-6336
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
Decided and Filed: July 22, 2016
16a0172p.06
Before: SUTTON and COOK, Circuit Judges; HOOD, District Judge.
RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b).
COUNSEL
ON BRIEF: Eric P. Schroeder, Jacquelyn N. Schell, BRYAN CAVE LLP, Atlanta, Georgia, Robb S. Harvey, WALLER LANSDEN DORTCH & DAVIS, LLP, Nashville, Tennessee, Brian M. Willen, Jason B. Mollick, WILSON SONSINI GOODRICH & ROSATI, P.C., New York, New York, for Appellee Google. Scot M. Graydon, OFFICE OF THE TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL, Austin, Texas, for Texas Court Appellees. Colin O’Kroley, Bon Aqua, Tennessee, pro se.
OPINION
SUTTON, Circuit Judge. Colin O’Kroley googled himself and did not like the results. “Texas Advance Sheet,” an entry read, followed by the words “indecency with a child in Trial Court Cause N . . . Colin O’Kroley v Pringle.” R. 1 at 4–5. Truth be told, O’Kroley was never involved in a case about indecency with a child. What had happened was that his case, O’Kroley v. Pringle, was listed immediately after another case, a child-indecency case, on the Texas Advance Sheet, a service that summarizes Texas judicial opinions. If users clicked the Google link they would have seen how the Texas Advance Sheet works and would have seen that the two cases had no relation. But if they did not click the link and stayed on Google, they would see only the name of his case and the description of the other case separated by an ellipsis.
Claiming “severe mental anguish” from the listing, O’Kroley sued Google (and a number of other entities) for $19,200,000,000,000 (that’s trillion), on causes of action ranging from “libel” to “invasion of privacy,” from “failure to provide due process” to “cruel and unusual punishment,” from “cyber-bullying” to “psychological torture.” R. 1 at 10, 17, 20–21, 24.
The district court rejected the claims as a matter of law, holding that Google couldn’t be liable for the way it displayed search results. It dismissed O’Kroley’s complaint against Google based on the Communications Decency Act, which insulates interactive computer services from certain types of lawsuits. See
The district court got it right in each respect.
Google. Seeking to encourage websites like Google to reproduce content from other Internet users, see
That’s what we have here. Google is an interactive computer service, an entity that provides “access by multiple users to a computer server.”
O’Kroley insists that Google did more than merely display third-party content. The company was “responsible,” he maintains, for the “creation or development” of the content, making it liable.
Nor did Google’s alterations “materially contribute to the alleged unlawfulness of the content.” Jones, 755 F.3d at 412. O’Kroley points to the ellipsis that separated “indecency with a child” from his name and case information. Doesn’t that mean, he asks, that Google is “responsible for what makes the displayed content allegedly unlawful“—linking him to a crime he didn’t commit? Jones, 755 F.3d at 410. No, it does not. For Google did not add the ellipsis to the text. It was already in the Texas Advance Sheet’s case preview. Because the Act immunizes Google for reproducing this third-party content, the district court correctly granted Google’s motion to dismiss. See
Other defendants. The district court also correctly dismissed the other defendants: Fastcase, the author of the Texas Advance Sheet; Yasni, a German people search engine; and the Texas courts and their administrative office. For nearly three years (and counting), O’Kroley has not properly served Fastcase, despite being required to do so within 120 days after he filed his complaint.
Other arguments. O’Kroley raises several other points on appeal, ranging from the meritless to the frivolous. On the meritless side: He “requests a court appointed attorney,” Appellant’s Br. 13, but he has not shown the “exceptional circumstances” needed to appoint one, Lavado v. Keohane, 992 F.2d 601, 606 (6th Cir. 1993). On the frivolous side: He asks us to strike down the Communications Decency Act (“as a simple matter of logic“); he claims violations of the Eighteenth Amendment (the former prohibition on alcohol repealed long before the Internet came into being); he asks us to add Georgetown University as a defendant (because it might be using this case in its “Robots and Law” class); and he contends the judges below were “biased” against him (because “[t]hey may be ignorant about the English language“). Appellant’s Br. 11–16. To restate some claims is to reject them.
* * *
In most respects, O’Kroley didn’t accomplish much in suing Google and the other defendants. He didn’t win. He didn’t collect a dime. And the search result about “indecency with a child” remains publicly available. All is not lost, however. Since filing the case, Google users searching for “Colin O’Kroley” no longer see the objectionable search result at the top of the list. Now the top hits all involve this case (there is even a Wikipedia entry on it). So: Even assuming two premises of this lawsuit are true—that there are Internet users other than Colin O’Kroley searching “Colin O’Kroley” and that they look only at the Google previews rather than clicking on and exploring the links—it’s not likely that anyone will ever see the offending listing at the root of this lawsuit. Each age has its own form of self-help.
For these reasons, we affirm.