Stanley K. YOUNG, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE; Gail Thompson; Camille Jackson; Hartford Courant; Brian Toolan; Amy Pagnozzi, Defendants-Appellants, and Michael Lawlor; Carolyn Nah; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Connecticut Post; Rick Sawyers; Ken Dixon, Defendants.
No. 01-2340
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
Argued June 3, 2002. Decided Dec. 13, 2002.
315 F.3d 256
C. Challenges to the Costs
Finally, the SSA challenges the district court‘s award of $81,224.54 in costs for various items that it contends were either non-compensable or inadequately documented. In particular, the SSA asserts that the district court abused its discretion in awarding costs associated with travel for attorney training sessions in Asheville, Wilmington, and Charlotte; travel for other meetings; booking hotel rooms and meals; and $17,080 in computer consultant charges requested by NCJCDC.
As we have previously held, plaintiffs are not entitled to recover attorneys’ fees or costs associated with the transfer of file management responsibilities from Legal Services to the NCJCDC or with the training of North Carolina attorneys to handle individual Hyatt III claims. The work was not necessitated by a post-Settlement Agreement position taken by the SSA that was not “substantially justified.” Again, we leave for the district court the task of individually evaluating the challenged entries to ensure that the SSA is only charged with those fees and expenses fairly attributable to the monitoring and investigatory activities that led to the discovery of the dispute and to the litigation of that dispute.
V. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the SSA‘s position in the underlying Settlement Agreement litigation was not “substantially justified” and, therefore, in awarding attorneys’ fees and costs under
AFFIRMED IN PART, VACATED IN PART, AND REMANDED.
Michael Lawlor; Carolyn Nah; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Connecticut Post; Rick Sawyers; Ken Dixon, Defendants.
Advance Publications, Incorporated; American Society of Newspaper Editors; Associated Press; Association of Alternative Newsweeklies; Belo Corporation; Bloomberg, L.P.; Center for Democracy & Technology; Daily News, L.P.; Dow Jones and Company, Incorporated; El Dia, Incorporated; the E.W. Scripps Company; the Hearst Corporation; Investigative Reporters and Editors, Incorporated;
Before MICHAEL and GREGORY, Circuit Judges, and Bobby R. BALDOCK, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, sitting by designation.
Reversed by published opinion. Judge MICHAEL wrote the opinion, in which Judge GREGORY and Senior Judge BALDOCK joined.
OPINION
MICHAEL, Circuit Judge.
The question in this appeal is whether two Connecticut newspapers and certain of their staff (sometimes, the “newspaper defendants“) subjected themselves to personal jurisdiction in Virginia by posting on the Internet news articles that, in the context of discussing the State of Connecticut‘s policy of housing its prisoners in Virginia institutions, allegedly defamed the warden of a Virginia prison. Our recent decision in ALS Scan, Inc. v. Digital Service Consultants, Inc., 293 F.3d 707 (4th Cir.2002), supplies the standard for determining a court‘s authority to exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state person who places information on the Internet. Applying that standard, we hold that a court in Virginia cannot constitutionally exercise jurisdiction over the Connecticut-based newspaper defendants because they did
I.
Sometime in the late 1990s the State of Connecticut was faced with substantial overcrowding in its maximum security prisons. To alleviate the problem, Connecticut contracted with the Commonwealth of Virginia to house Connecticut prisoners in Virginia‘s correctional facilities. Beginning in late 1999 Connecticut transferred about 500 prisoners, mostly African-American and Hispanic, to the Wallens Ridge State Prison, a “supermax” facility in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. The plaintiff, Stanley Young, is the warden at Wallens Ridge. Connecticut‘s arrangement to incarcerate a sizeable number of its offenders in Virginia prisons provoked considerable public debate in Connecticut. Several Connecticut legislators openly criticized the policy, and there were demonstrations against it at the state capitol in Hartford.
Connecticut newspapers, including defendants the New Haven Advocate (the Advocate) and the Hartford Courant (the Courant), began reporting on the controversy. On March 30, 2000, the Advocate published a news article, written by one of its reporters, defendant Camille Jackson, about the transfer of Connecticut inmates to Wallens Ridge. The article discussed the allegedly harsh conditions at the Virginia prison and pointed out that the long trip to southwestern Virginia made visits by prisoners’ families difficult or impossible. In the middle of her lengthy article, Jackson mentioned a class action that inmates transferred from Connecticut had filed against Warden Young and the Connecticut Commissioner of Corrections. The inmates alleged a lack of proper hygiene and medical care and the denial of religious privileges at Wallens Ridge. Finally, a paragraph at the end of the article reported that a Connecticut state senator had expressed concern about the presence of Confederate Civil War memorabilia in Warden Young‘s office. At about the same time the Courant published three columns, written by defendant-reporter Amy Pagnozzi, questioning the practice of relocating Connecticut inmates to Virginia prisons. The columns reported on letters written home by inmates who alleged cruelty by prison guards. In one column Pagnozzi called Wallens Ridge a “cut-rate gulag.” Warden Young was not mentioned in any of the Pagnozzi columns.
On May 12, 2000, Warden Young sued the two newspapers, their editors (Gail Thompson and Brian Toolan), and the two reporters for libel in a diversity action filed in the Western District of Virginia. He claimed that the newspapers’ articles imply that he “is a racist who advocates racism” and that he “encourages abuse of inmates by the guards” at Wallens Ridge. Young alleged that the newspapers circulated the allegedly defamatory articles throughout the world by posting them on their Internet websites.
The newspaper defendants filed motions to dismiss the complaint under
In responding to the declarations of the editors and reporters, Warden Young pointed out that the newspapers posted the allegedly defamatory articles on Internet websites that were accessible to Virginia residents. In addition, Young provided copies of assorted print-outs from the newspapers’ websites. For the Advocate, Young submitted eleven pages from newhavenadvocate.com and newmassmedia.com for January 26, 2001. The two pages from newhavenadvocate.com are the Advocate‘s homepage, which includes links to articles about the “Best of New Haven” and New Haven‘s park police. The nine pages from newmassmedia.com, a website maintained by the publishers of the Advocate, consist of classified advertising from that week‘s newspapers and instructions on how to submit a classified ad. The listings include advertisements for real estate rentals in New Haven and Guilford, Connecticut, for roommates wanted and tattoo services offered in Hamden, Connecticut, and for a bassist needed by a band in West Haven, Connecticut. For the Courant, Young provided nine pages from hartfordcourant.com and ctnow.com for January 26, 2001. The hartfordcourant.com homepage characterizes the website as a “source of news and entertainment in and about Connecticut.” A page soliciting advertising in the Courant refers to “exposure for your message in this market” in the “best medium in the state to deliver your advertising message.” The pages from ctnow.com, a website produced by the Courant, provide news stories from that day‘s edition of the Courant, weather reports for Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut, and links to sites for the University of Connecticut and Connecticut state government. The website promotes its online advertising as a “source for jobs in Connecticut.” The website printouts provided for January 26, 2001, do not have any content with a connection to readers in Virginia.
The district court denied the newspaper defendants’ motions to dismiss, concluding that it could exercise personal jurisdiction over them under Virginia‘s long-arm statute,
II.
A.
A federal court may exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant in the manner provided by state law. See ESAB Group, Inc. v. Centricut, Inc., 126 F.3d 617, 622 (4th Cir.1997);
B.
We turn to whether the district court can exercise specific jurisdiction over the newspaper defendants, namely, the two newspapers, the two editors, and the two reporters. To begin with, we can put aside the few Virginia contacts that are not Internet based because Warden Young does not rely on them. Thus, Young does not claim that the reporters’ few telephone calls into Virginia or the Courant‘s eight Virginia subscribers are sufficient to establish personal jurisdiction over those defendants. Nor did the district court rely on these traditional contacts.
Warden Young argues that the district court has specific personal jurisdiction over the newspaper defendants (hereafter, the “newspapers“) because of the following contacts between them and Virginia: (1) the newspapers, knowing that Young was a Virginia resident, intentionally discussed and defamed him in their articles, (2) the newspapers posted the articles on their websites, which were accessible in Virginia, and (3) the primary ef
Young frames his argument in a way that makes one thing clear: if the newspapers’ contacts with Virginia were sufficient to establish personal jurisdiction, those contacts arose solely from the newspapers’ Internet-based activities. Recently, in ALS Scan we discussed the challenges presented in applying traditional jurisdictional principles to decide when “an out-of-state citizen, through electronic contacts, has conceptually ‘entered’ the State via the Internet for jurisdictional purposes.” ALS Scan, 293 F.3d at 713. There, we held that “specific jurisdiction in the Internet context may be based only on an out-of-state person‘s Internet activity directed at [the forum state] and causing injury that gives rise to a potential claim cognizable in [that state].” Id. at 714. We noted that this standard for determining specific jurisdiction based on Internet contacts is consistent with the one used by the Supreme Court in Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 104 S.Ct. 1482, 79 L.Ed.2d 804 (1984). ALS Scan, 293 F.3d at 714. Calder, though not an Internet case, has particular relevance here because it deals with personal jurisdiction in the context of a libel suit. In Calder a California actress brought suit there against, among others, two Floridians, a reporter and an editor who wrote and edited in Florida a National Enquirer article claiming that the actress had a problem with alcohol. The Supreme Court held that California had jurisdiction over the Florida residents because “California [was] the focal point both of the story and of the harm suffered.” Calder, 465 U.S. at 789. The writers’ “actions were expressly aimed at California,” the Court said, “[a]nd they knew that the brunt of [the potentially devastating] injury would be felt by [the actress] in the State in which she lives and works and in which the National Enquirer has its largest circulation,” 600,000 copies. Calder, 465 U.S. at 789-90.
Warden Young argues that Calder requires a finding of jurisdiction in this case simply because the newspapers posted articles on their Internet websites that discussed the warden and his Virginia prison, and he would feel the effects of any libel in Virginia, where he lives and works. Calder does not sweep that broadly, as we have recognized. For example, in ESAB Group, Inc. v. Centricut, Inc., 126 F.3d 617, 625-26 (4th Cir.1997), we emphasized how important it is in light of Calder to look at whether the defendant has expressly aimed or directed its conduct toward the forum state. We said that “[a]lthough the place that the plaintiff feels the alleged injury is plainly relevant to the [jurisdictional] inquiry, it must ultimately be accompanied by the defendant‘s own [sufficient minimum] contacts with the state if jurisdiction ... is to be upheld.” Id. at 626. We thus had no trouble in concluding in ALS Scan that application of Calder in the Internet context requires proof that the out-of-state defendant‘s Internet activity is expressly targeted at or directed to
When the Internet activity is, as here, the posting of news articles on a website, the ALS Scan test works more smoothly when parts one and two of the test are considered together. We thus ask whether the newspapers manifested an intent to direct their website content—which included certain articles discussing conditions in a Virginia prison—to a Virginia audience. As we recognized in ALS Scan, “a person‘s act of placing information on the Internet” is not sufficient by itself to “subject[] that person to personal jurisdiction in each State in which the information is accessed.” Id. at 712. Otherwise, a “person placing information on the Internet would be subject to personal jurisdiction in every State,” and the traditional due process principles governing a State‘s jurisdiction over persons outside of its borders would be subverted. Id. at 712. See also GTE New Media Servs. Inc. v. BellSouth Corp., 199 F.3d 1343, 1350 (D.C.Cir. 2000). Thus, the fact that the newspapers’ websites could be accessed anywhere, including Virginia, does not by itself demonstrate that the newspapers were intentionally directing their website content to a Virginia audience. Something more than posting and accessibility is needed to “indicate that the [newspapers] purposefully (albeit electronically) directed [their] activity in a substantial way to the forum state,” Virginia. Panavision Int‘l, L.P. v. Toeppen, 141 F.3d 1316, 1321 (9th Cir.1998) (quotation omitted). The newspapers must, through the Internet postings, manifest an intent to target and focus on Virginia readers.
We therefore turn to the pages from the newspapers’ websites that Warden Young placed in the record, and we examine their general thrust and content. The overall content of both websites is decidedly local, and neither newspaper‘s website contains advertisements aimed at a Virginia audience. For example, the website that distributes the Courant, ctnow.com, provides access to local (Connecticut) weather and traffic information and links to websites for the University of Connecticut and Connecticut state government. The Advocate‘s website features stories focusing on New Haven, such as one entitled “The Best of New Haven.” In sum, it appears that these newspapers maintain their websites to serve local readers in Connecticut, to expand the reach of their papers within their local markets, and to provide their local markets with a place for classified ads. The websites are not designed to attract or serve a Virginia audience.
We also examine the specific articles Young complains about to determine whether they were posted on the Internet with the intent to target a Virginia audience. The articles included discussions about the allegedly harsh conditions at the Wallens Ridge prison, where Young was warden. One article mentioned Young by name and quoted a Connecticut state senator who reported that Young had Confederate Civil War memorabilia in his office. The focus of the articles, however, was the Connecticut prisoner transfer policy and its impact on the transferred prisoners and their families back home in Connecticut. The articles reported on and encouraged a public debate in Connecticut about wheth
The facts in this case establish that the newspapers’ websites, as well as the articles in question, were aimed at a Connecticut audience. The newspapers did not post materials on the Internet with the manifest intent of targeting Virginia readers. Accordingly, the newspapers could not have “reasonably anticipate[d] being haled into court [in Virginia] to answer for the truth of the statements made in their article[s].” Calder, 465 U.S. at 790 (quotation omitted). In sum, the newspapers do not have sufficient Internet contacts with Virginia to permit the district court to exercise specific jurisdiction over them.*
We reverse the order of the district court denying the motions to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction made by the New Haven Advocate, Gail Thompson (its editor), and Camille Jackson (its reporter) and by the Hartford Courant, Brian Toolan (its editor), and Amy Pagnozzi (its reporter).
REVERSED.