In March,
the Hon. John Koeltl of the Southern District of New York dismissed the class action lawsuit filed by Jonathan Tasini on behalf of Huffington Post bloggers who were not paid for their efforts, following the site's sale to AOL.
On Wednesday, a panel of judges serving on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal in a unanimous summary order, along the same grounds. The Court's principal reasoning was as follows:
Plaintiffs’ basic contention is that they were duped into providing free content for The Huffington Post based upon the representation that their work would be used to provide a public service and would not be supplied or sold to “Big Media.” Had they known that The Huffington Post would use their efforts not solely in support of liberal causes, but, in fact, to make itself desirable as a merger target for a large media corporation, plaintiffs claim they would never have supplied material for The Huffington Post.
The problem with plaintiffs’ argument is that it has no basis in their Amended Complaint.
Nowhere in the Amended Complaint do plaintiffs allege that The Huffington Post represented that their work was purely for public service or that The Huffington Post would not subsequently be sold to another company. To the contrary, plaintiffs were perfectly aware that The Huffington Post was a for-profit enterprise, which derived revenues from their submissions through advertising. Perhaps most importantly, at all times prior to the merger when they submitted their work to The Huffington Post, plaintiffs understood that they would receive compensation only in the form of exposure and promotion. Indeed, these arrangements have never changed.
Though it is no doubt a great disappointment to find that The Huffington Post did not live up to the ideals plaintiffs ascribed to it, plaintiffs have made no factual allegations that, if taken as true, would permit the inference that The Huffington Post deceived the plaintiffs or otherwise received a benefit at the expense of the plaintiffs such that equity and good conscience require restitution.
If they so choose, the plaintiffs would have 90 days to seek a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court of the United States. I can't imagine it would go any differently.