Different Sections of a Web Site Still a Single Web site for Purposes of Publication
In Cantella v. Van De Kamp, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of civil rights claims against the State Bar of California and several of its officers on statute of limitations grounds. The appellant, who conceded in pleadings that he had been investigated by disciplinary authorities forty-seven times and sanctioned 26 times in the period between 1989 and 1998, entered into an agreement in 1999 in which an eighteen month suspension was stayed, and a thirty day suspension was stayed. An account of the sanction was published in the bar’s print and online journals in February 2000. After 2003, the attorney search function of the state bar’s web site allowed an attorney’s public disciplinary record to be displayed. In 2004, opposing counsel in one of appellant’s cases discovered the disciplinary account through the search function, and cited it in a motion in that case. In July, 2005, appellant sued both opposing counsel and the bar defendants, claims various constitutional violations. The Court reiterated that a single publication can give rise to only one cause of action.
The Court, citing Oja v. Army Corps of Engineers, 440 F.3d 1128 (9th Cir. 2006), held that the claims against the state bar arose upon the initial publication of the disciplinary account; the purported subsequent republication was located at the same website as the initial website publication, albeit, at a different section of that website. Because California’s then-existing one year statute of limitations for personal injury claims applied to this action, the appellant’s claims were time barred.
