The Volokh Conspiracy
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An Odd Response from One of the Lawyers in the Kelly Hyman v. Alex Daoud Case
As I mentioned in my post below, a Florida court issued an overbroad takedown order, which someone is using to try to vanish mainstream media articles about the Hyman v. Daoud daughter-vs.-father property lawsuit. (Kelly Hyman is a lawyer and an occasional political commentator; Alex Daoud, her father, is the former mayor of Miami Beach.) The overbroad order was apparently directly adapted from the proposed order submitted by Ms. Hyman's lawyers, Bernard Lebedeker and David Sholl.
I e-mailed the lawyers yesterday morning to ask whether they had a comment on the situation:
Dear Messrs. Lebedeker & Sholl: I'm writing an item about the Hyman v. Daoud deindexing order [which I attached to the e-mail -EV], and in particular its purporting to bind not just Mr. Daoud (who agreed to it) but search engines and other site operators (which didn't). I also noticed that Ms. Hyman (or someone working on her behalf) had apparently asked Google order – on the strength of this order order – to remove not just material that Mr. Daoud had posted, but also articles on the Miami Herald, CBS Miami, and The Real Deal sites, as well as some criticisms of Judge Paul Hyman that don't seem to come from Mr. Daoud. See https://lumendatabase.org/notices/22289871?access_token=PmqlvB2uV55U65_hZwOt6A and https://lumendatabase.org/notices/22299229?access_token=akdiWrDzTNNkECqFuJpDzA . Can you tell me a bit more, please, about the thinking behind the attempt to bind nonconsenting third parties, and to remove legitimate news coverage of the dispute? Please let me know. (I'm asking you given that the order was proposed as an attachment to your Oct. 30, 2020 motion.) Many thanks,
Eugene Volokh
Author, Reason Magazine site, http://reason.com/volokh Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law, http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh
Here's a response I got this afternoon from Mr. Lebedeker:
I'm sorry, I don't know who you are or why you are sending this. I am placing you on my block sender's list, please do not contact me again.
Bernard A. Lebedeker, Esq.
Well, all right then, though I'm not sure how I could have been clearer about who I was and why I was sending my message.
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