Hat tip to Law Office of Judith C Dorenstein, Esq., from whom I learned of this decision.
In New Sensations v. Does 1-1474 (San Francisco, CA), the Court has ordered the plaintiff to dismiss as to all defendants over whom it can not show that the Court has jurisdiction, and that the venue is proper.
The Court observed that
all of the available information suggests that this Court does not have personal jurisdiction over at least a large number of Doe Defendants named in this action[,]
observing that the general location of each "John Doe" defendant is readily available by checking each's respective IP address on one of many publicly available web sites, and the Court's own preliminary examination of some random defendants suggested that many of them had been wrongly sued in California. The court went on:
given the ease by which the Court located presumptive geographic data for a random selection of IP Addresses in this case, the Court is troubled that Plaintiff has made no attempt to identify those Doe Defendants for whom it has a good faith belief reside in California
Order directing plaintiff to dismiss as to John Doe defendants for whom it cannot make sufficient showing of jurisdiction and venue
[
Ed. note] I have been saying, since 2005, that the Courts should not be allowing the John Doe cases to proceed without factual showings of both jurisdiction and venue. See, e.g. Suggestion #2 in my article, which appeared in the ABA Judges Journal
"Large Recording Companies v. The Defenseless". I am pleased to see that some judges are applying this basic legal principle.
-R.B.]
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