With a $7.2 million default judgment against nine website operators under her belt, a former Miss West Virginia is now hoping that an appeals court will allow her to recover damages from others she sued for posting a phony porn video of her.

Allison Williams (right) and impersonator

Allison Williams, 27, originally sued 59 defendants -- in the U.S., Australia, South Africa and The Netherlands -- over the video, which purports to show her performing various sex acts in the back of a TV news van. Identifying her as “Miss West Virginia and TV reporter,” the ad for the video said Williams “is the next upcoming star in the leaked home video department.”

The real Williams, who won her beauty pageant title in 2003, looks nothing like the woman in the van and has never worked as a TV reporter. She discovered the video in 2004 when she did an Internet search of her name during her first week of law school.

Earlier this week, a federal court jury in Clarksburg, W. Va., awarded default judgments of $800,000 against each of nine defendants for damaging Williams' reputation and invading her privacy. The defendants were associated with seven websites including juicybucks.com and paparazzifilth.com.

“This had been a very long fight for her so this was a great victory for her,” Williams' attorney said.

But the fight is by no means over. A day after the jury's verdict, Williams appealed a trial court ruling which illustrates the difficulties that plaintiffs have in trying to bring cases against multiple websites in a single jurisdiction.

Dismissing 28 other defendants from Williams' case, U.S. District Judge Irene M. Keeley ruled they did not have sufficient contacts with West Virginia through their websites “to have reasonably foreseen being haled into court in this state.” She followed the “technology-specific” test for “personal jurisdiction” that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals crafted in ALS Scan v. Digital Service Consultants, 293 F.3d 707 (2004).

“[G]enerally accessible websites do not 'direct' internet activity into a particular state in a manner that satisfies the requirements for personal jurisdiction,” Keeley said.

Williams contends the judge should have applied the “effects” test of Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783 (1984), which requires only “the commission of an intentional tort, expressly aimed at a specific individual in the forum state whose effects were suffered in the forum.”

Keeley noted Williams' concern that requiring plaintiffs to sue in multiple jurisdictions “would leave almost all victims of Internet defamation bereft of a remedy,” but concluded that “while perhaps not an ideal result, Williams nevertheless may bring her suit against the Default Defendants in any forum able to exercise jurisdiction over them.”

According to Williams's complaint, defendants associated with juicybucks.com “constituted the conspiratorial hub” of her cyber-smearing. Five of the defendants against whom the jury awarded default damages are Australian entities and individuals associated with that site, including Castle Co. Pty. Ltd.

While the Castle Co. defendants also asserted the defense of lack of personal jurisdiction, Keeley entered a default judgment against them for failure to comply with discovery orders.

“[T]hey have engaged in a pattern of bad faith activity beginning with evasive and incomplete discovery responses and ending with a complete disregard of this Court’s authority,” she said in a July 2008 decision.

Williams has graduated from law school and is now preparing for the bar exam. "I struggled every single day to maintain my law school studies, in the face of incredible stress and anxiety," she said in a statement. "Still, I refused to allow these pornographers to control my dream to graduate from law school and realize my goals."

By Matthew Heller
4/10/09