EBay wants newsletter publishers its employees harassed to ID sources
By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, Sept 12 (Reuters) -EBay EBAY.O has asked a judge to force the publishers of an e-commerce newsletter to disclose the identity of their news sources so it can defend itself against a lawsuit they filed after several of the company's employees admitted to carrying out a bizarre campaign to harass and terrorize them.
The e-commerce company in a motion filed on Wednesday in Boston federal court said it sought the information after David and Ina Steiner argued they were entitled to more than $12 million in economic damages because the harassmentstifled their ability to report and made would-be news sources fearful of providing them information.
Seven former eBay workers have pleaded guilty and received sentences of as high as 57 months in prison for their roles in an extensive campaign that took place in 2019that involved sending the Steiners cockroaches, fly larvae and a bloody Halloween pig mask and surveilling their home in Natick, Massachusetts.
Prosecutors say the employees did so after senior executives deemed the Steiners' newsletter critical of eBay.
The San Jose, California-based company agreed in January to pay $3 million under a deferredprosecution agreement and has said it is seeking to settle the civil lawsuit the Steiners filed.
The company, though, has sought to limit the scope of any potential damages the Steiners could pursue before any settlement is struck, and on Wednesdaysaid it needed information on their sources to investigate their economic damages claims.
It said the Steiners have refused to disclose any information about who those would-be sources are, though, citing "reporter's privilege," a legal doctrine through which reporters can keep private information about their confidential sources.
"Plaintiffs are free to preserve the confidentiality of their sources, and they are free to pursue damages based on the alleged loss of those sources as a result of the Natick events," eBay's lawyers said. "But Plaintiffs are not free to do both."
EBay called its request "limited," saying it only wanted the Steiners to reveal the identities of sources that stopped working with them and that it would be willing to limit any disclosure to its outside counsel to mitigate their concerns.
The Steiners' attorney did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
EBay has separately asked U.S. District Judge Patti Saris to decide whether the Steiners are entitled to punitive damages. Its lawyer, Jack Pirozzolo of Sidley Austin, told Saris in July that the question had become an issue in settlement talks.
The case is Steiner v. eBay Inc, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, No. 21-cv-11181.
For the Steiners: Andrew Finkelstein of Finkelstein & Partners
For eBay: Jack Pirozzolo of Sidley Austin
Read more:
EBay seeks judge's guidance to settle with victims of harassment campaign
EBay to pay $3 million penalty over harassment of couple behind newsletter
Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston
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