Ashley Madison: Judge Rules That Those Suing The Cheating Site Must Use Real Names

Bad news for folks who want to sue the cheating website Ashley Madison over the computer hack that left millions of users with their personal data exposed. A federal judge has ruled that all plaintiffs suing Ashley Madison, a dating service that caters to cheaters and promises anonymity, must be publicly identified if they choose to proceed with their case against the website.

As the New York Times reports, 42 plaintiffs who collectively seek to represent a “class of users of the website” were trying to sue Ashley Madison anonymously as a bunch of “John Does.” The reason? The group was seeking to “educe the risk of potentially catastrophic personal and professional consequences that could befall them and their families,” court papers say. Because Ashley Madison has marketed itself primarily to those looking for sexual affairs outside of already committed relationships or even marriages, it’s no wonder that those who were exposed would wish to remain anonymous after hackers accessed the site’s computer systems in July 2015 and subsequently leaked online information pertaining to over 30 million accounts.

Apparently, though, the federal judge in question wasn’t overly sympathetic to the Ashley Madison plaintiff’s collective cause.

According to the plaintiffs in the case, Avid Dating Life, Inc., owner of Ashley Madison, failed in its duty to protect their financial and personal information, utilized fake female profiles among its accounts to “lure” male customers, and, despite promising a “full delete removal” in its marketing, did not effectively purge account information of users from its database.

The ruling against the anonymity of Ashley Madison users was issued by Judge John A. Ross of the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri. The federal judge noted in his Ashley Madison ruling that there is a precedent set for plaintiffs in rape, child sexual assault, and other “sensitive matters” to be allowed to hide their identities behind a pseudonym. However, according to the judge, multiple other cases have found that “mere embarrassment” isn’t enough to outweigh the “presumption of openness and public scrutiny in judicial proceedings.”

“Moreover, the personal and financial information plaintiffs seek to protect has already been released on the Internet and made available to the public.”

Avid Dating Life, Inc. owner of Ashley Madison, also reportedly argued to the court that the habits and sexual preferences of the plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit “do not constitute information of the utmost intimacy,” which would require the court to withhold their names during the lawsuit proceedings.

The federal court judge ultimately ruled that any of the Ashley Madison plaintiffs who wish to move forward as class representatives, who also have a trustee-related obligation to represent the entire class of Ashley Madison plaintiffs and who will ultimately “receive an incentive award as compensation for work done on behalf of the class,” must ultimately reveal their identities in order to proceed in such a capacity as part of the lawsuit against Ashley Madison.

The judge did rule that the Ashley Madison plaintiffs do have another option. They may, at their discretion, dismiss their complaints as trustees and later, without disclosing their names to the public, move forward as members of a class-action suit against Ashley Madison. If and when a class is certified, that is.

Mere class members in any suit against Ashley Madison will not have to be publicly identified by name, ruled the judge. Class representatives, however, won’t have the option of anonymity.

This isn’t the first class-action lawsuit brought against Avid, the parent company of Ashley Madison. In previous similar lawsuits, eight of the plaintiffs chose to sue Ashley Madison using their real names while a ninth plaintiff opted to dismiss her lawsuit against Ashley Madison to protect her anonymity.

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