A California lawyer who has waged an ongoing battle with Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) over personal attacks made against him on Yahoo message boards has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the company. The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday by associates of corporate attorney Stephen Galton, claims Yahoo has unfairly protected people who post negative messages on its bulletin boards and falsely advertised that it prevents such abusive messages.
"It wouldn"t be prudent for us to comment on this pending lawsuit," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said in a statement. Galton is a partner in the firm of Galton & Helm, which specializes in insurance law. He registered to use Yahoo message boards in early 2004 in order to respond to a negative late-2003 post about one of his clients, which he did not identify in the suit. After Galton posted his response, under the screen name "stephengalton," he was subjected to name-calling by various other users of the message boards.