14 DAY TRIAL // St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa finally dropped the suit against Twitter and, this time, it's for real. The suit was filed last month with La Russa accusing Twitter of copyright infringement after a fake account using his name was set up on the service. There will be no monetary compensation for the dismissal and La Russa acted completely voluntary.
“Pursuant to Rule 41(a)(1)(A) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Plaintiff Anthony La Russa hereby dismisses with prejudice all claims in this action against Twitter, Inc., with each party to bear its own costs and attorneys’ fees. No payment was made by Twitter to La Russa in exchange for this dismissal,” the court papers [PDF] read.
The manager was upset last month after a Twitter user set up a fake account in his name and used it to make some rather tasteless remarks on his behalf. While the account was obviously fake, as stated in the profile description, and had very few followers and views, the man claimed that Twitter failed to remove it even after being asked to do so several times. Seeing that he had no response from the micro-blogging service he decided to sue the company asking for “unspecified damages.”
In a surprising, though some might use harsher words, move just several days after the filing La Russa claimed he had settled with Twitter and that the company would make a donation to his animal charity foundation. Most people thought that would be that but then came a response from Twitter cofounder Biz Stone saying there was no settlement and that the company has no intention to make any sort of deals with the MLB manager.
“Reports this week that Twitter has settled a law suit and officially agreed to pay legal fees for an impersonation complaint that was taken care of by our support staff in accordance with our Terms are erroneous. Twitter has not settled, nor do we plan to settle or pay,” Stoner wrote at the time. Finally, the case seems to be over and at least some good came out of it as it made Twitter launch verified accounts that would guarantee that users are who they say they are.