KANSAS CITY, Kan.—A federal lawsuit filed in Kansas on behalf of a minor was thrown out on Monday by a judge who found that the foreign private company that operates the adult website the plaintiffs sued cannot be held accountable due to jurisdictional issues.
The case is Q.R., a minor, by and through Jane Doe v. Pump Lab, SL, filed alongside three similar lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas.
All four of the cases were brought by the far-right anti-pornography group, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), and the personal injury law firm Mann Wyatt Tanksley, based in the city of Hutchinson, Kansas. Note that Mann Wyatt Tanksley was identified by the author of this report and the Free Speech Coalition for actively advertising for plaintiffs to sue pornography companies under Kansas age verification laws that allow individuals to bring private civil enforcement actions through state and federal courts.
The cast targeted the parent companies of Chaturbate.com, Jerkmate.com, tube site SuperPorn.com, and a company called Titan Websites, which is the hosting company for a hentai tube site called HentaiCity.com. The Jerkmate.com and HentaiCity.com suits were dismissed, while the Chaturbate suit was sent to arbitration, but the plaintiff chose to withdraw the complaint to double down on the Pump Lab lawsuit. Pump Lab owns SuperPorn.com. That complaint is now officially dead.
U.S. District Judge Holly L. Teeter of the District of Kansas explained in her Monday order that she is dismissing the SuperPorn.com complaint because the plaintiff "fails to state a prima facie basis for this court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction based on the prevailing standards and binding law." Personal jurisdiction is established when a court can prove it has the legal authority to make binding decisions over specific classes or organizations involved in a lawsuit. Pump Lab is legally based in Spain; Judge Teeter found no legal authority.
"Fundamentally, this is a case about the content available on a universally accessible website that a Kansas user accessed," Teeter explained. "This case doesn’t involve a product that was sold to a Kansas user. This case doesn’t involve a subscription service that a Kansas user signed up and paid for. This case doesn’t involve content that the website’s owner puts on the site that is tailored, customized, or specifically adapted to Kansas users. This case doesn’t involve a website’s servers being physically sited in Kansas.
"[The] defendant’s website is available (more or less) everywhere," Teeter wrote.
The plaintiffs argued that jurisdiction existed because SuperPorn.com used content delivery networks and geolocation technology, generated revenue from Kansas web traffic, installed browser cookies, and knowingly served Kansas users. Judge Teeter rejected all of these claims.
"The company has no employees, offices, property, servers, or business registrations in Kansas," adult industry attorney Corey Silverstein of Silverstein Legal explained in a recent legal alert emailed to AVN. "Although Kansas residents could access the site, Kansas traffic represented less than one-tenth of one percent of total site visitors." Silverstein explained in a separate discussion with AVN about the case that NCOSE's arguments were "unoriginal and fruitless." Silverstein added that it is "[not] surprising because it is the same rhetoric they always demonstrate."
