Late last month, the law firm Shearman & Sterling delivered a subpoena to Craigslist, Inc. as a plaintiff in a suit against a disgruntled employee in order to determine her name. Apparently Steve Hibbard of their San Francisco office (who recently helped represent Oracle in their case against PeopleSoft while with Bingham McCutchen) is not happy about a nasty email sent to the firm's staff manager, and he wants the emailer to be held accountable -- though the emailer could well have just forwarded something they saw posted on Craigslist's Rants and Raves section. Based on information from our sources, the email may well have taken Steve to task for rude behavior in the workplace.

Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has since fired off an open letter [PDF] to Shearman & Sterling, and more specifically Steve. To paraphrase: "Oh no you didn't." Kurt takes Steve to task and snarks hard on the case's lack of merit, citing numerous precedents in California courts supporting the rights of people to be anonymous online. Legal reporter Pam Smith quotes Jolene Overbeck, the firm's spokeswoman, in a good aricle on Law.com: "This was a hateful and racist e-mail that verbally assaulted one of our staff members. And we have a responsibility to protect our staff and to respond appropriately." Kurt responds:

Given the California law that refutes Shearman’s causes of action and the chilling effecton the First Amendment caused by subpoenas for the identity of online speakers, we urge Shearman to reconsider its legal actions, and drop the subpoena to craigslist immediately.

We've got notes out to the parties involved, and will keep an eye on the case. If Jane Doe doesn't move to quash the subpoena, her identity may be revealed before a judge even has a chance to look over the merits of the case. As they say in the biz, developing...