The Huffington Post‘s lawyers have urged a New York City judge to dismiss Jonathan Tasini‘s lawsuit filed on behalf of unpaid bloggers on the site. The filing argued that “no rule of statutory or common law, in New York or elsewhere, recognizes such a remarkable and unwarranted intrusion into the relationship between publishers and contributors.”
In April, Tasini (pictured, via) filed a class action lawsuit against Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post and AOL. The suit includes an estimated 9,000 unpaid bloggers and seeks damages of at least $105 million.
Here’s an excerpt from the motion (PDF link): “many of the 216 blog postings cited in the Complaint demonstrate on their face that Mr. Tasini took full advantage of the platform The Huffington Post gave him. They show, for example, that Mr. Tasini used his Huffington Post blog to sell copies of books he authored, to link to his personal ‘micro-blogging’ account at the Twitter.com website, and to announce one of his Senatorial campaigns and solicit donations for another.” (Via PaidContent)