Californians can stay home and sue AOL

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- A federal appeals court said California residents can sue AOL in their home state for privacy violations based on a 2006 Internet posting.

An AOL membership agreement stipulated that lawsuits against the company had to be filed in Virginia, where class-action suits are prohibited, the Sacramento, Calif., Bee reported Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Sandra Armstrong upheld that agreement when customers sued the company after it posted 20 million Web site searches by 658,000 of its members.

The information revealed "personal struggles with various highly personal issues, including sexuality, mental illness, recovery from alcoholism, and victimization from incest, physical abuse, domestic violence, adultery and rape," a class-action suit claimed.

On Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Armstrong's ruling for Californians, because the clause in the agreement "violates the (California) Consumer Legal Remedies Act," the court said.

Even though AOL took the information off the Web site 10 days after it was posted, the incident that AOL called "a screw up," allowed anyone with access to the information "to openly criticize and pass judgment on AOL members based on their searches," the court said.