"By sending the e-mail to a Shearman address, "Jane Doe deliberately and wrongfully misused and caused the continuing misuse of Shearman & Sterling's Internet resources," the suit contends."
Does this set a precedent for SPAM? I'm not a law guy by any means but I am a network administrator. Why not just block Jane Doe's account, heck, her whole ISP if they want?
I sure hope Dennis Kucinich doesn't read this. I have written so much crap about him on message boards that I may get sent up for life.
That's exactly the point.
The law firm is trying to make the argument that sending an unsolicited (or unwelcome) email is trepass. The ABA Journal argument refers to the Intel v. Hamidi case where this argument was tried before, and failed.
Your point is exactly why the law of trespass doesn't really work to prevent spam. If every unsolicited email was a trespass on the recipient, we'd all be liable.
The firm is using a Jane Doe suit in order to avail itself of the court's subpoena power during discovery. It will use that subpoena power to force the ISPs who routed the email to identify their customer. At that point, the law firm will know the identify of the person who sent the email.
Although this is pure speculation, my guess is that the firm thinks it is dealing with a disgruntled employee but can't prove it. The firm is using the lawsuit to identify the sender. If it finds the email was sent by an employee, it now has an easy path to fire the employee.