A California man is suing greater than 50 ladies for $2.6 million after they shared damaging tales about him on a “Are We Relationship The Identical Man” Fb web page, claiming their evaluations had been false and defamatory.
The ladies say Stewart Lucas Murrey is utilizing the authorized motion to intimidate them, they usually’re asking the courts to slap him down.
On Monday, a decide in Los Angeles civil courtroom dominated that one of many ladies — Vanessa Valdez — did nothing mistaken by sharing her opinion of Murrey with the favored on-line group.
One other girl slapped with a lawsuit by Murrey, Kelly Gibbons, mentioned the primary time she noticed the person in actual life was when he got here to her home to drop off the lawsuit.
“My coronary heart began pounding, as I assumed: this man is aware of the place I stay,” she informed the Occasions of London.
“It was fairly eerie. He was filming along with his mobile phone, strolling in. I don’t know who wouldn’t get creeped out by that.”
Now, the ladies focused by Murrey — who claims they ruined his courting life and broken his status — are hoping the ruling will set a precedent and stop him from additional utilizing the authorized system towards them.
They’re invoking California legal guidelines meant to discourage junk lawsuits — referred to as anti-SLAPP legal guidelines.
After discovering no proof of conspiracy, the decide granted an Anti-SLAPP movement to forestall the abuse of the authorized system to silence the ladies, FOX 11 LA reported.
Gibbons penned the preliminary publish about Murrey within the Los Angeles chapter of the “Are We Relationship The Identical Man?” after assembly on a courting app and texting for just a few weeks.
Gibbons chatted with Murrey on the telephone earlier than she determined she didn’t wish to meet him in individual.
The interplay went so badly that she needed to warn different ladies about his impolite habits, noting, “I wouldn’t need my good friend going out with somebody like that.”
The personal “Are We Relationship The Identical Man” Fb group, which originated in New York Metropolis in 2022, is a part of a wider community of teams the place ladies share details about damaging courting encounters they’ve had of their respective cities. The Los Angeles chapter at the moment has some 53,000 members.
On the time of Gibbons’ publish, solely about 10,000 ladies had been within the group. Regardless of this, different ladies started becoming a member of Gibbons in detailing their dangerous interplay with Murrey, some sharing screenshots of exchanges on courting apps and recounting in-person dates.
Others simply commented reactions.
Whereas the curiosity light inside weeks, 9 of the ladies who posted about Murrey are named within the lawsuit, whereas the remainder are known as “Does 1-50.”
The ladies — most of whom didn’t know one another — are accused within the swimsuit of getting “conspired to hurt the plaintiff’s status” and discriminating towards him as a result of he was unable to affix the women-only Fb web page.
Murrey shouldn’t be the primary man to have filed lawsuits towards ladies who’ve shared their damaging evaluations on the web page.
Nikko D’Ambrosio, 32, filed a lawsuit towards 27 ladies in Chicago in January after they described him of their posts as “very clingy” and a ghoster.
The decide in Murrey’s case on Monday mentioned that primarily based on the proof, the courtroom didn’t see any chance of Murrey prevailing towards the defendants on any declare he made.
The Submit has reached out to Murrey for remark.
