Journalist, newsrooms ordered to delete articles about real estate dispute

Legal journalist Eugene Volokh and multiple newsrooms were targeted in a March 13, 2024, court order to remove articles in connection with a real estate dispute between a former mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, and his daughter. A judge partially vacated the order in October after Volokh challenged it.

Alex Daoud, who served as Miami Beach mayor from 1985 to 1991 before being convicted of bribery, was sued in 2012 by his daughter, Kelly Hyman, an attorney and frequent TV commentator. Hyman alleged that Daoud was trying to take away her company and that she was the rightful owner of his residence, which he disputed, the Miami Herald reported.

As part of a settlement agreement, Daoud agreed in November 2020 to remove defamatory statements he had posted online or that had been posted at his behest.

Volokh — co-founder of the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy and retired law professor — reported on that initial order, highlighting that Google was asked to deindex (or remove from search result pages) articles by several mainstream media outlets.

“My recollection is that Google did not actually remove them,” Volokh told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. “But I wrote about this attempt to try to get things removed and then I started noticing that there were attempts to deindex that very article. So I write about that.”

In a January 2024 filing reviewed by the Tracker, Hyman wrote that more than three years after the initial order she had still come across “disparaging material” that she believed should have been removed in compliance with it. She asked the judge to amend the order to include new web addresses, and Circuit Court Judge Thomas Rebull did so in March 2024.

Among the around two dozen URLs that the new order demanded be taken down, deleted or deindexed were Volokh’s article about the attempt to deindex his previous article and a piece about an “odd” response he received from one of Hyman’s attorneys.

Reporting published by the Herald, WFOR-TV, the Daily Mail, The Real Deal and Law.com was also targeted, as was a link to an appellate ruling in the lawsuit published on Justia, a legal information website.

Rebull specified that the website host or service provider must remove or deindex the links within 10 days of receiving a copy of the order, and that “all statements, posts, social media, or videos or documents” directly or indirectly related to the underlying lawsuit must be removed as well.

At least one article by WFOR-TV appears to have been removed — a review of the Internet Archive shows that it was still available as of December 2023, but by April 2024 it had been removed.

Volokh wrote that he learned of the court order Oct. 17, when he received an email directing him to delete the two articles from his blog. He argued that the order was “unjustified,” adding that he had obtained legal representation who filed a motion Oct. 25 challenging the order.

“The Order, if applied to my posts, would violate the First Amendment,” Volokh wrote. “Those posts consist entirely of statements from public records, other accurate factual statements, and opinion.”

Rebull clarified his order Oct. 28, writing specifically that it does not apply to Volokh and clarifying that the order only applies to Daoud, Hyman and those acting in their interests.

Volokh told the Tracker it was heartening to see the order corrected so quickly.

“I just think that this was an error of the form that human beings — including ones wearing robes — make. Shouldn’t have. He should have, I think, recognized that they were asking for too much,” Volokh said. “But once he was alerted to it, he very promptly fixed it: blazingly fast by the standards of our legal system.”