Court OKs subpoenas to unmask anonymous individuals behind Diet Madison Avenue
Ad Age in the US reports that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Monica Bachner has signed an order allowing the legal team for former CP&B Boulder Chief Creative Officer Ralph Watson to serve business record subpoenas to Instagram, its parent Facebook and Gmail (part of Alphabet-owned Google) to provide identifying information about the anonymous individuals behind Instagram page Diet Madison Avenue.
The judge’s action is the latest development in a suit filed by Watson in May, claiming defamatory statements posted to the account led to his wrongful termination from the agency. DMA has taken aim at some of the biggest names in advertising with a goal of exposing sexual harassment and discrimination at ad agencies.
Following the lawsuit against it in late May, Diet Madison Avenue launched a GoFundMe page for its legal expenses, with a goal of raising $100,000. As of Thursday, it had raised $1,970.
The lawsuit states that the plaintiff believes the DMA account is run by at least 17 individuals “with assistance from at least another 42 individuals.” The suit cites Instagram’s privacy policy, which states the platform may access, preserve and share a user’s information in response to a legal request or when Instagram believes that is necessary to detect, prevent and address fraud and other illegal activity.
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The Crime of the Century
In January 2018 Ted Royer, Chief Creative Officer of New York advertising agency Droga 5, was sacked. No explanation was given by Droga 5 other than that: ‘We are committed to maintaining a safe and inclusive environment for all our employees’. His exit was surprising not just because he was David Droga’s key lieutenant and one of the best creatives of his generation, but also because myself, and everyone I have ever talked to, thought he was a decent guy.
Being thought of as ‘decent’, of course, doesn’t mean you’re not capable of wrongdoing, so to be clear, I’m not defending Ted. I can’t, because I don’t know what he’s accused off, let alone whether he’s guilty or not.
And I think that’s a problem.
Let’s assume that there’s no smoke without fire and Ted is guilty of something like ‘an attempted use of his position to try and take advantage of another person’. To most people that’s wrong, immoral, and Droga 5 were quite right to take the action they did.
But presumably what Ted has been accused of is not a crime. If it was, Droga 5 would have called the police to investigate, not an ‘outside firm’. Ted (and his family) is being punished, not only by losing his job, but in the current climate he will struggle to find a comparable one. Which potential employee would arouse the ire of its female staff, as well as a chunk of the nation’s press, in order to hire such a pariah, however talented he may be?
So, someone who has committed no crime is, at least temporarily, prevented from working again in his chosen profession. Does that punishment really fit?
If we, as a reasonable people, believe that impropriety at work (or anywhere else) is a criminal act, then we need to declare it to be such. In that way, the definitions would be clear (well, as clear as the law is capable) everyone would know where they stood, and the suspects, once found guilty would be treated as a criminal with resulting penalties.
If we’re going to clear this mess up, let’s take a deep breath and do it properly rather than through kangaroo courts and innuendo that wreck lives through moral indignity rather than due process.