A case is now percolating through the Illinois courts that may have implications on whether perpetrators of online deception can be sued for damages.
The case is Paula Bonhomme v. Janna St. James. Bonhomme lives in Los Angeles. She is a fan of the TV show Deadwood, and back in 2005, joined a chat room about the show. There she met St. James.
St. James eventually introduced Bonhomme, online, to a man by the name of Jesse. Bonhomme and Jesse exchanged emails, phone calls and handwritten notes, and their relationship blossomed into a romance. Jesse introduced Bonhomme to his family and friends via email. Bonhomme sent gifts to Jesse and his family. They planned a future together, and decided that Bonhomme should move from Los Angeles to Jesse’s home in Colorado.
Then suddenly, Jesse died of liver cancer. In Jesse’s memory, Bonhomme went to Colorado to visit some of his favorite places, accompanied by the woman who had introduced her to Jesse—Janna St. James.
But there was a problem: None of it was real.
Janna St. James made up the Jesse character, along with all 20 of his friends and family. She created an entire web of deceit, and snared Paula Bonhomme. She actually used voice-altering technology, so when they spoke on the phone, St. James sounded like a man.
Bonhomme spent money on gifts. She bought Jesse airline tickets and made changes to her home in preparation for his visits, which never materialized. In all, the charade cost Bonhomme about $10,000, including $5,000 for therapy after the emotional devastation of Jesse’s “death.”
Finally, Bonhomme’s friends, worried about the amount of time she was spending online, confronted St. James and exposed the fraud. They captured it on video, which is posted on YouTube.
Read ”˜Fake’ online love affair becomes legal battle on ABCNews.go.com.
Watch the YouTube video, St. James exposed.
Taking it to court
Bonhomme filed a complaint against Janna St. James in Illinois court in February 2008. The court dismissed her case. She filed a motion to reconsider in 2009, which was also dismissed. Then her attorneys filed an appeal.
Bonhomme’s complaint stated that St. James St. James committed fraudulent misrepresentation. The elements of this claim are:
- A false statement of material fact
- Knowledge or belief of the falsity by the party making it
- Intention to induce the plaintiff to act
- Action by the plaintiff in justifiable reliance on the truth of the statement
- Damage to the plaintiff resulting from that reliance
The problem with the original case apparently was that a claim of fraudulent misrepresentation was historically recognized only in business or financial transactions. The court had previously declined to consider fraudulent misrepresentation in noncommercial or nonfinancial dealings between parties.
Also, the defendant’s attorneys argued that St. James engaged in fiction, not a misrepresentation of facts, and that “the concepts of falsity and material fact do not apply in the context of fiction, because fiction does not purport to represent reality.”
The original trial court apparently bought that argument, but the appeals court did not. The appeals court ruled that the trial court erred in dismissing the case, and sent it back for further proceedings.
The actual court opinion is interesting and mostly easy to read. Check it out: Appellate Court of Illinois— Paula Bonhomme v. Janna St. James.
Blame the victim
The appellate court decision wasn’t, however, unanimous. One of the justices dissented, writing:
The reality of the Internet age is that an online individual may not always be—and indeed frequently is not—who or what he or she purports to be. The plaintiff’s reliance on the defendant’s alleged misrepresentations, in deciding to spend $10,000 on Christmas gifts for people who allegedly lived in another state and whom she had never met, was not justifiable. The plaintiff also cannot be said to have justifiably relied on the alleged misrepresentations in incurring expenses to move to another state to live with someone she had never met in person and who had cancelled a previous face-to-face meeting after she had purchased nonrefundable airline tickets.
In other words, the dissenting justice blamed the victim for being dumb enough to fall for the scam.
Kirk Sigmon, a blogger for the Cornell Law School, also thought the appellate court decision was a bad idea. He argued that “the world is full of misleading statements and ”˜puffery,’” and Bonhomme v. St. James could set a precedent that made Internet users responsible for telling the truth. This, Sigmon seemed to imply, was an imposition.
This holding has the potential to cause serious problems for Internet users. At least according to the Bonhomme court’s logic, many individuals may be liable for expenses incurred as a result of someone’s reliance upon their virtual representations. Mindless banter in chatrooms could now create legal liabilities. If courts apply a similar logic to negligent misrepresentation cases, even careless statements made on websites could give rise to litigation so long as plaintiffs can prove intent and harm. In theory, every user of the Internet is now subjected to an implied duty of truthfulness or due care in the representations they make when interacting with others online.
The blogger argued that allowing a complaint of fraudulent misrepresentation arising from personal dealings, rather than just commercial dealings, “threatens the very freedom that makes the Internet so attractive.”
Read The wild, wild web and alter egos, on CornellFedSoc.org.
Wrong but not illegal
I am troubled by the judge’s dissent, which blames the victim, and the Cornell blogger’s apparent opinion that the freedom of the Internet must include the freedom to lie, no matter how destructive it is to another individual.
The actions of Janna St. James were clearly reprehensible. They were morally wrong. This woman did not engage in “social puffery.” She set out to purposely deceive Paula Bonhomme, apparently just to amuse herself. Unfortunately, she succeeded, and Bonhomme was damaged.
Not only that, but St. James had a history of pulling this scam. Since this case became public, Bonhomme was contacted by at least five other women who were similarly victimized by St. James, in fake letters going back to the 1980s.
So why is it so difficult for Paula Bonhomme to get justice? I think the problem is the very structure of our legal system. Even when an action is clearly wrong, if it doesn’t violate a law, nothing can be done. The law hasn’t kept up with the technology, and the law, like most of society, doesn’t understand the maliciousness of sociopaths.
I hope Bonhomme makes out better in her next court go-round. In any event, I applaud her for even pursuing the case. If we want to make changes, and hold sociopaths accountable, we have to start somewhere.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
Skylar
Yup Yup Yup. My spath even admitted to something bad b/c HE was MUCH worse. He admitted to acting paranoid, CRAZY. Ironic considering that was what he told everyone I was, a suspcious crazy B*. He made his acting paranoid sound like a pity play b/c he was only paranoid to protect himself. his poor widdle self. So what he did was okay right? (taking all our marital assets, dissolving the corporation, and putting the assets in a new account in his name only.)
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Yep, Sky. I had one guy email me recently from another state. He was a reasonably attractive 46-y.o. guy. He sent me some beautiful prose that appeared as if he wrote himself. Since he did not quote anyone, the first thing I did was google his prose. What did I find? Some girl on another dating site last year received the exact same post. And she was blogging about it.
So I asked the guy if he wrote it himself. He said he did and asked why. I told him that I knew someone who received the exact same post a year ago. He changed the subject. I could also see his command of the English language was not good. I asked him what country he comes from. He got very defensive. He never answered my questions but kept discussing my beauty and asking me what I want in a man.
It was so obviously a scam. But I’m sure women fall for it.
Star,
I saw the prose when you posted it. And I googled it too.
It sounded like word salad to me. The guy is probably living in nigeria. I’ve gotten a few of those nigerian scammers on my BF’s ecommerce site and they all sound like that.
They begin by telling me they want to order a large quantity of our products. What they really want is to play the scam where they send you a check for a larger amount than they owe and then ask you to return the overage by writing them one of your own checks. Of course his check is stolen and ours is real, so he ends up with our merchandise, our money, and our checking account information which he can use to continue the con on somebody else.
You can find all this out by doing exactly what you did: google the words he used.
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dear constantine – i have to say i never focused on P’s infidelity – my understanding was that it was a marriage that was over in a fundamental way. i have been following her story very closely for 2 years (and do not think her a spath), and always i have seen her as a duped person – as i would anyone who came here – male or female (sorry, no gender bias here 😉 ), married or unmarried who had been spathed, and so heinously as that.
a spouse who has been cheated on has been victimized – but i never saw that as the central fact to the story of what jsj did to P. to me that is a fact that belongs to the tragedy of P and her ex husbands mmarriage. Yes, I have compartmentalized it. I saw what was important to me to know, as you have seen what is important to you.
xo
Sky, LOVE IT: “We are ALL here because our spath had multiple sexual affairs -except for OneJoy and Paula, their spath has multiple personalities.” snort!
Constantine,
Not throwing stones either…believe me, I have not led a “sin free” life myself, I don’t know anyone who has. I know that my own “sins” have been used against me by the abusers in my life….sometimes to justify their own (greater) sins, or to (essentially) black mail me into NOT making a big stir about THEIR sins.
For example, my egg donor, with a lie still in her mouth (she hadn’t had time to swallow it yet when I caught her lying) she looked at me and said when I accused her of being a liar, “Well! Don’t tell me you never lied to me!” Of course I had lied to her and I said,
“Yea, I have lied to you, when I was 15 —45 years ago!” LOL
St. James excuses the damage she has done to Paula by saying that it is “okay to lie” and that Paula is stupid for believing her….and of course Paula was “stoopid” for believing St. James, BUT that doesn’t excuse what St. James did. “Buyer Beware” is a good rule of thumb, but Paula wanted to believe what St. James was “selling.” She wanted to believe it the same way someone with cancer whose physician says “I’m sorry there’s nothing more we can do for you” goes to Mexico and pays big bucks for a “treatment” that is “guaranteed” to save the patient. We believe what we want to believe. Most of the time we “buy” things based on emotions not logic.
When I started dating the psychopathic BF, he was selling me a “bill of goods” that I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe there was “love for me” after my husband died. I wanted to believe there was a funny, bright, intelligent man that thought I was wonderful and sexy and that I would have a relationship again. I didn’t want to believe he was a cheating piece of carp simply looking for a respectable woman as a “front” for his continual affairs with his “harem” of girlfriends who were all just as desperate as I was to BELIEVE what we wanted to believe.
I wasn’t married, and I never cheated on my husband, but I won’t say that under the right circumstances I might not have….I have learned to “never name the well from which you will not drink.” I do know that I am a person who has a strong moral compass, but I also know that I have violated my own moral compass more than once in my life, and I can’t say I won’t ever do it in the future. I do my best to adhere to it, but we are all only “human.” The differences between “us and them” I think is the PATTERN of our lives…the psychopaths make a pattern of abuse, lack of empathy, and cheating, and the rest of the human race doesn’t make a PATTERN of those things.
As for the SPECTRUM of autism, I think that like Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen points out that even among the autistic, there is a wide range of levels of empathy from almost zero to more “normal” levels, so though Panther per se has X amount of empathy, that doesn’t mean that all autistic people have X amount of empathy or lack of it, only that SHE falls at the point marked “x” on the bell curve of levels of empathy.
I agree with you, Constantine, that Paula’s husband is a VICTIM in terms of being abused. That doesn’t mean that Paula is not a victim of his abuse as well. We don’t know much about Paula’s marriage or why it was not satisfactory to her and/or him.
It is not uncommon for people who are both low in empathy and/or high in “duping delight” to hook up together and the “loser” in the contest becomes a self-labeled victim. We see that from time to time here at Love Fraud, where a person presents as a “victim” but after some period of time, it becomes apparent that they are as much abuser as abused, and they start abusing other bloggers.
Of course we can’t “judge” whether a person is a true “innocent victim” or is just presenting themselves as a victim until they “drop their mask” here at LF, and believe me there are some “great” masks. On the screen we can “be” anyone we want to appear to be. We can make up a fake persona or we can pretend to be someone or something we are not and unless we get to know people in person it is pretty easy to keep that “mask” alive.
Even in “real life” it is easy enough to keep up a “mask” –look at Sandusky for example, or John Edwards or any number of fakers that you can name.
Most of the time we (victims) will acknowledge that even after we SAW that the abuser was abusive, we continued to live in denial and give them “another second chance.” So we can acknowledge our own part in allowing the abuse to continue. Some few individuals never saw what hit them and got totally blindsided and left the relationship immediately, but most of us, it seems at least, were engaged in denial and bargaining, and trying to fix, or enabling the abuser or at least not setting and maintaining reasonable boundaries.
Learning to set reasonable boundaries, as well as respecting ourselves and expecting others to respect us as well, has been a steep learning curve for me. I no longer take others at “face value” any more, but like Sky suggested, VALIDATE.
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