Doe v. Bonnell

Chronological View

The whole case, in order

Every substantive step, from long before there was a lawsuit through to the most recent thing on the public docket. The rest is the layout: what the plaintiff did sits left of the line, what the defendant did sits right of it, and the court keeps to the middle.

1. Before the suit

   The events the case is about. Only the ones below the line can support a federal claim.

2. Oct 2019

   They meet online

   She sends him a private message after a debate on a streaming platform. A friendship follows.

   She sent the first message. Both sides describe what followed as a friendship that moved into discussing their sex lives, a characterisation neither disputes, though they draw opposite conclusions from it.

   Bonnell Decl. ¶ 5 · ECF No. 42-1

3. 12 Sept 2020

   The video is recorded

   In Miami, consensually. Neither side has ever said otherwise.

   The court noted the point explicitly when denying a later motion: neither party alleges the recording itself, or its subject, was non-consensual. That matters, because it narrows the case to distribution alone.

   ECF No. 142 at 5

4. 9 Apr 2022

   He sends it to “Rose”

   Over Discord, to an account he took to be a college student’s. He admits this, and the plaintiff now accepts the date.

   His declaration puts the transmission at 8:36 p.m. Eastern. The account was in fact operated by an adult man in the United Kingdom using a real woman’s identity, established at her deposition three and a half years later. He states he has sent the video to no one since.

   Bonnell Decl. (Apr 2025) ¶¶ 9–10 · ECF No. 42-1 · Bonnell Decl. (Jan 2026) ¶¶ 2, 3, 5, 7 · ECF No. 213

5. 1 Oct 2022

   15 U.S.C. § 6851 takes effect

   The statute is not retroactive. It reaches conduct below this line and nothing above it, which is why the date of a single message decides whether a federal court can hear the case at all.

6. 3 Nov 2023

   The alleged second transmission

   To a witness known as “Abbymc.” Contested from the first day to the last, and the whole federal claim rests on it.

   The witness swears she received the video by Google Drive link and recognised the plaintiff. Her message to a friend that morning is timestamped 10:41. The defendant’s log puts his only links that day at 2:39 p.m. The plaintiff reads that as a four-hour gap, and his reply brief never addresses it. At his deposition he said he was not sure which time zone the log uses.

   Abbymc Decl. ¶¶ 6–7 · ECF Nos. 49-2, 86-1 · Dep. Tr. 221:3–13

7. 29 Nov 2024

   The leak

   A third party operating as “SoloTinyLeaks” publishes a cache of his private files, including this video, to a forum. Neither party consented.

   Twenty-nine files went up at once. The forum’s own operator posted that the resulting traffic surge caused a database failure. From there the video spread to several pornography sites, captioned with both parties’ screen names.

   ECF Nos. 42-8, 52-3

8. Dec 2024

   They work on takedowns together

   He retains specialist counsel and they coordinate removal requests across sites.

   Their messages show him hunting for a DMCA contact, emailing a registrar and passing her a search-removal form while she sends him further URLs. He cites this as proof there was nothing left for an injunction to order him to do.

   ECF No. 51-3

9. 22 Jan 2025

   Preservation letter served

   Formal written notice to preserve everything potentially relevant.

   The letter directed him to “preserve, maintain, prevent spoliation of, and not destroy” anything related to the matter. It fixes the outer date on which his duty to preserve attached; she argues it attached earlier, at the November leak.

   ECF No. 21-3

10. Jan–Feb 2025

    The redaction

    He later says on a livestream that he “ran like a whole redact” of his Discord in this window. Off the docket, but central to the spoliation motion eighteen months later.

    Said on a stream in May 2026 and quoted back at him in the sanctions motion. He also testified he deleted his messages with one witness “sometime maybe at the end of 2024,” and added that he had archived them with the Redact tool and produced the archives. His position is that removing material from view is not the same as destroying it.

    Peters Decl. ¶¶ 38–39, ECF No. 263 · Dep. Tr. 243:25–244:10

11. The case

    Filed 18 February 2025. Everything below is on the docket.

12. 18 Feb 2025

    Complaint filed

    Four counts. Only the federal one carries jurisdiction.

    Counts under the federal statute, Florida’s sexual cyberharassment statute, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy. Only the first supports federal jurisdiction; the other three ride on it through supplemental jurisdiction.

    ECF No. 1

13. 20 Feb 2025Granted

    Leave to proceed as “Jane Doe”

    Granted the day after it was filed, unopposed. The order seals identifying filings, releases her name to defence counsel on request, and bars disclosure to the media without her counsel’s consent. The statute itself contemplates pseudonymity.

    ECF No. 7 · 15 U.S.C. § 6851(b)(3)(B)

14. 3 Apr 2025

    Motion for a restraining order and injunction

    Four forms of relief, five months after the leak.

    The plaintiff asked the court to order the defendant to stop sharing the video, take down the copies he controlled, and tell third parties in writing to remove their own. The fourth request was to preserve evidence. The first three all aimed at publication that had already happened, which is most of why the motion failed.

    ECF No. 21 at 6

15. 4 Apr 2025Denied

    Restraining order denied

    No emergency. Her counsel concedes “most of the damage has already been done.”

    Judge Becerra: “There is nothing that’s happening today that wasn’t happening when you filed the suit.” The court also told counsel that spoliation relief needs its own separately filed motion under Rule 37(e), advice not acted on for another thirteen months.

    ECF No. 38 at 5:19–23, 6:3

16. 25 Apr 2025

    Opposition, with the date-format exhibits

    The paired screenshots reading 4/9/2022 on his side and 10/04/2022 on the recipient’s.

    The exhibit that decides the jurisdictional question: the same exchange captured from both sides of the conversation. A later message in the same thread stamped 14/04/2022 confirms the day-first format, since there is no fourteenth month.

    ECF Nos. 42, 42-4

17. 2 May 2025

    Abbymc’s first declaration

    The document the federal claim now depends on.

    Two pages, sworn under penalty of perjury. It asserts the transmission and the recognition but attaches no message, no link and no file, which becomes the defendant’s central objection at summary judgment.

    ECF No. 49-2

18. 23 May 2025

    Motion for a protective order over discovery

    Filed after the negotiation between counsel breaks down.

    The court later found she declared meet-and-confer “exhausted” about thirty-six hours after sending an eleven-page draft, and two minutes before opposing counsel replied that he had already marked it up.

    ECF Nos. 82, 92-3

19. 3 Jun 2025

    Evidentiary hearing

    Both parties testify for about two and a half hours, in open court.

    She testified she had never personally seen a record of any transmission after October 2022. He testified he never obtained verbal or written consent to share the video, but believed the context of their exchanges implied it.

    ECF No. 90 at 55:7–13, 83:7–13

20. 2 Sep 2025Granted in part

    Protective order entered

    In the court’s own modified form, closer to the draft the parties had negotiated.

    It covers intimate images, her legal name, the names of sealed non-party witnesses, and medical records, and it bars disclosure of any of it to the media or to “any online broadcast, podcast, stream, post or direct message.”

    ECF No. 116 ¶¶ 2, 7

21. 4 Sep 2025Granted

    Leave to amend granted

    The court calls the evidence of the timeline “murky at best.”

    It noted that the defendant’s own exhibit contains a screenshot taken from the recipient’s side of the chat, an image he could not have captured himself, and that no testimony from that recipient was ever offered to explain it.

    ECF No. 119 at 8

22. 5 Sep 2025

    Amended complaint

    Adds the Abbymc transmission and the continuing-accessibility theory.

    Both additions are attempts to land a qualifying act after the statute’s effective date. The court had just held that amendment would not be futile, which is a low bar but not nothing.

    ECF No. 120 ¶¶ 13–15, 45

23. 8–9 Sep 2025

    “Artificially creating a file”

    On a livestream he describes reconstructing a log. Days later he files a log with the court. Whether it is the same one is disputed.

    “There is no original file. I’m trying to reconstruct the file. I’m artificially creating a file by reconstructing a log of stuff.” On 19 September he filed a log and swore it was a true and correct record of everything he had sent the witness. The plaintiff says that is the file he was describing. At his deposition he said he did not remember which file the stream was about, that the filed log was a filtered list of his own sent messages, and that the merging only lined up timestamps and changed no message. Her filings date the clip to 8 September in one place and 9 September in another.

    ECF Nos. 139 at 13, 150 (audio), 132-6 · Dep. Tr. 311:4–313:20 (the clip, as played), 305:8–307:19, 314:5–318:9

24. 19 Sep 2025

    Motion to dismiss

    No jurisdiction: the only transmission predates the statute.

    A factual attack under Rule 12(b)(1). On that footing the court may weigh evidence from outside the complaint and answer, no presumption of truth attaches to the complaint, and the burden of establishing jurisdiction sits with the plaintiff.

    ECF No. 132

25. 3 Oct 2025

    Opposition and the footnote

    Asserts the recipient was a minor. This becomes the Rule 11 fight.

    The assertion sat in a footnote, resting on a redacted driving record said to fix the recipient’s date of birth. That premise collapsed at her deposition three weeks later. What the Rule 11 motion actually targets is not the footnote but the refusal to file errata afterwards.

    ECF Nos. 139 at 7 n.2, 139-2

26. 6 Oct 2025Denied

    Injunction denied. Forum motion denied.

    The court also notes that no spoliation motion has been filed.

    No irreparable harm: five months’ delay with no convincing justification, and her own post that she wanted him to “lose so much money” showed the injury could be met in damages. The forum motion failed because Rule 65 does not reach non-parties.

    ECF Nos. 143 at 12, 142

27. 23 Oct 2025

    Deposition in Illinois

    The woman whose identity was used testifies she never spoke to him, and that an adult man in the United Kingdom impersonated her.

    She testified she never messaged him, never saw the video, and had no idea who the plaintiff was. She also explained why the leaked screenshots carry European date formatting, the single most useful fact the defence obtained in discovery.

    Brettler Decl. Ex. L at 67:13–24, 79:22–80:7

28. 27 Oct 2025Denied

    Sealing the hearing transcript denied

    The hearing was public and the material was already in her own filings.

    No one had asked to close the courtroom, and non-parties attended. The passages she sought to seal, including those about suicidal ideation, had been in her own complaint on the public docket since February. Prior publication defeated the request.

    ECF No. 154 at 6–10

29. 3 Nov 2025

    She does not appear for her deposition

    No protective order was sought. Her own deposition and his are both delayed as a result.

    Defence counsel had travelled for it. No relief was requested and no explanation filed. The court issued an order to show cause two days later and stayed the defendant’s deposition until the dispute was resolved.

    ECF Nos. 163, 167

30. 5 Nov 2025

    His deposition stayed

    And an order to show cause issued against the plaintiff.

    The stay is what she later relies on to explain the timing of her spoliation motion: the intent evidence, she argues, could only come from his testimony, and his testimony was unavailable until the court lifted the stay the following April.

    ECF No. 167 · ECF No. 275 at 2

31. 21 Nov 2025

    Subpoena served on Abbymc

    A month before the cutoff. She produces nothing, and he never moves to compel.

    Served three and a half weeks before the discovery cutoff, after six months of disputed attempts. When she produced nothing he pursued neither a motion to compel under Rule 45(d)(2)(B)(i) nor contempt under Rule 45(g), and opposed the extension that would have allowed more time.

    ECF No. 212-10

32. 1 Dec 2025

    Rule 11 motion

    Over the minor allegation in the footnote.

    Safe harbour observed and errata demanded first. His strongest point is relevance: whether the recipient was seventeen has no bearing on whether the transmission preceded 1 October 2022, which is the only thing his own motion is about. The court denied the motion without prejudice on 21 April 2026.

    ECF No. 183 · ECF No. 240

33. 4 Dec 2025

    Rule 11 cross-motion

    The sanctions motion is itself sanctionable.

    It rests on the Advisory Committee’s own note that a sanctions motion is subject to the rule, and on decisions from this district, one written by this magistrate judge, holding that Rule 11 is not a vehicle for resolving a disputed fact. It was denied without prejudice in the same order as his.

    ECF No. 186 · ECF No. 240

34. 16 Dec 2025

    Discovery closes

    With the production disputes unresolved and no motion to compel ever filed.

    Neither side filed one. That single fact shapes everything after it: his complaint about an untested witness and her complaint about an incomplete production both arrive without the remedy that was available to fix them.

    ECF No. 23

35. 30 Jan 2026

    Motion for summary judgment

    The same jurisdictional argument, now on the full discovery record.

    Under Rule 56 he may carry his initial burden simply by pointing to an absence of evidence. He went further and filed affirmative evidence too, including his log of the media files he had sent the witness. The plaintiff says it is the log he described reconstructing on stream four months earlier.

    ECF Nos. 210, 213-5

36. 13 Feb 2026

    Rule 56(d) motion

    Asking the court to defer for discovery not yet taken.

    It asked the court to deny or defer until his deposition and a Swedish deposition could be taken. It was the third time in four months she had asked the court to wait for discovery, and the court had already remarked on the pattern.

    ECF No. 216

37. 30 Mar 2026Denied

    Speech order denied. Contempt denied.

    The court calls the requested restraint a prior restraint with “no limiting principle.”

    It held that Rule 26 reaches only discovery, and that her authorities were criminal cases resting on a Sixth Amendment right absent from a civil case. On contempt it corrected the record: it had made none of the findings she had attributed to it.

    ECF Nos. 223, 225

38. 30 Mar 2026

    Motions in limine, both sides

    What a jury would be allowed to hear, if there is a trial.

    Hers seeks to exclude implied-consent evidence under Rules 412 and 403. His seeks to exclude the minor allegation, the Abbymc declaration and exhibit, and her use of a pseudonym in front of a jury. Both are undecided.

    ECF Nos. 222, 224

39. 21 Apr 2026Denied

    Schedule, Rule 56(d) and both Rule 11 motions denied

    Depositions ordered within ten days, and no other discovery permitted. The trial moves to 10 August.

    A paperless order, and a consequential one. It denied the two Rule 11 motions without prejudice, which leaves either side free to file again, and granted her request to move the trial only in part. The words “no other discovery is permitted during these ten days” are what the defendant later invokes against the second Abbymc declaration, produced ten days after the order.

    ECF No. 240

40. 27 & 30 Apr 2026

    The parties are deposed

    His testimony supplies most of the intent evidence for the spoliation motion.

    He was deposed on 30 April. He testified that the files behind the Drive links “are not existing anymore,” and that the video stayed available to anyone logged into his Discord account or the recipient’s until he deleted it around November 2024. On the log, he said the version he filed was a filtered list of the media he had sent the witness, and that the merging he had described on stream was to make timestamps line up. His transcript stayed sealed until a redacted copy was filed that September.

    Dep. Tr. 237:3–6, 199:15–200:11, 305:25–306:6, 314:18–315:18 · ECF No. 305-1

41. 30 Apr 2026

    A second Abbymc declaration

    Produced after discovery closed, and days after she testified she had no recent contact with the witness.

    Materially identical to the first, adding no new facts. It arrived after the close of discovery, after the court had barred further discovery, and days after that testimony. The defendant asks that it be disregarded entirely under Rules 26(e) and 37(c)(1).

    ECF No. 249-1

42. 8 May 2026

    Opposition to summary judgment

    She concedes the April 2022 date. The case narrows to two routes across the line.

    The concession matters more than the opposition. Having pleaded October 2022, then “sometime in 2022,” she now accepts 9 April 2022. From here the federal claim can survive only on the Abbymc transmission or on continuing accessibility.

    ECF No. 247 at 1, 3

43. 18 May 2026

    Spoliation motion

    Seven weeks after the motion deadline, five months after discovery closed.

    It asks for judgment on liability, or an adverse-inference instruction. Its strongest point is one the defendant concedes: the sworn log of everything he sent the witness omits two Google Drive links that his own produced chat thread shows him sending.

    ECF No. 262

44. 1 Jun 2026

    Opposition

    Untimely, and no bad faith.

    Untimeliness first, merits second. He is on solid ground on timing, since this judge has denied spoliation motions as untimely in his own prior opinions, and weakest on the log, where the opposition concedes the omission and calls it inadvertent.

    ECF Nos. 271, 272

45. 30 Jun 2026

    Trial taken off the calendar

    No new date will be set until the court has ruled on the spoliation motion.

    The trial had been set for 10 August. The order setting the first hearing on the motion removed it, “given that the Motions pertain to evidence central to the resolution of Plaintiff’s claims.” A second order on 23 July moved that hearing to 19 August and repeated the point.

    ECF Nos. 280, 284

46. 17 Aug 2026

    Supplemental declarations

    Including a previously undisclosed witness, two days before the hearing.

    The defendant objects that the witness was never disclosed under Rule 26 and could not be deposed, that her statement is hearsay, and that her evidence concerns the pre-statute transmission in any event, so it cannot cure the jurisdictional defect. Her declaration is sealed. A later filing by the plaintiff, since struck, describes it: she says he told her in January 2025 that he was “wiping” his Discord logs, and that she watched him archive and then delete their messages that February.

    ECF Nos. 285, 289, 298 at 3

47. 19 Aug 2026

    Hearing on the spoliation motion

    Supplemental filings ordered. No ruling.

    The court directed both sides to file the underlying materials: the deposition transcript, the expert report, and the document requests and responses. It also asked each side to say which sealed entries should be opened. Nothing was decided from the bench.

    ECF Nos. 292, 293

48. 24 Aug 2026

    Both sides agree on what to unseal

    He lists ten sealed entries. She agrees, provided they are redacted as the protective orders require.

    The court had asked for the lists from the bench. No unsealing order has followed. The same day she filed two notices setting out which earlier filings she relies on, one for the spoliation motion and one against summary judgment.

    ECF Nos. 294, 297, 295, 296

49. 26 Aug 2026Stricken

    Two unrequested responses struck

    And summary judgment is put on hold until the spoliation motion is decided.

    The day before, she had filed two responses of about eighteen pages each to his objections to her supplemental declarations. The court struck both, noting that it had given neither side leave to file anything further on the sanctions motion. A separate order the same day stayed summary judgment and promised an evidentiary hearing.

    ECF Nos. 298, 299, 300, 301

50. 4 Sep 2026

    Both case-ending motions stayed

    The motion to dismiss and summary judgment now wait for the spoliation ruling.

    A paperless order widening the August stay to cover the motion to dismiss. It fixes the order of decision: spoliation first, then jurisdiction. The same day she filed a redacted copy of his deposition transcript, the first of the four to reach the public docket.

    ECF No. 304 · ECF Nos. 305, 305-1

51. 2 Oct 2026

    Evidentiary hearing on the spoliation motion

    He and her forensic expert testify. No ruling from the bench.

    Set by an order of 8 September and held in Miami. The minute entry records two witnesses, the defendant and Jesus Peña, and says an order will follow. The defence put in one exhibit: her message to him on the night of the leak, asking him to “please just make sure to delete” the videos. No transcript of the hearing is on the docket yet.

    ECF Nos. 306, 309, 310, 272-1

52. 7 Oct 2026 · the record ends

    Five motions still awaiting decision

    • May 2026Spoliation sanctions
    • Sep 2025Motion to dismiss, stayed
    • Jan 2026Summary judgment, stayed
    • Mar 2026Two motions in limine

    The spoliation motion comes first, and it could hand the plaintiff judgment on liability without a trial. The motion to dismiss and summary judgment would each end the case outright, and both are stayed until it is decided. There is no trial date.

Read as a whole the pattern is one-sided: the plaintiff has lost most of what she has asked for: on delay, on choosing the wrong procedural vehicle, on asking for a restraint the First Amendment does not permit in a civil case. None of it goes to whether her underlying account is true. The judge who denied her injunction also found her testimony “fully credible.”