Doe v. Bonnell: Both Sides

United States District Court · Southern District of Florida · No. 1:25-cv-20757-JB

Filed: 18 Feb 2025
Before: Becerra, J. · Torres, M.J.
Docket: 293 entries
Status: Undecided

01 · Chronology

The whole case, in order

Every substantive step, from the events the case is about through to the last filing in the public record. The rail sets the page’s rule: what the plaintiff did on the left, the defendant on the right, the court down the middle.

Before the suit

The events the case is about. Only the ones below the line can support a federal claim.
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
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
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 eighteen months later. He states he has sent the video to no one since.

Bonnell Decl. ¶¶ 3, 9–10 · ECF No. 42-1
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.
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 account puts his only links that day at 2:39 p.m., a four-hour gap his reply brief never addresses.

Abbymc Decl. ¶¶ 6–7 · ECF Nos. 49-2, 86-1
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
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
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
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.” His position is that removing material from view is not the same as destroying it.

Peters Decl. ¶¶ 38–39 · Dep. Tr. 243:25–244:3
The case

Filed 18 February 2025. Everything below is on the docket.
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
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)
3 Apr 2025

Motion for a restraining order and injunction

Four forms of relief, five months after the leak.

Stop further sharing; remove what he controls; tell third parties in writing to remove theirs; preserve evidence. Three of the four aimed at publication that had already happened, which is most of why the motion failed.

ECF No. 21 at 6
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
8 Sep 2025

“Artificially creating a file”

He describes reconstructing a log on a livestream, eleven days before filing that log with the court.

“Information is lost! There is no original file! I’m trying to reconstruct a file! I’m artificially creating a file by reconstructing a log.” He filed that log on 19 September and swore it was a true and correct record of everything he had sent the witness.

ECF No. 150 (audio) · ECF No. 132-6
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
3 Oct 2025

Opposition and the footnote

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

The footnote relied on a redacted driving record to fix the recipient’s date of birth. The premise collapsed at her deposition three weeks later, and it is the refusal to file errata afterwards, the formal correction a witness makes to sworn testimony, that the Rule 11 motion actually targets.

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

ECF No. 183
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.

ECF No. 186
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
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 the communication log he had described reconstructing on stream four months earlier.

ECF Nos. 210, 213-5
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
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
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
21 Apr 2026Denied

Schedule and Rule 56(d) motions denied

Depositions ordered within ten days, and no other discovery permitted.

A paperless order, and a consequential one. 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
27 & 30 Apr 2026

The parties are deposed

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

He testified the Google Drive files “are not existing anymore,” that he built the log by merging files with different timestamps “to make it line up,” and that the video stayed reachable on his account or the recipient’s until he deleted it in November 2024.

Dep. Tr. 237:3–6, 306–07, 199:15–200:11
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
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
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
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
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.

ECF Nos. 285, 289
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. Nothing was decided from the bench, and the record ends the next day.

ECF No. 293
20 Aug 2026 · the record ends

Seven motions still awaiting decision
- Sep 2025Motion to dismiss
- Jan 2026Summary judgment
- Dec 2025Two Rule 11 motions
- Mar 2026Two motions in limine
- Apr 2026Continuance of trial
- May 2026Spoliation sanctions
Two of them, the motion to dismiss and summary judgment, would end the case outright. A third could hand the plaintiff judgment on liability without a trial.

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.”

Skip to 02

02 · The whole thing at once

How it actually resolves

Every dispute in the case feeds one gate. This is the full shape of it: two routes to a federal claim, one test on each, and a separate path that bypasses all of it.

Read top to bottom. Teal carries the plaintiff’s path, violet the defendant’s, rose the questions a judge has to answer. The dashed line is the only route that skips the gate entirely.

03 · Common ground

What both sides agree on

For all of that, the record holds more common ground than the argument around it suggests. Whatever a court decides, five things are not in dispute at all.

i
The recording itself was consensual.

They met in Miami in September 2020 and recorded the encounter together. Neither party has ever claimed otherwise, and the court noted as much.
ii
He sent it to someone else.

Bonnell states in his own sworn declaration that he transmitted the video over Discord to a user he knew as “Rose.” That transmission is admitted, not alleged.
iii
He had no express permission to do it.

He testified under oath that he never obtained verbal or written consent to share the video. His position is that the context of their exchanges implied it.
iv
Neither of them put it on the internet.

In November 2024 a third party operating as “SoloTinyLeaks” published a cache of Bonnell’s private files, including this video, to a forum. Both sides say that happened without their consent.
v
She never agreed to any of that.

No one contends the plaintiff consented to public distribution. The dispute is about responsibility for it, not about her permission.

04 · Side by side

Seven questions, two answers each

Positions as each side has actually argued them in its filings, not as the other side characterises them. Where a court has spoken, it is marked.

1Did he share it without her consent?

Plaintiff

Yes, and he has admitted it. She authorised no one. Her account is that she agreed he could show it to his then-fiancée and was explicit that it go no further.

Defendant

He does not deny the transmission. He argues the surrounding exchanges implied permission, and that he never identified her by name to the recipient.

CourtNo merits ruling. He testified he obtained neither verbal nor written consent.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Plaintiff

The argument

The statute does not recognise silence or atmosphere as consent. It defines it as an affirmative, conscious, and voluntary authorization. Nothing of that kind exists anywhere in the record, and he does not claim it does.

Rests on

His own sworn declaration admitting the transmission; his hearing testimony that he never obtained verbal or written consent; his message to her on the day of the leak, apologising and saying there was no excuse; her declaration that she permitted his then-fiancée and no one else.

ECF Nos. 42-1, 90, 120

Authority

15 U.S.C. § 6851(a)(2) supplies the definition of consent.

Where it is weak

None of consequence. This is the strongest element of her case, and the defence does not seriously contest it.

Defendant

The argument

He is not arguing that she said yes. He is arguing that two people who had spent a year exchanging explicit material of themselves and their partners had established a shared understanding, and that he acted inside it, anonymously, without ever naming her.

Rests on

Their 2020 message history, filed as exhibits; his testimony that he believed he had implied consent given the norms of his circles; the fact that she raised no objection to his then-fiancée viewing it.

ECF Nos. 42-3, 50-2, 90

Authority

None directly. No authority is cited for implied consent under this statute, because the statute runs the other way.

Where it is weak

Fatal on this element. § 6851(b)(2)(A) says in terms that consenting to the recording is not consenting to its distribution. A court has already rejected a materially identical argument as contrary to the statute's plain language.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Did she give affirmative, conscious, voluntary authorisation to share it?
Defendant
He concedes he never asked her.
Statutory bar

§ 6851(b)(2)(A): consent to creation is not consent to distribution.

Defence route

The context of their exchanges implied permission.
Plaintiff
The implied-consent route is closed by the text of the statute itself.
Where it lands
Element satisfied, but only if the statute reaches the conduct at all. That question is Dispute 7.

2When did that transmission happen?

Plaintiff

Pleaded October 2022, then “sometime in 2022,” and in May 2026 conceded 9 April 2022, before the statute. Her own expert reached that date first.

Defendant

9 April 2022. The screenshot reading 10/04/22 is the recipient’s side of the chat in day/month format, because the account was run from the United Kingdom.

CourtCalled the timeline “murky at best” in September 2025. The concession came eight months later.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Plaintiff

The argument

Her original reading was not unreasonable on the face of the document, and her objection was never really about arithmetic. It was about provenance: the exhibit he relies on contains a screenshot taken from the recipient's side of the conversation. He could not have produced that image from his own account, and the person who supposedly took it never testified.

Rests on

The ambiguity of 10/04/22 standing alone; the unexplained origin of the recipient-side image; the absence of that recipient as a witness for the defence.

ECF No. 119

Authority

No presumption of truth attaches to either side on a factual jurisdictional attack, so the evidence has to actually establish the date.

Where it is weak

She lost this one. Her own forensic expert accepted April 2022 in October 2025 and she conceded formally in May 2026. Whatever the provenance question, this route to a federal claim is now closed by her own admission.

Defendant

The argument

The date is not a matter of interpretation once you put the two sides of the same conversation next to each other. His side reads 4/9/2022 at 8:28 PM. The recipient's side reads 10/04/2022 at 1:28 am: the same messages, four hours and thirty-eight minutes apart, which is exactly Miami to London.

Rests on

The paired screenshots of the identical exchange; a control message stamped 14/04/2022, which can only be read day-first because there is no fourteenth month; the deposition of the woman whose identity was borrowed, who confirmed the account was run by a man living in the United Kingdom; and the leaker's own published post, in which every date appears in European format.

ECF Nos. 42-4, 132-3

Authority

Landgraf v. USI Film Products bars retroactive effect without clear congressional intent. Three district courts have applied that to this statute specifically.

Where it is weak

He raised jurisdiction in responses for roughly six months before filing an actual motion, which the court noted. And the provenance point the plaintiff raised was never answered: he has still not explained how he came to hold an image taken from the other side of the chat.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
The screenshot reads 10/04/22. Is that 4 October or 10 April?
If 4 October 2022

After the statute. The federal claim stands on this transmission alone.

If 10 April 2022

Before the statute. This route is closed.
Defendant
Control test: a later message in the same thread is stamped 14/04/2022. There is no fourteenth month, so the format is day-first.
Defendant
Corroboration: the account holder's deposition places the correspondent in the United Kingdom.
Plaintiff
Unanswered: the exhibit includes an image from the recipient's side that he could not have captured himself, and that recipient never testified.
Where it lands
Resolved in the defendant's favour. The plaintiff conceded 9 April 2022 in May 2026. Jurisdiction must now come from somewhere else.

3Was there a second transmission, after the statute?

Plaintiff

Yes. November 2023, to “Abbymc,” supported by two sworn declarations and a message that witness sent a friend the same morning.

Defendant

It never happened. His preserved logs list every file he sent her and the video is not among them. The witness never testified, produced nothing under subpoena, and later distanced herself.

CourtUndecided. This is the question summary judgment turns on.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Plaintiff

The argument

The strongest piece is a clock. The witness's message to a friend is timestamped 10:41 in the morning. The two links the defendant says account for that day were sent at 2:39 in the afternoon, and he confirmed the time himself at deposition. A message sent at 10:41 cannot be describing something that arrived four hours later. Something else came that morning.

Rests on

Two sworn declarations from the witness; the screenshot of her 10:41 message; the defendant's own deposition testimony fixing his links at 2:39 p.m.; his admission that he deleted his side of the thread, which is where the direct proof would have been.

ECF Nos. 49-2, 86-1, 249-1

Authority

Rule 56(c)(2) requires only that evidence be reducible to admissible form at trial: it has to be capable of being put in proper form later, not already in that form now. Rule 901's authentication bar is low, and the author has twice sworn the message is hers.

Where it is weak

Serious. The witness never sat for deposition, produced nothing under a validly served subpoena, and days after signing her first declaration told the defendant she no longer wanted to be involved. A second declaration appeared after discovery had closed and after the plaintiff testified she had no recent contact with her.

Defendant

The argument

The plaintiff's entire federal case rests on one witness who has never been tested and one message that does not say what she needs it to say. It names no sender, attaches no video, produces no link, and is offered for the truth of what it asserts.

Rests on

His preserved communication log, which he swore identified every media file he ever sent her and in which the video's filename does not appear; the two Drive links from that day, which he says held videos of another woman who confirmed as much; proof of service of the subpoena she ignored.

ECF Nos. 132-6, 213-5

Authority

Anderson v. Liberty Lobby requires the side opposing summary judgment to produce evidence that is significantly probative, not merely colourable: enough for a jury to act on, not just enough to sound plausible. Cases from this district exclude affidavits where the opponent was denied a meaningful chance to test the witness.

Where it is weak

Two problems. He served that subpoena a month before the cutoff and then never moved to compel or for contempt, while opposing the extension that would have allowed more pursuit, so the gap he complains of is partly his own. And his opposition to the sanctions motion concedes the log he calls complete is not.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Is there evidence of a disclosure after 1 October 2022?
Plaintiff
The witness swears she received the video on or about 3 November 2023, and messaged a friend about it that morning at 10:41 a.m.
Defendant
The only things sent that day were two links to another woman's videos, sent at 2:39 p.m.
Plaintiff
A 10:41 message cannot describe a 2:39 event. Something arrived earlier. The reply brief does not answer this.
Defendant
But the witness was never deposed, produced nothing under subpoena, and later disavowed involvement.
If a jury could believe her

Genuine dispute of material fact. Summary judgment denied and the case goes to trial.

If the declaration is not probative

No post-statute transmission is established. Judgment for the defendant.
Where it lands
Undecided. The single most consequential open question in the case.

4Does leaving a file reachable count as sharing it?

Plaintiff

The statute defines “disclose” to include make accessible, a continuing state, not a single moment. He controlled the file and left it reachable until he deleted it in November 2024.

Defendant

A private link sent to one person is not publication. Courts have held that an unguessable, unindexed link is not public access, and no court has stretched the statute this way.

CourtUndecided, but treated as serious enough to allow the amendment that raised it.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Plaintiff

The argument

This is the argument that could win the case even after losing the date. Congress wrote four verbs: transfer, publish, distribute, or make accessible. If the fourth meant only the instant of sending, it would do no work the first three do not already do. Reading it as a continuing condition gives it meaning, and on that reading the defendant kept the video accessible for twenty-five months after the statute took effect.

Rests on

The statutory text; her expert's analysis of how the platform stores and serves attachments; and above all the defendant's own deposition admission that the file remained reachable on his account or the recipient's until he deleted it in November 2024.

ECF No. 139-1

Authority

15 U.S.C. § 6851(a)(4). A district court has held that continued post-enactment availability is itself a disclosure, regardless of when the material first went up.

Where it is weak

Her own expert conceded the link was effectively unguessable and that it is not known whether search engines ever indexed it. That guts the public accessibility half of the theory. What is left is the narrower version, that he simply failed to delete it, which is not quite what the amended complaint pleads.

Defendant

The argument

Sending one person a private link is not publishing. The plaintiff is trying to convert a single message into a continuing act so that conduct from April 2022 can be prosecuted under a statute passed six months later, which is retroactivity by another name.

Rests on

Two Arizona decisions holding that a long, non-guessable, unindexed URL is not public access, and that emailing such a link to one person is nothing like publishing in a newspaper. The plaintiff's lead authority involved posting to a public pornography site.

Authority

Wray v. Greenburg and Greenburg v. Wray; Landgraf on retroactivity.

Where it is weak

His factual premise is shakier than the brief admits. He told the court the video went only as a platform attachment and not by Drive link, but the leaker's own published post shows Drive links were in fact sent to that recipient. He also declined to engage this theory at all in his summary judgment motion and addressed it only on reply.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Does make accessible describe a continuing state, or only the moment of sending?
If a continuing state

Then ask the next question: was it still accessible after 1 October 2022?

If only the moment

Only April 2022 counts. This route closes and everything rides on Dispute 3.
Defendant
He admits he did not delete it until November 2024, so on his own account, yes.
Defendant
But accessible to whom? Her expert concedes the link was unguessable and may never have been indexed.
Plaintiff
The statute says make accessible, not publish. It does not obviously require the public.
Where it lands
An open question of first impression. If it resolves for the plaintiff, jurisdiction survives even if Dispute 3 fails.

5Does her earlier conduct amount to consent?

Plaintiff

The statute forecloses the argument in terms: agreeing to be recorded is not agreeing to distribution, and having shared something once is not agreement to share it again.

Defendant

He has not moved for judgment on consent. He offers the history for credibility and damages, pointing to a public statement of hers he says his own exhibits contradict.

CourtNot ruled. Both sides have asked to exclude the other’s material at trial.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Plaintiff

The argument

Congress anticipated this defence and wrote it out of the statute in two sentences. Beyond that, the material is exactly what the rules of evidence keep out of a civil trial: sexual history offered to make a jury think less of the person it happened to.

Rests on

The statutory text; a decision rejecting an identical argument; and the defendant's own testimony that he never asked her.

ECF No. 90

Authority

15 U.S.C. § 6851(b)(2)(A) and (B); Aaron v. Ferrell; Federal Rules of Evidence 412 and 403.

Where it is weak

One exhibit her own side filed is a message in which she tells him he had been very clear about how seriously he takes consent, which the defence can use on the reasonableness of his belief, even if belief is not a defence.

Defendant

The argument

He is not asking a jury to find she consented. He is asking that a jury be allowed to hear that she publicly said she had never sent him videos of other people, when his exhibits show she did, because a case that turns on whose account to believe cannot be tried with one side's credibility sealed off.

Rests on

The 2020 message history; her January 2025 public statement; her deposition testimony.

ECF Nos. 42-3, 50-1

Authority

Rule 412's own exceptions and Rule 403 balancing, which he argues permit the material for impeachment rather than consent.

Where it is weak

The line is not as clean as the brief makes it. Roughly seven pages of a purely jurisdictional summary judgment motion are given over to her sexual history, none of which bears on the October 2022 date. The plaintiff declined to answer it on the merits and preserved her objection, which is a strong position to be in.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Is the history relevant to consent?
Plaintiff
No. § 6851(b)(2)(A) and (B) exclude it by statute: creation is not distribution, and one disclosure is not permission for the next.
Test
Is it relevant to credibility instead?
Plaintiff

Even so, Rule 412 applies, and its balance is reversed: probative value must substantially outweigh the harm.

Defendant

Yes. She made a public statement his own exhibits contradict.
Where it lands
Turns on the motions in limine. Either way it cannot establish the defence, and at most it touches weight and damages.

6Did he destroy evidence?

Plaintiff

He deleted his side of conversations with several women after a preservation letter, and swore to a “true and correct” log of everything he sent one of them that omits two links his own production shows him sending.

Defendant

Nothing was lost. Removing material from public view at her request is not destruction, the omission was inadvertent, and the motion arrived five months after discovery closed, a discovery complaint relabelled as spoliation.

CourtHeard 19 August 2026. Undecided.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Plaintiff

The argument

The centrepiece is a document he filed himself. He swore that a spreadsheet was a true and correct log of every media file and link he ever sent that witness. His own produced chat thread shows two links that are not on it, one of them introduced by a message asking whether he had already sent her a particular video. Either that link showed the plaintiff, which proves the transmission he denies, or his sworn statement of completeness is false. There is no third option.

Rests on

The conceded omission; his deposition testimony that the underlying files no longer exist; a public statement that he ran a wholesale redaction of his messages in early 2025; three productions about the same witness that disagree with each other, one carrying a different username; and the fact that he produced the attachments she sent him and none that he sent her.

ECF Nos. 263, 272

Authority

Rule 37(e)(2), which allows an adverse inference or judgment where a party acted with intent to deprive.

Where it is weak

The timing is close to indefensible. The court noted in October 2025 that no spoliation motion was on file. The motion deadline passed in March 2026. She filed in May. This is a judge who has denied such motions as untimely in his own prior opinions.

Defendant

The argument

This is a discovery dispute that was never brought, arriving as a sanctions motion after the deadline for both. Rule 37(e)(2) requires bad faith, not untidiness, and the two links she calls missing were produced to her eight months before she filed.

Rests on

The production history; his testimony that he preserved and produced everything in his possession; the court's own observation, early in the case, that someone removing intimate material after being sued is not necessarily spoliating; and her own request that he take the material down.

ECF No. 272

Authority

Skanska and Tesoriero hold that intent to deprive means bad faith, and that negligence is not enough. A line of decisions from this district denying spoliation motions filed after the discovery cutoff.

Where it is weak

The substance is where he is most exposed anywhere in the case. He generated no hash values, produced 2,400 pages as a flat PDF with no metadata, publicly described artificially reconstructing a log, refused a cost-shared neutral forensic examination and then argued she never conducted one, and he conceded the sworn log is incomplete.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Gate: is the motion timely?
Defendant
Discovery closed December 2025. The motion deadline was March 2026. She filed in May 2026.
Plaintiff
The intent evidence came from his April 2026 deposition, which the court itself had stayed. She filed eighteen days later.
If timely

The Rule 37(e) elements are reached and the merits below are decided.

If untimely

Denied without reaching the merits at all. This is the live risk for the plaintiff.
Test
Was there a duty to preserve, was information lost, and was it lost with intent to deprive?
Plaintiff
Duty attached by the January 2025 letter at the latest. He testified the files no longer exist. He swore to a complete log that his own opposition concedes is not complete.
Defendant
Inadvertent. The links were produced. Removal from public view was at her own request.
Where it lands
If intent is found, sanctions run from an adverse-inference instruction up to judgment on liability, which would end the merits of the case in her favour.

7Should a federal court hear this at all?

Plaintiff

Yes. The November 2023 transmission and the continuing accessibility of the file both land after the statute took effect, and either is enough.

Defendant

No. The only established transmission predates the statute by nearly six months. Without the federal count, the state-law claims should be dismissed with it.

CourtWarned in October 2025 that jurisdiction may be absent. Still undecided.

Detailthe argument, what it rests on, where it is weak

Plaintiff

The argument

She accepts the burden. She needs one qualifying disclosure after 1 October 2022 and she has pleaded two independent routes to one. She also argues that a motion resting on the defendant's own documents cannot succeed while those documents are contested, and one of them he now concedes is incomplete.

Rests on

The Abbymc declarations and the timing gap; the continuing-accessibility opinion; the unrebutted expert evidence, which the defendant never answered with an expert of his own.

ECF Nos. 49-2, 139-1, 249-1

Authority

28 U.S.C. § 1331 and § 1367; Rule 56 and the principle that credibility and inferences belong to a jury.

Where it is weak

Crawford-El says a plaintiff cannot substitute attacks on the other side's credibility for affirmative evidence of the disputed fact, and a good deal of her opposition does exactly that. Her brief does not engage the case.

Defendant

The argument

Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction and the burden never shifts. After ten months of discovery she has produced no document, no message, no link and no file evidencing a transmission after the effective date. Rule 56 does not require him to prove a negative; pointing to the absence is enough.

Rests on

The concession that the only proven transmission was April 2022; the plaintiff's own hearing testimony that she had never personally seen a record of any later transmission; the witness's failure to produce anything.

ECF No. 90

Authority

OSI v. United States and McCormick v. Aderholt on the burden; Celotex on pointing to an absence of evidence; Crawford-El and Matsushita on what the side opposing the motion must produce.

Where it is weak

The affirmative half of his showing rests on a declaration his own later filing concedes is incomplete. If the court discounts that document, he is left with the absence of evidence alone, part of which is attributable to deletions he admits making.

Logic chainhow the reasoning runs, and where it breaks

Test
Has the plaintiff shown, by a preponderance, one disclosure after 1 October 2022?
Route A: Dispute 3

The November 2023 transmission to the witness.

Route B: Dispute 4

Continuing accessibility until November 2024.
Defendant
Route A rests on an untested declarant. Route B asks a court to read the statute more broadly than any court yet has.
If either route holds

Federal jurisdiction survives. The case proceeds to trial on the merits.

If neither holds

No federal claim. The court declines supplemental jurisdiction and the state claims go with it.
Where it lands
Undecided. Both the motion to dismiss and the motion for summary judgment turn on this single node.

Skip to 05 · Notes

05 · Notes

How this was made, and what it leaves out

Source

Built from the complete public docket, 439 filings across 293 entries, as archived by the Free Law Project from PACER. Every characterisation here comes from a filing, an exhibit, or a signed order.

Every docket number in a citation opens that filing, in the archive it came from. The court’s paperless orders have no document behind them and are left as plain text.

What is sealed

A great deal. The plaintiff’s legal name, several witness identities, all four deposition transcripts and many exhibits were never filed publicly. Some of what each side relies on cannot be read by anyone outside the case.

Names

The plaintiff sued under a pseudonym and the court granted it. Non-party witnesses appear here only by the screen names already used in public filings. The explicit material quoted in the record is described, not reproduced.

What this is not

Not legal advice, not a finding, and not a verdict. Allegations are allegations. No court has resolved the central factual dispute, and the two motions that could have were still pending when this record ends.

Tell me what I got wrong

If something here is missed, misrepresented or unfairly portrayed, let me know. Point me at a filing or record and I will verify it on my end. I actively look to correct, improve and remain unbiased.

No account, no name, no email. The submission stores what you typed, your address and your browser string, to make abuse traceable and for nothing else.

Record reviewed through 20 August 2026. Nothing filed after that date is reflected here.

Terms

Plain English

Words this page uses because the court uses them. Nothing here is special to this case.

The paperwork

Docket: The court’s numbered list of everything filed in a case. Entry 42 is the forty-second thing filed.
ECF No.: How a filing is cited: its docket number. A number after a dash, like 42-4, is an attachment to it — usually an exhibit.
Complaint: The document that starts a lawsuit and sets out what the plaintiff says happened. An amended complaint replaces it.
Answer: The defendant’s formal response to the complaint, admitting or denying each allegation.
Declaration: A written statement signed under penalty of perjury. It counts as evidence without the witness appearing in person.
Exhibit: A document, screenshot or record attached to a filing as proof of something asserted in it.
Transcript: The word-for-word record of a hearing or a deposition. Cited by page and line, so 55:7 means page 55, line 7.
Errata: A formal correction a witness files to their own sworn testimony after reading it back.
Under seal: Filed with the court but kept off the public record. Both sides and the judge can read it; nobody else can.

How a case moves

Motion: A formal request that the court do something. The other side files an opposition; the moving side may then file a reply.
Discovery: The stage where each side must hand over relevant evidence to the other. It has a deadline, and missing it matters.
Deposition: Sworn question-and-answer, out of court, recorded by a court reporter. Lawyers for both sides attend; there is no judge.
Subpoena: A court order compelling someone who is not a party to hand over documents or give testimony.
Evidentiary hearing: A hearing where witnesses actually testify and are cross-examined, rather than lawyers simply arguing.
Protective order: An order limiting what either side may do with the material it receives in discovery.
Magistrate judge: A judge who handles pre-trial matters. On some questions they recommend, and the district judge decides.
Paperless order: A short ruling typed straight onto the docket. It has no document behind it, which is why some entries here do not link.

The motions that can end things

Motion to dismiss: Argues the case cannot proceed even if everything alleged is true — usually because the court lacks power to hear it.
Summary judgment: Argues the facts are not genuinely in dispute, so the judge can decide without a trial. If facts are disputed, it fails.
Motion in limine: Filed before trial to decide what a jury will and will not be allowed to hear.
Spoliation: Destroying or losing evidence you were obliged to keep. The duty starts once you know a lawsuit is coming.
Sanctions: A penalty for misconduct in the litigation itself. They can run from a fine to losing the case outright.
Adverse inference: A sanction where the jury is told it may assume the destroyed evidence would have hurt the side that destroyed it.
Rule 11: The rule requiring that filings have a factual basis. A Rule 11 motion says the other side asserted something it could not support.

Tests the court applies

Jurisdiction: Whether this court has the power to hear this case at all. A federal court needs a federal claim, which is why one date decides so much here.
Burden: Which side has to prove a thing. If they do not, they lose that point, even if the other side proves nothing either.
Retroactive: Whether a law reaches conduct from before it existed. Usually it does not, unless Congress clearly said so.
Hearsay: Repeating what someone said outside court to prove it was true. Generally not allowed, with many exceptions.
Authentication: Showing a document or screenshot is genuinely what its proponent says it is. The bar is low, but it is not nothing.
Probative: Actually tending to prove something. Evidence can be admissible and still carry very little weight.

The whole case, in order

They meet online

The video is recorded

He sends it to “Rose”

The alleged second transmission

The leak

They work on takedowns together

Preservation letter served

The redaction

Complaint filed

Leave to proceed as “Jane Doe”

Motion for a restraining order and injunction

Restraining order denied

Opposition, with the date-format exhibits

Abbymc’s first declaration

Motion for a protective order over discovery

Evidentiary hearing

Protective order entered

Leave to amend granted

Amended complaint

“Artificially creating a file”

Motion to dismiss

Opposition and the footnote

Injunction denied. Forum motion denied.

Deposition in Illinois

Sealing the hearing transcript denied

She does not appear for her deposition

His deposition stayed

Subpoena served on Abbymc

Rule 11 motion

Rule 11 cross-motion

Discovery closes

Motion for summary judgment

Rule 56(d) motion

Speech order denied. Contempt denied.

Motions in limine, both sides

Schedule and Rule 56(d) motions denied

The parties are deposed

A second Abbymc declaration

Opposition to summary judgment

Spoliation motion

Opposition

Supplemental declarations

Hearing on the spoliation motion

Seven motions still awaiting decision

How it actually resolves

What both sides agree on

The recording itself was consensual.

He sent it to someone else.

He had no express permission to do it.

Neither of them put it on the internet.

She never agreed to any of that.

Seven questions, two answers each

1Did he share it without her consent?

The argument

Rests on

Authority

Where it is weak

The argument

Rests on

Authority

Where it is weak

2When did that transmission happen?

The argument

Rests on

Authority

Where it is weak

The argument

Rests on

Authority

Where it is weak

3Was there a second transmission, after the statute?

The argument

Rests on

Authority

Where it is weak

The argument

Rests on

Authority

Where it is weak