Lemon Juice Squeezes Twitter for Information

By Nick Divito
Courthouse News Service
April 7, 2014

http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/04/04/66768.htm

BROOKLYN (CN) - A man named Lemon Juice wants to force Twitter and Blackberry to reveal a user's identity after he was falsely accused of posting a picture of a molestation victim testifying against her convicted attacker, who was a high-ranking official in a conservative Orthodox Jewish community.
     Juice was charged with contempt in November 2012 after a photo of the teen witness was allegedly taken after the judge had ordered audience members to not take pictures during the criminal case against Nechemya Weberman, a religious leader in the orthodox Jewish community who was later convicted on 59 counts of sex-related crimes.
     According to his complaint in Kings County Supreme Court, Juice, Yoana Weissman and Joseph Fried were arrested and jointly hit with misdemeanor charges alleging that an informant saw Weissman with a camera and Fried was spotted nudging him when the informant approached.
     "To stress, Mr. Juice was charged for allegedly posting a photograph on his Twitter account," the lawsuit states.
     The image was then posted on a Twitter count "in the name of Lemon Juice."
     Prosecutors alleged that "a continuing scheme throughout the course of the prosecution was that members of the community who supported Weberman, ostracized the victim and her family because she cooperated with the prosecution."
     Charges against Juice were dropped - after he appeared in court at least 14 times.
     "Nevertheless, a Twitter account in the name of Lemon Juice - and with Mr. Juice's actual photograph - was created by an imposter and this Lemon Juice account posted the photograph of the victim that resulted in Mr. Juice's arrest and subsequent prosecution," according to Juice's lawsuit.
     "Mr. Juice had no knowledge of the identity of the owner or operator" of the account, he says. Not until prosecutors served Juice's attorney, Leopold Gross, with discovery documents containing an email address linked to the account, and the IP address of a computer that logged into it. Prosecutors then learned that the owner of the site was a man they said was Moses Klein.
     Juice wants to know for certain if that's who he thinks it is, but the complete identity of potential witnesses were redacted by the court's rules, so he wants Twitter to identify him for certain so he can file a lawsuit.
     "The only way to obtain the true address and phone number of 'Moses Klein,' and to obtain the identity of the Twitter account's operator, is by and through this special proceeding" to compel Twitter to disclose the identity of the account, Juice claims.
     "One wonders, why would Moses Klein open a Twitter account in Mr. Juice's name and post the photographs of on Twitter?" the complaint asks. "This is because, upon information and belief, Moses Klein is an aide, driver and right-hand man to Rabbi Zalmen Leib Teitelman, who is one of the Satmar grand rabbis," and who is the head of the school where the girl attended and where Weberman worked, according to the lawsuit.
     Juice says he was a supporter of the victim, had attended her wedding and was at the trial to support her.
     "Now, Moses Klein wanted to cause humiliation and torment a supporter of the victim, as Moses Klein was a supporter of Weberman," the complaint states.
     Juice says his false arrest and prosecution caused him emotional distress, ridicule and embarrassment from the media attention.