I don’t know how many of you have received emails from Reunion dot com over the years. But if you did it may have been the result of a practice known as “address book scraping”.

Address book scraping is the practice of collecting email addresses from either another company’s web site or as in this case by new users. This lawsuit however is not about the collecting of those email addresses but about the alleged misuse of those email addresses.

In July 2008, three California residents and one Texas resident sued Reunion dot com for allegedly sending e-mails that appeared to have come from their friends.

The lawsuit was dismissed back in October 2008 by Judge Maxine Chesney but the judge allowed the plaintiffs to re-file an amended complaint.  The plaintiffs did just that.

But as of January 6th the lawsuit has again been dismissed. The internet users had claimed to have lost money as a result of the e-mails they received from Reunion dot com. But the presiding judge didn’t think they had proven their loss of revenue.

Federal District Court judge, Maxine Chesney, wrote that the plaintiffs cannot proceed with their claim in “…the absence of an allegation that each such plaintiff incurred some type of injury or damage”.

You’ve probably received email from social networking web sites where the emails look like they have been sent by either friends or acquaintances of yours. You’re asked to provide your email addresses and passwords when you sign up. Once they get your addresses they contact your friends with invitations for them to join too. Once they sign up then the spam cycle repeats itself.

The plaintiffs allege that this is a deceptive practice because the emails appear to be sent by your friends as opposed to being sent from the Reunion dot com site. The lawsuit was filed in California and California’s anti-spam law prohibits emails from being sent with misleading headers and subject lines. Violators can be fined up to $1000 per violation.  Federal law – specifically the CAN-SPAM law – preempts most state spam laws but state laws concerning fraudulent emails are exceptions.

So unless the plaintiffs can amend their complaint by January 16th to show reliance and damages then the lawsuit will end. In the judge’s ruling it suggested that it might even be considered unconstitutional for the judge to hear the case since the emails would not be considered fraudulent emails and thus the lawsuit not an exception to Federal law.

Of course, the definition of injury should not be just limited to monetary losses but to also include such losses as clogged in-boxes or Internet service provider failures. We’ll keep watch on this.