Intimate, often painful allegations in lawsuits — intended for the scrutiny of judges and juries — are increasingly drawing in mass online audiences far from the courthouses where they are filed.
When a former saleswoman at Zillow sued the real estate website in December, describing X-rated messages from male colleagues, her court filing drew hundreds of thousands of readers, causing an instant public relations crisis for the company.
The papers in a sexual harassment suit filed last summer against Tinder, the dating app, circulated in a popular Buzzfeed post. And a lawyer for a fired University of Minnesota-Duluth women’s hockey coach who is planning a lawsuit knows what the initial complaint will need: a clear narrative and damning details.
More and more, the first court filings in gender-related suits, often allegations that inspire indignation, are winning wide readerships online before anyone steps foot in a courtroom.
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Leigh Goodmark, another Maryland law professor, said the online boom of gender-related court documents was a harbinger of a future in which virtually no legal document — an eviction notice, a divorce pleading with embarrassing details — would be safe from public consumption.
“Things people never bargained on getting out will get out,” she said.
A version of this article appears in print on February 23, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Lawsuits’ Lurid Details Draw an Online Crowd. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
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