by Tanta on 6/27/2007 09:00:00 AM

Yeah, another mortgage post.

Via the intrepid Housingdoom.com, we see that the forthright, reputable, upstanding and not funny firm eAppraiseIT, LLC is suing a website, mortgagefraudwatchlist.org.

Mortgagefraudblog.com posts a copy of the complaint:

Defendant's false and malicious statements, when considered alone and without innuendo, have (a) negatively impacted Plaintiff's trustworthiness and character, (b) caused Plaintiff to be subjected to distrust, ridicule, contempt and disgrace, and (c) injured Plaintiff's reputation and goodwill in the appraisal management industry.

Of course, it should be noted that Calculated Risk is drawing your attention to this story, alone and without innuendo, merely for the purpose of informing the investment community, which has big boatloads of money at stake in mortgage and housing-related investments, and which often relies on muck-raking blogs for crucial information ignored or garbled by the mainstream media and paid-for analysts, which information has saved them a lot of money over the last few years, that the possibility exists that bloggers may have to form legal defense funds if certain complaints which have nothing to do with the complaint referenced above are filed and are not dismissed on the grounds of distrust, ridicule, contempt and disgrace.

I'm willing to bet that there's not a lot of deep pockets to be picked in blogland. Most blogs are volunteer efforts and the legal costs of nuisance suits would shut them down, pronto. If the eAppraiseIT suit has merit--if the statements made about eAppraiseIT were truly false and defamatory, and I wouldn't know that--then by all means it should proceed, and the blogger in question should make it right. If, on the other hand, those parties who have enabled a disastrous frenzy of fraud and misrepresentation in the mortgage and housing market over the last few years are going to respond to their deserved ridicule with legal harassment, I for one am going to call on the moneyed bagholder community to step up to the plate behind the shoestring blogs. You know who you are and why you read us and what you have to lose.