The District of Columbia Court of Appeals reversed

Appellee Susan L. Burke is an attorney based in the District of Columbia who litigates in state and federal courts across the country. She founded her own law firm to pursue her interest in human rights litigation and a focus of her practice is advocacy for those allegedly harmed by the misconduct of U.S. military personnel and government contractors. For example, Ms. Burke represented a group of former detainees held at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in their suit against federal government contractors working at that site. In 2007, Ms. Burke filed a civil lawsuit seeking to vindicate the rights of Iraqi civilians and their families who were victims of the 2007 civilian shootings in Baghdad by individuals who worked for the company then known as Blackwater (now Academi). See Abtan v. Blackwater Lodge & Training Ctr., 611 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2009). That lawsuit was settled in 2010.

In October 2011, an individual known only as RetroLady64 created a webpage for Ms. Burke on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a “collaboratively edited, multilingual, free-access, free content Internet encyclopedia” and any visitor to the website has the ability to add, edit, or remove content.

The Wikipedia entry for Ms. Burke discussed, among other things, her civil suit against Blackwater…