Kathleen Seidel, the outspoken and enterprising autism blogger at Neurodiversity.com, was horrified when she received a subpoena in April asking for her financial and research records.
The Peterborough mother and former librarian had been asked to open her books by a frequent vaccine court litigant who had been the target of several critical blog posts.
So, with the help of lawyers from Public Citizen, Seidel fought the subpoena, saying she had nothing to offer in the case, which related to the alleged injuries of a child she had never met.
The subpoena, she and her lawyers argued, was overbroad and designed to intimidate her, not gather valid information for the suit, and she asked the judge to sanction the lawyer, Clifford Shoemaker.
Federal Magistrate James Muirhead in New Hampshire granted her request this week, saying that Shoemaker's argument - that he intended to unearth evidence that Seidel was the "leader of a conspiracy to obstruct justice" - was without merit.
"(Shoemaker's) efforts to vilify and demean Ms. Seidel are unwarranted and unseemly," Muirhead wrote.
Shoemaker has withdrawn the underlying lawsuit, and Seidel continues to blog. She was recently profiled in New York magazine.
"I'm incredibly grateful," she said yesterday.
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