IT group claims former official used pseudonym to discredit it in blogs

Computerworld - This version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld's print edition.

The U.S. chapter of the IT Service Management Forum has filed a defamation lawsuit against its former executive director, alleging that he tried to discredit the group via blog comments posted under a fictitious female name.

The lawsuit follows an allegation made last year by someone using the name "Julie Linden, Ph.D." that an online board election held by the ITSMF USA in late 2006 had been compromised. The board hired Kroll Inc. to investigate the claim, and the consulting firm turned up evidence that some votes were recorded as being cast by people who said they didn't actually vote.

But the number of apparently illegitimate votes was too small to affect the outcome of the election, according to ITSMF officials.

Now the group, which promotes the use of standards such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is claiming that "Julie Linden" and James Prunty, its former executive director, are one and the same. The lawsuit, filed last month in a California state court, seeks hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages from Prunty, who left the 8,000-member organization last year.

In the lawsuit, the ITSMF USA alleges that Prunty, making blog posts under the name Linden, disparaged the organization and suggested that people distance themselves from it. The legal filings don't suggest any motives for the attempts to discredit the group.

Prunty has yet to file a response to the lawsuit. He declined to comment on the allegations last week.

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