Legal Question in Civil Litigation in New Jersey

Re: General Civil Litigation

You can absolutely sue. The computer that was used can also be located from the email address if you act quickly.

If you are going to sue or think that you may want to sue, the most important thing for you to do at this point is to preserve the evidence so that it can be admitted at trial. To locate the sender, you will need not only the text of the email, you will need the full message including the header. If you don't know how to get that yourself, have somebody who does (and who would make a good witness) pull that information from your computer and copy it to a secure place. Keep that record safe and secure. While this is going on, find a lawyer to handle your suit. Ideally seek out somebody who has done Internet defamation cases before.

Time is critical. To find the sender, you will need to subpoena the records of at least one ISP. They are only required to keep those records for 90 days and they religiously destroy them after that. So, you need to have a suit in court against a "John Doe" defendant and a subpoena or at least a notice to preserve records to the ISP person who can act on it within 90 days of the date of the email or you will lose the information forever.

If I can be of further help to you, call or email.

See also: http://info.corbettlaw.net/lawguru.htm