Yestrday, April 1st, BridgeWinners has released the following statement:
Bridge Winners received notice earlier this week of a lawsuit being brought against the company by a coalition of disgruntled members and former members who had been suspended or banned from our site for violating our policies. The lawsuit alleges censorship and other First-Amendment violations for our “silencing of dissent” and libel and slander for our publishing of articles that included cheating accusations. A Florida court today granted the plaintiffs’ motion for an injunction against our site, requiring us to shut the site down pending the outcome of the trial. Our lawyers are confident that we have a strong case on both counts, and we are fighting as vigorously as our meager resources allow.
We have filed an appeal and hope to have the injunction lifted and the site back up and running soon, but if our appeal is denied Bridge Winners will be down until the lawsuit is settled, and if the outcome is not favorable for us possibly forever. We have loved running the site, and we thank all of our members for making this such a vibrant community. It has been a labor of love. Our goal has always been to serve and enhance the game of bridge and the community of bridge players. We regret that the actions of a small minority may prevent us from continuing this mission.
Sincerely,
The Bridge Winners TeamJason Feldman
Greg Humphreys
Eugene Hung
Robert Jungblut
Adam Parrish
Polly Siegel
Steve Weinstein
Gavin Wolpert
BridgeWinners was down for several hours. But what’s happened?
Today Adam Parrish explained “We had some server migration to do that required shutting the site down for a while, and we decided to combine it with an April Fool’s joke. So no lawsuit, no injunction, just a new server.”
And Eugene Hung confirmed: “Actually, it’s a joke. We took it down for server maintenance and decided to use the absence for a joke.”
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