Mob fully admits that he sometimes gave UT Hooligan a hard time in that AOL chatroom. But never in his wildest imagination did he expect to be sued in court for what he characterized as “razzing.”

“We gave him crap,” said Mob, a 29-year-old welder in Chicago, Ill. “I’m not going to deny it. I teased him and he teased me back. He gave it back better than he ever got it.”

UT Hooligan, 32, claims that Moband Lee, a 30-year-old Oregon resident, insulted him and harassed him in the AOL chatroom called “Romance — Older Men” to the point where it inflicted “severe emotional distress and physical injury that is of a nature no reasonable man could be expected to endure it.”

The complaint, expected in court on Jan. 31 for a pretrial conference, also names AOL as a defendant for allowing the alleged harassment to take place.

UT Hooligan alleges that the duo intruded into his “private affairs.” The complaint states that Mob actually drove from Illinois to the UK to photograph the plaintiff’s home, which he then posted on the Web. He also allegedly went to the courthouse in Chicago to dig up personal dirt on UT Hooligan, which he then also disseminated over the Internet.

Even if Mob did take a trip to the UK, posting a picture of someone’s house on the Internet does not violate privacy laws, according to Chris Hoofnagle, attorney with the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“Those norms require the aggressor to engage in behavior that is highly offensive to a reasonable person,” he said. “Taking a picture of somebody’s house and putting it up on the Web is not that.”

Hoofnagle said UT Hooligan’s emotional distress claim will also be tough to prove.

“We live in a rough society, as compared to Europe, where offending someone or directly cursing or attacking their dignity can give you a cause of action,” he said.

“He just came in slamming on me, saying all kinds of derogatory crap: that I was a fat, bald, broke old man who sits around in a rusted wheelchair,” said UT Hooligan, who has a chronic back injury. “I don’t even own a wheelchair.”

Megan Gray, a Washington D.C.-based intellectual property attorney who specializes in cyber issues, called it “a loser of a case.” She said the Communications Decency Act gives AOL immunity from chatroom misconduct.

She also suggested the case against Mob and Lee was doomed.

“The Internet is such a vibrant, young medium, these types of cases are not taken seriously,” she said.

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