What can I do after Roadrunner broke their own privacy policy?

Question

They gave name, address and account info to a detective who had no court order.. He just called them and they faxed him my account info and it's in the police report.

The detective and 2 cops came to my house today with it and a posting off of my blog where I had listed someones home address which he thought was a crime. It was a major embarassment, but after like an hour when I explained to him the address is a matter of public record that anyone can get off of the countys own internet system and that it was a free speech issue he was satisfied and left.

I looked up Roadrunners privacy policy and it says they will only give out users account information if there is a court order to do so- and in this case there was none... What can I do about it?

Answer 1

You can sue for breach of contract, but the question then becomes damages, of which you suffered none, at least not in what you wrote down, so with out a compensatory claim you can not even hope to get punitive damages, so; what you will get is a verdict in your favor worth no monetary value and a bill for your lawyer's costs. Then again if you take this public, you may get some money out of the story without the expense of a lawyer. This is what might be considered a nuissence complaint. Sometimes they pay you just to go away. If they do, take it and be glad.