After a towing company hauled Justin Kurtz’s car from his apartment complex parking lot, despite his permit to park there, Mr. Kurtz, 21, a college student in Kalamazoo, Mich., went to the Internet for revenge. Outraged at having to pay $118 to get his car back, Mr. Kurtz created a Facebook page called mbt footwear** “Kalamazoo Residents against T&J Towing.” Within two days, 800 people had joined the group, some posting comments about their own maddening experiences with the company. T&J filed a defamation suit against Mr. Kurtz, claiming the site was hurting business and seeking $750,000 in damages. Web sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp have given individuals a global platform on which to air their grievances with companies. But legal experts say the soaring popularity of such sites has also given rise to more cases like Mr. Kurtz’s, in which a business sues an individual for posting critical comments online. The towing company’s lawyer said that it was justified in removing Mr. Kurtz’s car because the permit was not visible, and that the Facebook page was costing it business and had unfairly damaged its reputation. Some First Amendment lawyers see the case differently. They consider the lawsuit an example of the latest incarnation of a decades-old legal maneuver known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or Slapp. The label has traditionally referred to meritless defamation suits filed by businesses or government officials against citizens who speak out against them. The plaintiffs are not necessarily expecting to succeed — most do not — but rather to intimidate critics who are inclined to back down when faced with the prospect of a long, expensive court battle. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” said Mr. Kurtz, who recently finished his junior year at Western Michigan University. “The only thing I posted is what happened to me.” Many states have anti-Slapp laws, and Congress is considering legislation to make ...

During the last two weeks at a large assembly plant here, the first glimpse into Chrysler’s future has been zipping through production. The redesigned Jeep Grand Cherokee, a crossover vehicle with a $31,000 price tag, is being lauded by the troubled automaker as the “symbol of the new Chrysler.” It will be officially unveiled on Friday in a ceremony typically reserved for much bigger occasions, like the opening of a plant. A lot is at stake — perhaps too much, some analysts suggest, for one model to carry. For nearly two years, Chrysler has struggled to get by with a lineup that has essentially ...

The pain of the European debt crisis is spreading as the plummeting euro makes Chinese companies less competitive in Europe, their largest market, and complicates any move to break the Chinese currency’s peg to the dollar. Chinese policy makers reached a rough consensus early last month about breaking the dollar peg and letting the currency, the renminbi, rise in value somewhat, according to people close to Chinese currency policy makers. Uncoupling the currencies would make American goods more competitive ...

Three Pakistani men taken into custody during a series of raids across the Northeast as part of the investigation into the failed Times Square car bombing may have provided money to the man who has admitted carrying out the unsuccessful attack, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. walking shoes** said Thursday. Mr. Holder said it was unclear if the men knew that the funds they provided were going to be used for an act of terrorism — one that Obama administration officials have said was aided and directed by the Pakistani Taliban — and as of late Thursday, they were being detained on civil immigration violations and had not been charged with a crime. Several people briefed on the case said that Faisal Shahzad, the naturalized Pakistani immigrant who the authorities say drove the crude car bomb into Times Square, traveled to the suburban Long Island town of Ronkonkoma in the days before the failed May 1 attack to collect several thousand dollars in cash, some of which he used to finance his plan. But the people could not say whether the person who provided that money was one of the men taken into custody, and it was unclear whether the person was aware of what Mr. Shahzad intended to do with the money. Two of the men taken into custody in the early morning raids were picked up after one of two searches in the Boston area, part of a sweep in which Federal Bureau of Invesigation agents and local police officers executed six search warrants there, in New Jersey and on Long Island. A third man was taken into custody in Maine. Mr. Holder called the development “a significant step” when he was asked for details about the three men. He said the men were connected to Mr. Shahzad, 30, but investigators were “trying to determine exactly what the nature of the connection was.” “There’s at least a basis to believe that one of the things that they did was to ...

It’s about 2,500 miles from this green, rural town in the rolling hills near Vermont to the Mexican border at Nogales, but that hasn’t stopped Jackson from making a bid to be New York’s small version of Arizona in the immigration wars. Or that’s how it is beginning to feel two months after Jackson — which has 1,700 people, no village, no grocery store or place to buy gasoline, no church, no school, two restaurants and maybe a few Spanish-speaking farm workers — decided it needed a law requiring that all town ...