U.S. Foodservice Threatens
Action Against Web Site

U.S. Foodservice, which is engulfed in an accounting scandal, has threatened legal action against an elementary school teacher who runs a Web site for posting negative comments about the company and for asking its employees to forward internal documents for distribution to the news media.

As a result, Steve Hoschler, who has operated foodservicerumors.com (www.foodservicerumors.com¹) for five years, on Thursday “temporarily” removed the “news and comment” section from the site.

“We do not think that we have provided anything other than a forum for freedom of expression,” Mr. Hoschler stated on his Web site. The lively site is hugely popular among food-service-industry employees, who use it to exchange news, gossip and internal company memos. Lately, there has been a daily flood of postings about U.S. Foodservice, its managers, and speculation about its accounting problems.

U.S. Foodservice, a unit of the big Dutch supermarket operator Ahold NV, is under investigation by a federal grand jury in the U.S. and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ahold disclosed last month that financial irregularities at the Columbia, Md. unit, the second-largest U.S. distributor of food to hotels and restaurants, led the parent company to overstate operating profit by at least $500 million over the past two years.

Robert S. Brennen, an attorney for U.S. Foodservice, faxed a letter Wednesday to Mr. Hoschler requesting that he remove several unidentified postings on the site that contain “statements that are false and defamatory.”

He also accused the site of encouraging employees to violate company policy by asking them to forward “confidential and proprietary” information. “It is reprehensible for you to importune USF's employees to, perhaps unwittingly, engage in wrongful conduct against the company by soliciting this information,” the letter stated.

Mr. Hoschler, a food-industry veteran who now teaches fifth grade at a California elementary school, said he intends to seek legal advice, but vowed to resume publishing the site's news section. He termed the letter's demands “a violation of our freedom of speech.” He also said he makes U.S. Foodservice employees aware of company policy by posting internal memos. The site contained one on Thursday that instructed all employees contacted by the news media to say “no comment” and refer reporters to a public-relations spokesman.

Jonathan Zittrain, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School and an expert in cyberlaw, said that despite the lawyer's claims in the letter, Mr. Hoschler is protected by federal law from any legal liability for postings on his Web site, even if they are defamatory. Mr. Zittrain further called the lawyer's request for Mr. Hoschler to stop soliciting internal company documents “a real stretch” with no legal basis. “Frankly, it's a loser,” he said.

In an e-mailed statement, Mr. Brennen said, "As its terms make absolutely clear, the letter to Mr. Hoschler requested that he prevent the mass distribution of false and defamatory material on his web site and that he stop using the web site as a vehicle for inducing U.S. Foodservice Employees to breach their duties to the Company. The letter did not request any restriction of Mr. Hoschler's legitimate First Amendment rights or those of any individual contributor to his web site."

Spokesmen for U.S. Foodservice and Ahold declined to comment.

Write to Steve Stecklow at steve.stecklow@wsj.com