A plaintiff in a defamation suit over anonymous postings on a Google-hosted blog may not obtain the writers’ names, a New Jersey appeals court ruled on Wednesday, upholding a trial judge who had quashed a subpoena.

Because the statements concerned a public figure and a matter of public concern, the statements were nonactionable “rhetorical hyberbole,” the Appellate Division said in Somerset Development v. Cleaner Lakewood, A-2819-10.