By Nate Raymond 

Last year, after a short seller blogging under the pseudonym Alfred Little targeted three Chinese companies he accused of accounting fraud, the companies -- Silvercorp Metals, Sino Clean Energy and Deer Consumer Financial -- decided to strike back. All three sued Little and the websites that published his blogs for defamation. But the lawyer defending Little, who is actually a man named Jon Carne s , said that rulings this week signal a possible end to the Chinese companies' accountability campaign against his client.

In dual decisions Friday and Tuesday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead of Manhattan pared down Deer's lawsuit against Carnes's company, EOS Holdings, and Loren Weinberg, who (under the pseudonym Simon Moore) is the managing editor of AlfredLittle.com. Edmead has not ruled on Carnes's own motion to dismiss Deer's claims, but her new rulings, as well as a previous decision by her in another Chinese company's defamation suit against Carnes, have led defense counsel Martin Garbus of Eaton & Van Winkle to predict that the rest of Deer's claims will soon be dismissed.

Garbus's confidence is based on a ruling in August in a similar case filed by the Chinese company Silvercorp. The company had sued AlfredLittle.com and Chinastockwatch.com in New York State Supreme Court after the websites published negative reports on the company's production and revenue figures. But Edmead, who is presiding over both the Silvercorp and Deer cases, concluded that the short sellers' reports constituted opinion rather than statements of fact and couldn't be the subject of a suit.

That decision has broad implications for the suits against anonymous short-selling bloggers like Carnes, as Edmead acknowledged. "The court recognizes that this result could be viewed as a green light to those who could use this kind of vehicle to manipulate the market," she wrote in the August opinion. "However, the court is constrained to conclude that the challenged statements failed to support a claim for defamation." (Silvercorp counsel Stephen Crimmins of K&L Gates declined to comment.)

Soon after that ruling, Sino Clean Energy's counsel, Eugene Licker of Loeb & Loeb, moved to drop Sino's suit against Carnes and various co-defendants. That left only Deer's case. There's been considerable briefing and discovery over how to bring claims in New York state court against Carnes, which led to Deer adding co-defendants, including EOS Holdings and Weinberg, to its case. But in the new rulings, Edmead ventured beyond jurisdictional questions to give finality to some of Deer's non-defamation claims.

She rejected Deer's creative argument that it should be able to sue EOS and Weinberg for allegedly deceiving "consumers," in this case, Deer shareholders. And she said Deer does not have a viable claim for tortious interference with its business relationships since the company provided "insufficient" allegations about how its relationships were affected. "There is no indication that plaintiff's alleged loss resulted from anything other than the harm to plaintiff's reputation due to defendants' defamatory statements," Edmead wrote.

The rulings suggest she will dismiss similar claims against Carnes. That brings the case back to the defamation claims and the Silvercorp ruling from August. Garbus said he was optimistic Edmead would toss Deer's claims, just as she dismissed Silvercorp's. "This is an extraordinarily wide protection for short sellers who identify themselves," Garbus said.

Deer counsel John Bostany of The Bostany Law Firm pointed to several default judgments he has racked up against defendants in the case, including International Financial Research & Analysis Group, which he said was the Chinese arm of EOS. Bostany also said that despite the Silvercorp ruling, Deer's case should not be dismissed before trial. "The allegations contained in Deer's amended complaint are far more particularized with respect to defamation that occurred and why it complies with necessary criteria," he said.

(An earlier version of this story misspelled Jon Carnes's first name. The story has also been updated to clarify Edmead's ruling.)

Follow us on Twitter @AlisonFrankel, @nateraymond, @ReutersLegal  | Like us on Facebook