07.29
Can you get sued for something you say on your Twitter? If you tweet something unfavorable about someone or a company, should they be able to sue you? Amanda Bonnen is finding out that the answer to that, is yes. Horizon Group Management is suing her for $50,000 in a defamation suit.
Just what exactly did she say you ask? Well, lets take a look…
Innocent enough, right? She’s complaining about her moldy apartment on Twitter. That’s what services like this are for, aren’t they? To talk about all these little things that annoy us? But you see, the problem with all that however, is that we are still bound by the laws covering libel. Had she just stated that he apartment was moldy, and her apartment was in fact moldy, Horizon wouldn’t be able to do anything. She also stated that Horizon thinks its OK to sleep in a moldy apartment, and unless she can show where they have told her that her apartment is moldy, but that she can sleep amongst the mold, again, it is libel.
What people seem to forget, is that when you post something to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Livejournal, Blogger, or any other of the social networking and blog sites out there, you are indeed publishing something. Just because you are posting something online, doesn’t mean that there aren’t consequences. I always love reading about someone who posts a picture to facebook, or says the wrong thing on their blog and find out that they are now unemployed because of it, and this is no different. There is no difference between writing a news paper article saying that my neighbor is a rapist, posting a tweet saying that my neighbor is a rapist, or putting a sign up in my yard saying my neighbor is a rapist. If my neighbor isn’t a rapist, I publishing libelous statements against him, and he can sue me.
Now, as much as I love seeing someone doing something stupid and getting smacked down, I don’t agree with Horizon’s methods here. I don’t think that the first step to take is a $50,000 lawsuit. I believe that first, I would have contacted her and asked her to remove the tweet. Failing that, I would possibly have disputed any claims that she made within the same public forum. The last thing I would do, is threaten legal action if she didn’t. By doing taking those other steps first, you get the remark taken down, or show that you can resolve issues with customers, and you don’t wind up with any bad media coverage. Sure some people would have already seen the remark, but they would have quickly forgotten about it, or even better, they would have seen how you care about customers and assist them. Now however, you have guaranteed that this one little tweet will forever be floating around the internet reflecting on them as having moldy apartments and inhumane management. Which of course, brings up the second thing that I love…
I love it when somebody sues someone else to try and keep something quiet, and it blows up in their face. Whether its a libelous remark, a sex tape, or any other embarrassing peice of information that they don’t want anybody to know about. They need to learn that starting with a simple cease and desist letter, or just talking to the person and asking them to remove the info is normally the best first step. If that doesn’t work, then you start thinking about the big lawsuit.
Horizon has a press release on their page, but the link appears to not be working at the moment, there is an article here with a couple of details on it.