The $50,000 Tweet—Is lawsuit justified?

As we have predicted, another lawsuit is born of social media. A Chicago woman sent a negative Tweet via Twitter about her landlord. Bear in mind you get 140 characters for a Tweet. That's a pretty pricey short message.

The Wall Street Journal ran an official statement from a spokesman for the realtor. Among other things, the spokesman said, “The facts that gave rise to this Twitter lawsuit were discovered in the course of due diligence relating to a class-action lawsuit first filed by Ms. Bonnen relating to alleged Chicago Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance (RLTO) violations. It is our position that this lawsuit is completely baseless and was waged merely as a pretext to address an underlying disagreement that Ms. Bonnen had with regards to her apartment.”

We looked up the property address at a Chicago realtor website, Horizon Realty Group. If this is the right group, the property looks pretty upscale. We matched the tenant’s address to property advertised on this site.

TV CBS2 Chicago said the Tweeter’s account settings let the public read her Tweets, as opposed to just her friends.

The station said the company wants damages for more than $50,000.

I’d have to say in my opinion, a Tweet is a personal opinion or preference, by its very nature. But how this case is determined may impact comments posted on myriad blogs and websites.

The company has a well-designed highly public website and I’d be willing to bet they do print advertising as well. They’re in the public sphere. If management is smart, an effort will be made to work out the problem with the tenant’s class action lawsuit and avoid the negative press they’ll earn by suing for questionable defamation. That’s a hard charge to prove under any circumstances. And management should really hope the woman’s opinion isn’t backed up by testing. If it is, she will take the landlord to the bank.

As far as damage to the company, public statements by company personnel helped give the story legs.

It's obvious from the WSJ story we don't have all the facts, so perhaps undisclosed information might work for the company. I'm just opining on what we know.

Meanwhile watch what you tweet when you Twitter. You may incur some unexpected expenses.

The $50,000 Tweet--Is lawsuit justified?
by Kay B. Day
The US Report, Jul. 29, 2009