"You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay."
This is the short statement, or "tweet," that Amanda Bonnen, a former tenant of a Chicago apartment building, casually posted on May 12 to her Twitter account. Twitter accounts are free and users don't pay to post their thoughts, but this particular tweet now carries the threat of a hefty, unprecedented price tag.
The building's management company, Horizon Realty Group, has filed a civil complaint against Ms. Bonnen for over $50,000 in damages, claiming she slandered Horizon by posting what it claims amounts to a statement that is false and unfairly hurts the company's reputation. (You can read the complaint here, courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times.)
Although Ms. Bonnen's Twitter account (now deactivated) was public, she had only 20 followers, and it's clear that the tweet at issue was posted as a reply to another user.
Do you think Horizon has a valid case against its former tenant? If so, given the probably very small number of people who read the tweet before the lawsuit's publicity, is $50,000 an accurate reflection of the reputational harm that the company allegedly suffered?
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Hey ron,
i saw this all over twitter the other day, it was even a top ten trending topic on that site.
if i wrote, taco bell’s taco’s made me sick, when they in fact didn’t make me sick, should taco bell sue me?
if i wrote taco bell poisoned me with their tacos, when they in fact didn’t, should they sue me?
how do you define public? having cut and dry numbers seemingly makes it much more difficult.
It would have been only 20 people who saw it. It wasn’t national news until the realty group made it national news. They hurt their own reputation. Although the Twitter account was public, no one else wanted to look at it until it became a media sensation. BTW – How did the realty group even find out about it? Are they monitoring tenants? Hmmmm……
I think that law suite was ridiculous, however, I have to take issues with Gramma when she says
“Although the Twitter account was public, no one else wanted to look at it until it became a media sensation. BTW – How did the realty group even find out about it? Are they monitoring tenants?”
Twitter is not really about followers seeing your tweets as most people are using search to find tweets and follow so many people that they are not likely going to see the vast majority of the tweets from the people they follow. Most Twitter users search for info relating to things that interest them, which is the answer to your last question “are they monitoring their residents?” No necessarily, They are monitoring their name on twitter.
A search for “apartment” or “Horizon realty” would have brought up her tweet in the results and shows that while their response to the tweet was ridiculous, it is a good idea to monitor your brand on social networks and use tweets like Ms. Bonnen’s as an opportunity to resolve her issues.
If she was lying about her situation and continues to post these false claims (in the Companies mind of course) the company might want to contact twitter to see if they will look into her tweets and remove her account or the tweets and discuss with them the implications of her using twitter as a vehicle to libel their Company.
If a resident posts a tweet like that once very few people are going to read it but if she posts it over and over again it could cause damage and amount to Libel.