Woman Sued for $50,000 over a Tweet

[CHR]

Be careful what you say on Twitter, especially if you accuse a company or person of bad business practices. From Mashable:

Woman Sued for $50,000 Over a Tweet

How much damage can a Tweet do? According to property management company Horizon Realty, $50,000 worth.

That’s the size of the lawsuit waged against one of its former tenants on Monday, in response to a Tweet about one of their Chicago apartments.


Amanda Bonnen was staying an apartment at 4242 N. Sheridan, one of over 1,500 apartments owned by the company. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Bonnen’s Tweet on May 12 read, in part:

“Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”
​

The Tweet, posted under the now defunct user name @abonnen, was the impetus for the libel lawsuit filed at Cook County Circuit Court, seeking $50,000 in damages. And although the Tweet and username are now deleted, accessing the account via Google's cache shows it has around 20 followers. While the numbers could have dropped since deletion, it doesn’t appear the message would have travelled far. @abonnen wasn’t a particularly heavy Twitter user, either – she posted somewhere between 1 and 5 tweets per day and often didn’t post for 2 or 3 days.


Horizon’s Jeffrey Michael is quoted in the Sun-Times as saying “The statements are obviously false, and it’s our intention to prove that”, adding that Horizon has a good reputation to protect. Bonnen wasn’t contacted before the suit was filed or asked to remove the Tweet, he said: “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization”.

She better hope she can produce the mold - although these guys may end up damaging themselves more than the original tweet by overreacting and blowing the whole thing out of proportion.

Still, it's a good idea to heed the comment left by "unmarketing: -

Even though Twitter is a reaction-based, don't forget that it's still public communication. Don't tweet anything you wouldn't want to see on a billboard with your name, face and phone number on it... and your mom driving by.

Something to think about.....

 

[Dazeal]

Yeah I love following unmarketing

She better hope she can produce the mold - although these guys may end up damaging themselves more than the original tweet by overreacting and blowing the whole thing out of proportion.

I think about this when I point out the truths of the big boys. If they ever send me a letter, I'll scan it and tweet it and their PR people can clean it up.

I won't be driven by fear, but I am also ethical and smart enough not to tweet lies.

Think about all the stuff said on here about the big boys, could you imagine the lawsuits? lol

 

[BOSS]

Think about all the stuff said on here about the big boys, could you imagine the lawsuits?

Naw... it's true... there have been a couple over the years that never made it to court, I was the recipient of one from a wire service (none of the BIG3). But in that case I was wrong and made a public apology to the fact.

 

[BamaE4U]

Don't tweet anything you wouldn't want to see on a billboard with your name, face and phone number on it... and your mom driving by.

I would say that applies to anything you type on your keyboard.

Whether you actually meant to hit the send button or not!

 

[Chezbloom]

Well, I quess its a good thing I deleted my posts about how Qwest F-up our phone lines. But really, if you Google a companies name and follow it by the word "sucks" there are plenty of blogs, and even websites devoted to people's stories of horrible customer service etc. Try Googling "Qwest sucks" tons of results, tons. I'm done twittering about the phone service and we still don't have our phones working properly and who knows when it will be resolved but that company sucks and its no secret.

 

[bloomz]

I think we're going to be seeing more and more of this in all arenas of negative publicity as reputation management becomes more mainstream.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a Law Firm specializing in it soon, if there isn't one already.

 

[BOSS]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a Law Firm specializing in it soon, if there isn't one already.

There's lots already... Internet Defense Group

 

[bloomz]

Interesting, tho that doesn't look like a law firm.

This is interesting

There was a great story on BBC Breakfast News this morning about how social media can seriously damage a brand. In this case a single YouTube video complaint about a bad experience with United Airlines has contributed towards United Airlines share price dropping by 10% and costing shareholders a reported $180 million!

"Meanwhile, within four days of the song going online, the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines’ stock price to suffer a mid-flight stall, and it plunged by 10 per cent, costing shareholders $180 million. Which, incidentally, would have bought Carroll more than 51,000 replacement guitars.”

http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2009/07/united-airlines-lose-millions-youtube.html

Catchy tune also!

but freaking ouch - the power of negatives is sure to draw some legal sharks out of the water onto land.

 

[goldfish]

1-800-flowers.com sucks. Sue me.

 

[BOSS]

Amazing stuff... and you're right Jon. I like that tune...

United's Stuff

I wonder if Dave Carrol is made at 800Flowers or FTD

 

[TGDragonfly]

Talk about BIG CAHONNIES, check these guys out:

http://theyesmenfixtheworld.com/

 

[CHR]

1-800-flowers.com sucks. Sue me.

LOL About 10 minutes before my AIFD Symposium presentation, I was informed it was being videotaped with the videos being sold via AIFD.org.

No big deal, except one of the slides from the PowerPoint presentation was a screen shot of the negative groups on Facebook dissing 1-800 - including 1-800-Flowers Sucks and Don't Use 1-800-Flowers. The two groups combined had about the same number of members as the main 1-800 group at the time (3 weeks ago or so.) (They've since picked up a large amount of members.) Yes, I did point out 1-800-Flowers Sucks on stage.

The point of the slide was to remind attendees that it's better to resolve issues quickly than to drive customers to create negative pages/sites out of frustration - and that 1-800 has a far larger budget to deal with reputation management than any local florist of flower shop.

At any rate, Goldie's post reminded me that saying 1-800-flowers sucks is oft repeated so he's off the hook when it comes to a lawsuit. If he isn't, we'll both be getting served. :>

 

[Victoria]

So, does this mean, if someone says I suck on Twitter I can sue? Oh God I hope so... please help me get to Ireland.

V

 

[RJD]

No big deal, except one of the slides from the PowerPoint presentation was a screen shot of the negative groups on Facebook dissing 1-800 - including 1-800-Flowers Sucks and Don't Use 1-800-Flowers. The two groups combined had about the same number of members as the main 1-800 group at the time (3 weeks ago or so.) (They've since picked up a large amount of members.) Yes, I did point out 1-800-Flowers Sucks on stage.

When I presented a session on blogging to SAF in 2005, I had a slide of "FTD Sucks" posts and how they ranked for different terms. The FTD table sat up and took notice. It made my point to the entire room as to the power of the electronic word.

Before anyone gets a false sense of bravado, keep in mind the rules are very, very different for businesses than they are for private citizens. A disgruntled customer can say what they want (and the tweeter will probably win the lawsuit), but competing businesses have different rules.