A Chicago resident’s use of Twitter, the online social networking service, has prompted the resident’s former realty management company to file a lawsuit against the resident.
Horizon Group Management LLC (“Horizon”) filed a libel lawsuit Monday, July 27, 2009 against former tenant Amanda Bonnen alleging a Twitter post she “maliciously and wrongfully” published contained false and defamatory information regarding Horizon and her former apartment.
Ms. Bonnen allegedly posted the following message on her Twitter account: “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay.” Horizon alleges that Ms. Bonnen’s account is public and accessible throughout the world via the Internet and that Ms. Bonnen’s Twitter post greatly injures Horizon’s reputation as a landlord in Chicago. Horizon has requested $50,000 in damages.
On July 28 Horizon published a press release indicating the libel suit is related to a class action Ms. Bonnen filed related to Chicago Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance violations. Horizon discovered Ms. Bonnen’s Twitter post during the course of its due diligence investigation for the class action lawsuit.
An alternate approach for a business in Horizon’s position that is interested in mitigating negative publicity in online media would be to aggressively promote a positive message regarding their brand and their products or services. Businesses can launch blogs or ad campaigns to counteract negative comments made on the Internet with the goal of ensuring the positive messages appear higher in Internet search results than negative messages. Depending on the content of negative messages, additional remedies may be available including DMCA takedown notices, copyright infringement actions, or trademark infringement actions.
If your business is the victim of negative electronic advertising from third parties, you should retain counsel experienced in protecting business’ rights and brands.
To view the complaint, click here.
To view the subsequent press release, click here.
Posted by Marketing Department at 08/10/2009 12:33:34 PM