140 Characters Away From a $50,000 Lawsuit

It’s been said before, but it bears repeating ad infinitum: if you wouldn’t say it in real life, don’t say it on the Internet.

The popular assumption among the general public seems to be that some special body of law applies on the internet that doesn’t apply in real life. This assumption, as some people have learned the hard way, is incorrect. While there has been much debate over the particulars of how certain areas of the law should apply online, there’s never been any serious debate as to whether it applies.

Enter Amanda Bonnen. She is being sued by Horizon Group Management on a theory of libel for a “tweet” in which she made an offhand complaint about mold in her apartment. According to the complaint, the statement about mold in the apartment is, of course, completely false, and caused irreparable damage to Horizon’s reputation.

This may or may not be true, and that’s not what makes this case interesting. What does make it interesting is how this statement was made, followed by the lawsuit, and the public reaction to it.

It is entirely possible that Ms. Bonnen’s statement was false, and that it did, in fact, cause some damage to Horizon’s reputation. In that case, the lawsuit has merit, and Horizon should, as a legal matter, prevail.

But if they were acting to vindicate their reputation, they could not have gone about it in a worse way. A search on Twitter’s website for “Horizon Group” reveals that almost everyone who has heard about this matter is not very sympathetic with their cause. Besides some childish insults flung at the company (my personal favorite describing Horizon employees engaged in unsavory acts with barnyard animals), and some creative spellings of the word “frivolous,” one can see that many people now assume that Horizon has moldy apartments, whether that assumption is true or not.

So, what have we learned from all of this? Well, everyone involved should have learned some valuable lessons. First off, Ms. Bonnen has learned that if you wouldn’t say something in person, you shouldn’t say it online (as it turns out, there are a lot of people on the Internet who might read what you’ve written). Horizon has learned that filing a lawsuit is not automatically the best way to deal with a problem.