Ever Regret a Tweet or Social-Media Post?
Users of Twitter and other social-networking services likely breathed a sigh of relief last week, when a defamation lawsuit against 25-year-old Amanda Bonnen by Chicago-area real estate management company Horizon Group Management over a tweet was dismissed by Circuit Judge Diane J. Larsen in Cook County, Ill.
The case centered on a tweet by Bonnen referencing mold in her apartment:
Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.
According to The National Law Journal, Bonnen was represented by attorneys at The John Marshall Law School’s Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law, and their defense centered on tweets being considered opinion in the social context, the message lacking factual context and verifiable facts and a 2009 study that found that more than 40% of tweets were “pointless babble.”
Horizon countered by calling Twitter a “legitimate medium used by reporters to report up-to-the-minute updates on legal actions,...
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