On Jan. 20, a judge dismissed a libel lawsuit filed last year by a Chicago property firm against a tenant who complained about her "moldy apartment" on Twitter.
"Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay," Amanda Bonnen wrote in her Twitter feed May 12 at 9:08 a.m.
Horizon Group Management, which leased the Uptown apartment to Bonnen, wasn't pleased and filed a libel suit against her saying she "maliciously and wrongfully published the false and defamatory Tweet."
In Cook County Circuit Court, Judge Diane J. Larsen ordered the case dismissed with prejudice, meaning that Horizon cannot refile the same case. According to Bonnen's attorney, the judge felt the tweet was too vague to meet the legal standards of libel.
Bonnen moved out of the apartment at the end of June "of her own volition … at which time there was no mold in her apartment," the statement said.
"It mentioned Horizon Realty but it never specified whether it referred to Chicago or Illinois and knowing that Twitter is international, that could pertain to any company that uses the name Horizon," said Leslie Ann Reis, who is director of the Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law at John Marshall Law School, and one of Bonnen's lawyers.
While the publication channel was novel, the legal grounding was not. "This was not a case about Twitter. This was a case about defamation. … The fact of the matter is that you have to meet all those elements" to prove libel, Reis said.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.