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Woman Sued For Tweet
July 28th, 2009
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by Warren Whitlock · Filed Under: How to Twitter · Twitter · Twitter Stories
A $50,000 law suit was filed this week against a woman that tweeted about her allegedly moldy apartment:This just in from CBS 2 Chicago
Horizon Group Management sued Amanda Bonnen Monday for publishing a false and defamatory tweet on Twitter May 12.
According to the suit filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court Bonnen wrote an update that said “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”
What you say on Twitter is just as real as what you say in public anywhere… though it would seem that a photo of mold and a note from a property manager saying they weren’t going to fix it would be a great defense. (not a legal opinion.. I’m not a lawyer).
Watch what you tweet 
UPDATE: A short comment can be defamatory.. and other legal issues: Will The First Twitter Case Be Dismissed?
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You are so right.
Besides, if you put people down in a tweet you run the risk of becoming unpopular as a tweeter.
I might even go so far as to say that what you tweet is more important than what you say as what you tweet is in black and white writing. Written evidence is a whole lot more convincing in a court of law than spoken evidence.
The Body By Chocolate Man
TWITTER: @BodyByChocolate
I wish this was more shocking.
Did they think she doctored her photo or are they arguing that the mold is akin to blue cheese and really quite delicious?
Jessica
Let me clear up the part about a photo… I added that as an idea of how it might be OK to tweet in this situation. I DO NOT know if a photo exists in this case.
That would make your comment speculation on speculation
(but if it were true, quite delicious in it’s humor 
I guess this puts the “state” in Real Estate…
Also known as how to not handle a customer complaint.
After Central Florida’s 2004 hurricanes, I fought my homeowner’s insurance company for three years for payment to repair the downed ceilings, damaged electrical wiring, and moldy walls in my home. It wasn’t until I hired an attorney that the insurance company finally forwarded funds to repair my home, after I’d been paying for homeowner’s insurance since 1992.
I suggest this woman fight fire with fire.
Attorneys are a necessary evil in today’s litigious society.
I say…COUNTER SUE!
Again.. I don’t think any of us has enough information here to make a recommendation on action.. legal or otherwise.
Very interesting to see how these ideas come into the comments. We all have so many bad customer service stories.
Tweeting about bad experiences is great.. but DO keep in mind that you are responsible for everything you say
Regardless of mold or not..being conscious of what you put out there on Twitter or any other Social Media site is huge. It never goes away, and it can be used in ways we never dreamed..not always positive.
OH yeah. Mold is one of those things that owners and management companies get reaaaaaaaaaly funny about. Mold makes people VERY sick and can kill people. Not very funny.
Before I moved out of my last home that I’d been in for 5 years, I told the landlady numerous times that there was mold in the house, that water would rain in my bedroom every time it rained but she would never come over and look at my “Ma and Pa Kettle” leaky roof handling (which consisted of three 5 gallon buckets and two pans to catch the water) until I asked her partner if he wanted to come over and see “Lake Lomitas” in my bedroom. THEN they believed me.
About 4 months before I moved, I tore out the floorboards in the other room which was leaking and there was black mold on the back of all of them and on the wall. Did I take pictures? YOU BET!
Bleach seemed to help with the mold cleaning, but be VERY careful. It’s very hazardous to your health and really should only be handled by people who are licensed to do so.
If you feel that there may be mold in your home, call a mold remediation company to come out and do an assessment and document what you do have with pics and their official report. Then you have a “professional” stating that you do, in fact, have mold. In this case, it could be worth the $100 or $200 they charge for the testing. YOUR lawsuit could be MUCH bigger than what they are slapping you with depending on how much is there.
I hope that this might be of some help:
http://moldblogger.com/toxic-mold-lawsuits/
This looks like a mold lawyer referral service.
http://www.toxic-mold-stachybotrys.com/
Good luck with your situation!
Lauren
Great practical advice. I do hope the woman in the Chicago story hears about it.
Sounds like this might keep tweeps on the right side of a lawsuit
What this story seems to indicate is that we need to be ever more and more careful and watch what and how we say things on Twitter.
If she had offered a website with a pic and proof in her tweet there wouldn’t have been an issue (possibly).
What’s more interesting is that the company picked up her Tweet!
Looks like some corporations have woken up…
Life has changed in this very technological age we live in. I think people should always be very aware that whatever you say & publish on any social media channel, is out in the open. Anyone can see it and copy it and forward it and read it.
Rick
You got it right. Mold is yucky stuff, but not at issue here. Either she has it or not.. we don’t know. And we don’t know if the property manager tried to address her concerns (though likely not to her satisfaction we can assume)
So she chose to address it on Twitter and got a response.
I’m guessing that a lawsuit isn’t the best move.. but since I don’t know what else happened, I can only comment that the NEWS here is that they were watching Twitter and responded.
Kathy
Right. The laws and rules of social conduct have not changed.
We say NO RULES when asked about how you “should” do something on Twitter. That does not mean “anything goes”.. rather it means “act as you would if there were no Twitter”
Exactly Warren!
My advice to clients and anyone using Twitter – for business in particular – is to pretend you are at in-person and live networking event. Let this guide what and how you say on your social media sites/profiles. Whether it is a post to no one in particular or when @replying to others or sending DMs. Sometimes that also helps inspire them to overcome the “What do I say?” problem too!
Well, if I were horizon, I would have contacted Bonnen and apologized if there was mold. And if horizon had in fact been defamed at all by the tweet, then they should have issued a statement through the press that was honest, saying that they will fix the problem.
People have the right to express their opinions about companies, public or not. Especially if it was true, which I believe it was. Why else would Horizon get on the defensive so fast?
Horizon looks even worse by the way they are handling all this.
@rantbombboy
Your comments are logical enough, but I still think there is much more to the story than we know. I sure hope the property management company knows better than to fan the flames of one tenent’s single tweet with a lawsuit.
Bottom line.. even if they were 110% justified in what they did, it’s a pretty good chance they won’t be able to get paid enough from one renter to cover the bad publicity they got from that article.
We’ve had a lot of discussion on this post through Twitter. I’ve seen dozens of tweets to the original article. That will fade away soon enough… but I assume their prospects in Chicago will remember for some time
Recently, I had a situation with a company that owed me a refund. I wrote to them and asked whether they intended to sort matters out properly or should I tell my 11,000+ Twitter followers what had happened to me at their hands.
The matter was resolved very fast and I was told by a secretary that this was the first time the company had ever given a refund as far as she knew!
Something tells me that things would have gone very differently if I had bad-mouthed the company to my Twitter friends before they had been given an opportunity to rectify the situation.
Sad thing for this woman who did twit that company. But this is really frustrating to have these dirt and molds eating your homes slowly. You badly need like the NYC mold remediation team to totally get rid of it. Aside from being clean, health considerations are also an issue since this could affect any of the family members.
Brad
You’ve taught us another valuable lesson here.
I’m all for shameless promotion, but your link to your company give the impression that you are “that guy” and killed the good will you gathered by commenting.
Even with the weak comment “sad for this woman who did twit” that sounds like you might not really be from NYC, it IS an attempt at a real connection.
Since the story was not about NYC or mold removal, I question how your intentions when you drop a link like that. Then you add more about the need to attack mold than anything about the post.
See what I mean? It looks like you just placed an AD in the comments.
Since @Coachdeb has our blog set to NOFOLLOW on comment links, I decided to leave you post up and use this to help others looking for a way to promote and sell on Twitter, blogs and social media.
The secret to selling on TWITTER?
STOP TRYING TO SELL STUFF ON TWITTER.
With a single line, expressing your concern, you showed you cared. Maybe add “in my experience as working in the mold industry, I know how frustrated tenants and property owners get negotiating to end this problem”.. and MAYBE a link to a post you wrote about mediating and negotiating.
Tweeps know that they can click on your name, your Twitter bio, or look you up if they need service. What they really want is to deal with people they KNOW, LIKE and TRUST. Build that, and the customers will FLOCK TO YOU