Twitter post gets renter sued by landlord
A woman in an apartment building reportedly complains on her Twitter feed about mold in her apartment. Her landlord sues her for alleged defamation.
She only had 15 Twitter followers.
And, according to CBS2 Chicago, Amanda Bonnen, a local resident, wanted those followers to know about her mold.
Well, not her mold exactly, but the mold she claimed had taken up residence in her residence.
So she reportedly tweeted: "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay."
Horizon Realty appears not to think it's OK, as the company has sued Bonnen for publishing false and defamatory information in her tweet. (Her Twitter account is now inactive.)
The suit suggests that Horizon Realty feels terribly hurt and that Bonnen's tweet adversely affected its excellent reputation, an adverse effect that might be mitigated somewhat by compensation of $50,000.
This might be a lesson for residents of Cook County, Ill., to be very careful when it comes to social networking. This is, after all, the county in which the sheriff tried to sue Craigslist.
But one does wonder whether Bonnen brought up the alleged mold to her landlord before tweeting. If Horizon Realty really does uphold its allegedly excellent reputation, surely the company would have done something about it.
And if Bonnen really wanted only her 15 followers to know about her alleged moldy misery, might she not have sent 15 direct messages? Or, at least, kept her Twitter feed private?
There again, how did Horizon Realty hear about her tweet? Was one of Amanda Bonnen's 15 followers a mold mole?