This is the suit I blogged about here; law.com reports:
[A] Cook Country, Ill., circuit judge dismissed a defamation suit filed by a Chicago-area real estate management company against a former tenant who tweeted about mold in her apartment….Attorneys at The John Marshall Law School’s Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law represented 25-year-old defendant Amanda Bonnen against the lawsuit filed by Horizon Group Management….
Judge Diane J. Larsen issued no written opinion but indicated in court that the complaint against Bonnen was too vague, Reis said….
Other high-profile Twitter defamation cases are pending. For example, a clothing designer sued rock star Courtney Love in Los Angeles County, Calif., Superior Court in March alleging defamation, invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress because of a serious of unflattering tweets that Love wrote about her. A judge declined to throw out the suit in October.
Reality television star Kim Kardashian was sued in December by a Miami doctor who markets a cookie weight loss diet. Kardashian wrote two tweets denying that she was on “Dr. [Sanford] Siegal’s Cookie Diet” and referring to the program as “unhealthy.” The case is pending….
Thanks to Josh Blackman for the pointer.
Alast says:
An interesting question is posed by communications forua that have extremely limited capacity such as the 160-character limit of SMS messages. It can be problematic, if not impossible in some cases, to cram in an exculpatory legal disclaimer and still have a cogent message.
So do such fora become, practically, impossible to use for opinion speech?
January 26, 2010, 1:01 pmCrunchy Frog says:
Generally, the exculpatory legal disclaimer language is to protect the forum itself (in this case, Twitter) rather that the one who posts the message. Since ISPs and message boards no longer have to face legal action due to user messages, such fine print is unnecessary.
In any case, pure opinion postings (“Person X is an ass”) are pretty much immune from libel. There typically has to be knowing, willful misstatement of fact before anyone can be successfully sued.
Of course, SLAPP suits can serve their purpose without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom, but YMMV.
January 26, 2010, 1:18 pmAmiable Dorsai says:
Given the Streisand effect, only a twit would sue over a tweet.
January 26, 2010, 1:20 pmDarel Finkbeiner says:
I thought twitter was where I was *supposed* to be placing my unsubstantiated gripes and worthless comments… and also here, obviously.
January 26, 2010, 2:06 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Twitter Libel Suit Dismissed -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Noxi, Dan McAndrew, Michael Searles, Henrik Boyander, Jojie and others. Jojie said: The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Twitter Libel Suit Dismissed: [A] Cook Country, Ill., circuit judge dismiss… http://bit.ly/bzuj4z [...]
January 27, 2010, 10:14 am