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Chicago Realty Group Sues Woman For $50,000 Over A Tweet
- yan 17y agoI hope that article becomes #1 hit after googling for "Horizon Realty"
- MicahWedemeyer 17y agoThe OP should include "Horizon Realty" in the title of the article. That would probably seal the deal on Google.
- Shooter 17y agoPeople that have sites dealing with related topics (real estate/apartments and communications/PR) could also give them some link love. Companies that are so heroically stupid deserve to have their statements haunt them.
- silvertab 17y agoWell, it is now a trending topic on Twitter, that didn't take long!
- maxer 17y agono wonder.. i felt obliged to retweet the story
- dkokelley 17y agoCheck the comments to the article. It appears that the commentators are RT first, ask questions later - Questions like, "well was the apartment actually moldy?" Has twitter forgotten #Savejon? I'm not saying sue first, ask questions later is the right response, but the company may be in the right to defend itself.
- lutorm 17y agoNoone actually claimed there was mold in any apartment. Just that the company thought it was ok to sleep in one that had mold.
- potatolicious 17y agoWhich makes this a legitimate libel case - the woman was in no way qualified to make comments on company policy. If she said something like "Horizon is making me sleep in a moldy apartment" she'd be in the clear, but now she is speaking on behalf of the company, which is unjustified. I also will hold off on bashing the company here just yet until we have the whole story. Wasn't it, like, yesterday when we found out the internet went berserk over censorship that turned out to be nothing?
- jacquesm 17y agooh please. Only in the USA would a company sue over something this silly. Anywhere else they'd be laughed out of court and their lawyers would get slapped with a fine. Until they made an issue out of it nobody had even heard from her, about them or about their policies, now they have a disaster on their hands. This is simple abuse of the court.
- dkokelley 17y agoThis is simple abuse of the court. Do we know this? All we know is 1 tweet and a couple of quotes (possibly) taken out of context. Was there a history of tweets by this woman regarding Horizon? Sure, she only had 20-something followers, but her message was publicly available. This could actually be an interesting precedent-setting case for how courts define tweets. Is it comparable to a newspaper article, or a conversation between parties? I wouldn't be so quick to judge the company or the woman in question. Something else to consider: Who told the media about the lawsuit?
- jacquesm 17y ago
- conorgil145 17y agoThis entire situation is just truly unbelievable. I can't fathom how Horizon thinks they could have benefited from suing a tenant over such a ridiculous thing as a twitter post. A good company would have immediately contacted her and solved the problem with no questions asked. Getting a cleaning crew out there and a free month's rent would have been the right move. Then, instead of posting about a crappy moldy apartment she might have posted about the outstanding customer service and then her "massive" collection of 20 followers might remember Horizon Realty the next time they need an apartment. Could have turned this SMALL negative into a positive if they played it right. Instead they did something incredibly foolish and sued her. nice
- MicahWedemeyer 17y agoOfficial spokesman: "We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization" Wow.
- kristiandupont 17y agoAnd now, that's way more official than he would have liked.
- TrevorJ 17y agoJust the kind of people I want to involve in the most financially weighty purchases of my life (I a home). Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I'd avoid these people like the plague.
- mrduncan 17y agoMichael added that the company has a "good reputation it wants to preserve." - Not for long if you are making statements like that. It's tough to imagine how they could have handled it in a worse way.
- swombat 17y agoMaybe if they kicked off with something more meaty, like "We like to sacrifice newborn babies." But then I guess no one would have believed them. No, I guess you're right, that statement was pretty much perfect.
- donw 17y ago"We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of company. Unless there are babies that we can roast on spikes, in which case, the order is: Sheish-kababy, sue, ask questions."
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- edw519 17y ago"We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization" Believe it or not, it is a business model. I know quite a few slimeballs that will sue anyone big with money because they know that they often prefer to settle just to get rid of them. (I call them slimeballs because it's the only way they know how to make money. They sometimes run for years with negative margins, but those settlements keep them alive.)
- jeroen 17y agoPR nightmare in the making: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23horizon http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23horizon
- jon_dahl 17y agoRetweeted the story, hoping to get in on the lawsuit action.
- ricree 17y ago“We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.” Michael added that the company has a “good reputation it wants to preserve.” Something here has to be taken out of context. Surely no one whose goal was to preserve their company's reputation would say something so silly as that first statement. At any rate, looks like it's going to be a fairly clear cut Streisand effect here.
- matt1 17y agoStreisand effect, FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect Mike Masnick originally coined the term Streisand effect in reference to a 2003 incident where Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million in an attempt to have the aerial photo of her house removed from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs, citing privacy concerns. Adelman stated that he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project. As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially and it became popular on the Internet, with more than 420,000 people visiting the site over the next month.
- joshz 17y agohahaha, I don't even care if if wasn't actually moldy. If Horizon Realty's policy is "sue first, ask questions later" they don't deserve good PR. Congratulations Jeffrey Michael, you're prince among spokespeople... no not really.
- socratees 17y agoThat's real BS. I hope the judge rules the case in favor of the lady. I don't think someone with 20+ followers on twitter is going to cause so much damage enough to warrant a court case.
- maclifer 17y agoWhat an unbelievably botched response for a company that wants to protect its reputation... wow. Their spokesperson looks like a complete idiot and by drawing such attention to this otherwise minor/nothing situation, they've reaped tons of bad PR. The Steisand effect continues to live and flourish!
- tocomment 17y agoOn a side note, I'm thinking about starting a blog to review products and businesses. But I'm kind of worried about this kind of stuff. If I report a true incident that happened at a business (e.g., Best Buy not accepting a returned computer because I installed software on it), is there any danger of libel suits?
- TallGuyShort 17y agoIf you were to get a twitter following like this suit is getting - my bet is they'll drop the suit. In any case - it's not libel if it's factual information that benefits consumers. That's free speech. Libel is like calling a political opponent a child molester just to give him bad publicity.
- dkokelley 17y agoIt doesn't even have to benefit consumers (I'm pretty sure). If it's true, it's free speech. Now the question is, was the apartment moldy?
- TallGuyShort 17y agoJust to clarify - I didn't mean to say that benefiting consumers is a necessary attribute - it just adds weight to their case. Wanting to silence such speech would be against consumers interests (and in this case - health/safety) and would surely be protected speech.
- karzeem 17y agoI'm not a lawyer, but under U.S. law, libel generally means that you've written something you knew to be false, or should have known to be false, and that you had malicious intent in doing so. There are some exceptions (e.g. food libel), but as a defendant in a libel case, you're usually better off in the U.S. than in most developed countries.
- tokenadult 17y agoYes, generally truth is a defense to a defamation action in the United States, by a precedent that goes back to colonial times, so when you publish, what you have to do to protect yourself is make reasonable efforts to publish true rather than false statements.
- dannyr 17y agoI wonder if they will be suing reviewers on Yelp next. http://www.yelp.com/biz/horizon-realty-group-chicago-4 http://www.yelp.com/biz/horizon-realty-group-chicago-4
- Shooter 17y ago<LAWSUIT BAIT> Some Horizon Realty apartments have mold. And dirty carpets. And cockroach infestations. And non-working fire alarms. The maintenance staff often move at a glacial pace. Their leasing agents may lie to you or stand you up. The company is, IMNSHO, one of the worst property management companies in Chicago. </LAWSUIT BAIT> Edited: Removed 'proven douche-nozzle' and 'reputed to have crabs' sentence that was inflammatory and only added in an attempt at humor. The faux tags are just social commentary. (And an attempt to garner startup publicity should they take the bait.) So...as a Chicago broker that is sick of dealing firsthand with certain nasty property management companies, I welcome the downvotes from the sensitive lily-type readers for what remains. I just wanted to explain myself since I got a few quick downvotes. I'm always interested in why people hit the arrows in either direction...
- quellhorst 17y agoHorizon Realty Group can be reached at 773-529-7200
- jon_dahl 17y agoAny lawyers here want to comment on the case? Is this libel? And if so (uninformed legal commentary here), is it illegal to express negative opinions in writing? "My landlord doesn't care that my apartment is moldy" seems pretty tame and commonplace.
- grellas 17y agoIf it is a mere opinion, it would not constitute libel. For something to be libelous, it must be an assertion of fact - it must also be false and tend to injure the reputation of the party within the community. The company would here argue that her tweet asserts that company policy deems it acceptable to expose tenants to serious health risks. It would say this is false and highly injurious to its reputation in the community. Had this firestorm not arisen, the company might easily win through intimidation in such a lawsuit by coercing a settlement. A court could let the case get to a full trial, meaning that it would (if nothing else) take many thousands of dollars to defend it. For this reason, it is not wise to use Twitter as a forum to vent in this way. That said as a general matter, in this case, the company's patently idiotic response did far more to hurt its own reputation than the original statement possibly could have done. Unless it has lost its mind, it will drop the case pronto.
- jon_dahl 17y agoThanks for the helpful response. If it is a mere opinion, it would not constitute libel. For something to be libelous, it must be an assertion of fact - it must also be false and tend to injure the reputation of the party within the community. Isn't every opinion an assertion of fact? If I say "American cars suck" or "Apple mistreats its developer community", I'm expressing what I believe to be the truth, not just my opinion. What's the distinction between opinions and assertions of fact?
- grellas 17y agoI don't think every opinion is an assertion of fact in that true opinion is by its nature unprovable: "I think Apple makes lousy products" may be what I think (which I don't, by the way) but no one would take it as anything beyond that. Opinion is basically non-actionable under libel laws as long as it falls in the unprovable category. You make an excellent point, though, in picking up on this issue. No less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court (in the 1990 Milkovich case) expressly rejected what it called "the creation of an artificial dichotomy" between fact and opinion and held that statements couched as opinions can be libelous if they imply false and defamatory facts. So, if you say, "In my opinion, politician x is a drug dealer," your statement could be found to be defamatory. For a good discussion on this, see http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/opinion-and-fair-comment-privileges http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/opinion-and-fair-comm....
- lawrence 17y agoBetter for us entrepreneurs that they are suing the Twitter user as opposed to Twitter itself.
- vijayr 17y agoI guess most media 'executives' still believe 'any publicity is good publicity'
- weirdwes 17y agoThis may be somewhat off topic, but it's also somewhat on topic. A former co-worker of mine recently posted a status update on Facebook claiming that her former boss "was the devil". The bosses name was not mentioned in the status update, but could be inferred by other co-workers, employees and etc. Her former boss emailed her and sarcastically thanked her for the kind words, to which she replied "you're welcome". This, in effect, confirmed who she was speaking about - though it was not in a public forum for anyone else to read. He quickly threatened to file a lawsuit against her for slander, though I do not know if anything has come of it. I'm no lawyer, but based on what I've read here and in some of the linked articles, he has no case. Obviously this is libel and not slander as it's written word and not spoken, so my assumption is the "boss" was just using scare tactics on here as had he gotten the advice of a lawyer, he would've known this. Not to mention, there is no way to prove that someone is or is not the devil, therefore the remark can't be used in case citing deformation of character, correct? Just curious if anyone wanted to weigh in on this. On topic: I'm curious to see if this lawsuit pans out. I'm honestly hoping it doesn't, but it will be interesting to see the outcome. Personally, I agree with most that the company should be trying to make their customers happy, not suing them over something like this.