aarond’s posterous

I may be late to the party on this one, but this story (WSJ Blog - The Shortest Allegedly Defamatory Statement in History?) from this morning caught my attention about a landlord in Chicago suing a tenant over a tweet that they are claiming was defamatory and damaged the landlord’s reputation. In my opinion this is just ridiculous. Can someone really claim that a single tweet did significant enough damage to call it defamatory and seek damages in a court of law. I am not a legal expert by any means, but a case of this nature seems to raise some interesting questions on how our legal system will look at and consider highly open and highly public Web based communications vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs, etc. in legal proceedings. Seems we may be opening up a Pandora’s Box that our legal system may not be ready to deal with.

This case also begs the question, do complaints by consumers on Twitter or Facebook or on a personal blog give companies the right to seek legal damages and sue their customers? Not something I recommend, but seems this case is setting that precedent. Does it mean that United Airlines should sue Dave Carroll for his hit YouTube video – United Breaks Guitars? That video could be seen as defamatory and it definitely damaged United’s brand and reputation and it seems he has no intention of stopping either. United is just one example, but I see hundreds of complaints by people within social media communities everyday complaining about companies and their products and services or making not so kind statements about other people. Seems this case might open up a whole new world of everyone wanting to sue everyone for something. Haven’t we seen this before? But again I am not a legal professional and this is just my opinion.

It is definitely changing the definition of “Everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” 

Careful with your comments or how you respond, if it offends me, I might sue you :)