
Chicago Realty Group Sues Woman For $50,000 Over A Tweet - MicahWedemeyer
http://www.podcastingnews.com/2009/07/28/chicago-realty-group-sues-woman-for-50000-over-a-tweet/
======
MicahWedemeyer
Official spokesman: _"We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an
organization"_

Wow.

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edw519
"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.)

~~~
cyunker
If I remember correctly, according to the book Inside Intel (Tim Jackson), the
lawyers in Intel's legal dept were reviewed by how many lawsuits they
initiated per quarter. Not necessarily by how many they won, but how many they
initiated. The goal, of course, to slow down any potential competitors.

~~~
ricree
It doesn't surprise me at all that there are companies who work like that. But
it does surprise me to hear a company spokesman admit it so freely.

~~~
jon_dahl
And that it would sue one of its own customers - not a competitor.

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Shooter
<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...

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jeroen
PR nightmare in the making: <http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23horizon>

~~~
jon_dahl
Retweeted the story, hoping to get in on the lawsuit action.

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ricree
“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
Streisand effect, FYI: <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._

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conorgil145
This 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

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tocomment
On 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?

~~~
karzeem
I'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
Yes, 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.

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dannyr
I wonder if they will be suing reviewers on Yelp next.

<http://www.yelp.com/biz/horizon-realty-group-chicago-4>

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dkokelley
Check 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
Noone actually claimed there was mold in any apartment. Just that the company
thought it was ok to sleep in one that had mold.

~~~
potatolicious
Which 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
oh 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
_This 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
Sure, because $50,000 sounds like a reasonable number to come up with when
somebody tells their friends that you expect them to sleep in a moldy
apartment.

These people need to lighten up a bit, it's a tempest in a teacup and a total
waste of time and energy.

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jon_dahl
Any 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
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.

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
Thanks 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
I 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-comm...](http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-
guide/opinion-and-fair-comment-privileges).

------
weirdwes
This 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.

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socratees
That'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.

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maclifer
What 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!

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yan
I hope that article becomes #1 hit after googling for "Horizon Realty"

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
The OP should include "Horizon Realty" in the title of the article. That would
probably seal the deal on Google.

~~~
Shooter
People 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.

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quellhorst
Horizon Realty Group can be reached at 773-529-7200

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joshz
hahaha, 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.

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lawrence
Better for us entrepreneurs that they are suing the Twitter user as opposed to
Twitter itself.

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vijayr
I guess most media 'executives' still believe 'any publicity is good
publicity'

