Mark Bult Design: San Francisco, CA, Established 1988

Hire a better lawyer than the other guy

I heard about this case a week or so ago, where a woman is being sued by the rental company that manages the apartment she used to live in, because she tweeted that there was mold in the place and they didn’t seem to be doing anything about it.

In a perfect world, she would clearly win on first amendment grounds, but this is a defamation suit, where “proof” depends more on who has the better lawyer than who’s telling the truth. If she can “prove” better than the realty company that she had a moldy apartment when she made the statement, she wins. If she can’t, she loses. If her lawyer can paint her as more trustworthy than the shyster realty guy quoted in the papers, she wins. If their lawyers paint her as a flaky tenant who was late with her rent half the time, she loses.

So the first lesson for people who blog, use Twitter, etc., is the one stated at the end of the article: Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face, and don’t lie. But the unstated — and arguably more important — lesson really is: Anyone can sue you, regardless of how frivolous their suit or how it impinges your right as an American to speak your mind, regardless of how factually wrong you might be when you do it. So hire a better lawyer than the fucker who sues you.

Labels: blogging, censorship, law, Twitter

Posted by espd at 11:33 PM | 
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