Judge Tosses Libel Suit Filed Against Tenant for ‘Moldy Apartment’ Tweet
A tenant who was sued because of her Twitter complaint about a “moldy apartment” has won the libel suit on a motion to dismiss.
Lawyers for the tenant, Amanda Bonnen, said Judge Diane Larsen of Cook County dismissed the complaint because it was too vague, according to stories in the National Law Journal and the Chicago Sun-Times. Bonnen’s lawyers had argued that her tweet was “rhetorical hyberbole” rather than a statement of fact.
The plaintiff, Horizon Realty Group, had discovered the tweet after Bonnen sued the company, claiming it had violated the city’s landlord ordinance, the Sun-Times says.
Bonnen’s May 12 tweet had read: “You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s OK.”
Bonnen was represented by lawyers from The John Marshall Law School’s Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law. They had argued in a motion that her tweet was opinion.
“When one considers Ms. Bonnen’s allegedly defamatory tweet in the social context and setting in which the statement was published, its nature as rhetorical hyperbole is readily apparent,” the motion read. The document also cited a 2009 study that found 40 percent of tweets are “pointless babble,” according to the National Law Journal.
Horizon Realty had argued in court papers that Twitter is a “legitimate medium used by reporters to report up-to-the-minute updates on legal actions, by rabbis, by people to support specific causes or engage in a certain activity, and as a marketing tool,” the NLJ reports.
