Company Suing Woman Over Tweet - $50,000 Lawsuit For Expressing an Opinion

No, I'm not joking, as much as I wish I was. I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect something like this to happen sooner or later anyway.

Horizon Group Management is suing Chicago resident Amanda Bonnen for posting the following Tweet to her Twitter account:

Bonnen has 20 followers on Twitter. Now, her account has been closed down. Whether this is her doing or Twitter's, I don't know.

What I do know is that it's a little ridiculous for a woman to be sued over posting her opinion. The lawsuit, which claims she "maliciously and wrongfully published the false and defamatory Tweet on Twitter," is for a whopping total of $50,000 dollars.

Really? Because 20 people saw a sarcastic remark made on a social networking site? This seems quite extreme to me.

For starters, I'd like to talk about the utter stupidity of this company. I'm not sure they realize it, but one very quick way to get consumers to hate a company is for said company to sue an individual. Just look at the RIAA, which is likely one of the most hated companies on the planet due to the fact that they find it entertaining to sue people for tens of thousands of dollars. Same thing here. They are earning themselves far more bad press - and I mean far more, search for this on Google if you'd like to find out just how much more - than they would have had by 20 people reading a single Tweet.

Aside from the idea that suing your customers is probably not the best business strategy, there are better ways to handle customers criticizing your company in public. Let's look to Comcast. They, well, Frank Eliason and team specifically, actively search social networking sites like Twitter for customers complaining about them. Then, instead of suing them, Frank's team resolves the issue. It's quite remarkable, really, the idea of taking a poor customer experience and turning it into a good one. Frank's approach breeds loyalty in the customer base, while Horizon's approach will likely garner them only an angry customer base that is much less likely to use their services.

Perhaps at the root of this issue, what is a Tweet really? Does writing a 140-characters-or-less blurb about a person/company so 20 of your friends can see it really count as publishing something? I'd relate that more to having a conversation with a friend, or group of friends, and having a representative of the company overhear the conversation. We all know that conversation cannot be the basis of a defamation lawsuit, so why should something as tiny as a Tweet? But then again, where do you draw the line?

I've never really agreed with the idea of defamation lawsuits anyway. It goes back to that whole idea that everybody cares too much about what other people think of them. If what the defamer is saying about you is untrue, prove it with your actions. The public will see that the defamer is obviously wrong, and that will be that. If the defamer is correct, well, that's hardly defamation then, is it?

Besides all that, this kind of lawsuit sets a dangerous precedent for censorship on the Internet. Should Horizon be awarded the victory here, the stage will be set for companies across the country to take folks to court for expressing their opinions, factual and otherwise. Given the Internet has long been a pillar of ideas without restraint, the ability for companies to actively censor what can and can't be posted, and sue you for crossing that line, is truly a threatening one.

Lawsuits are not the be all, end all answer to everything. This holds doubly true for companies suing individuals. In trying to "protect the company image," Horizon has brought a viral avalanche of crap down on themselves. It will be interesting to see what ends up happening to this one.