You can do anything on Twitter these days. Even get sued.
Well, this has got to be some sort of coming-of-age landmark.
Over the past few months, the social networking powerhouse Twitter has been used for just about everything – selling books, selling magazines, selling political careers, fomenting revolution in Iran, fomenting revolution in Moldova, talking about vampire movies, talking about sports, talking about politics, arguing about politics, arguing about Sarah Palin, arguing about healthcare, arguing about the indie band du jour, arguing about those Jon and Kate people, arguing about which recipe for chocolate chip cookies yields the tastiest chocolate chip cookie dough.
Once, some dude was tweeting so hard that he ran smack into a tree.
Today, Twitter users eagerly shared news of another landmark – in Chicago, a management company has sued a tenant for libel, after that tenant tweeted her dissatisfaction with an allegedly moldy apartment. According to a handful of news outlets, in a recently-filed lawsuit, Amanda Bonnen told an unnamed friend: “You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”
Not so bad, right? Wrong. Bonnen didn't type this message in an email to a friend – she typed it on Twitter, where it became readily available for consumption by anyone with a working Internet connection. And Horizon Realty, the company Bonnen so casually mentioned in the post, was angry enough to take Bonnen to court.
But as Debra Guzov, an attorney at Guzov-Ofsink International LLC in New York, told The Wall Street Journal, rumors of fungus are a big problem for landlords across the country, as well as a windfall for particularly litigious lawyers. “People who prosecute claims often say that mold is gold,” Guzov said. “Usually if mold is found in one apartment it’s throughout the building.”
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We'll never talk about the mold in your apartment. So find us on Twitter, @CSMHorizonsBlog.
