Oh Be Careful What You Tweet

Now this is scary, mostly because it means that Lawyers are getting their heads around twitter and that has got to be a bad thing, right. This woman had a few followers on her twitter account and rather simply insinuated that the managing agent of her property let thought that it was OK to let her sleep in damp and mold. Rather than reply back and set the record straight, they get in touch with their lawyer (probably by twitter) and get him to dust off the "Sue You" file, cut and paste a few relevant word documents and wham - slap her with a $50k law suit. Now granted, in the US a $50k law suit is probably small beer, but hang on its still $50k.


The story was broken by the Chicago Sun Times, have a look there are some great quotes from

the company about sue first and ask questions later, is that the modern day equivalent of the old holywood westerns where it was shoot first.........ask questions later.




Anyway, what I really want to understand is this. If the original tweet was sent and she had 20 followers, then in reality how many people saw the message and of those who did, how many actually took any notice? OK, armed with that number in your head, how many people do you think now know about this around the world, as a result of the law suit? Certainly a significantly larger number than before.

Maybe its me who is being stupid here, but haven't the letting company shot themselves in the foot (or should that be sued themselves in the foot) because if their real reason for taking action was to contain the story that one of their properties was allegedly moldy then they have failed miserably, right?


Of course as ever the most un-stupid party in the whole arrangement is the cut and paste guy, as his fee will probably be paid whatever happens.


As I said, the scary thing is that the lawyers are catching on to fast, we need to pick up the pace.