Chicago Realty Group Sues Woman For $50,000 Over A Tweet | Hacker News Reader

Chicago Realty Group Sues Woman For $50,000 Over A Tweet

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157 pointsMicahWedemeyer69 comments

Official spokesman: "We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization"

Wow.

Michael added that the company has a "good reputation it wants to preserve." - Not for long if you are making statements like that.

It's tough to imagine how they could have handled it in a worse way.

Maybe if they kicked off with something more meaty, like "We like to sacrifice newborn babies." But then I guess no one would have believed them.

No, I guess you're right, that statement was pretty much perfect.

"We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of company. Unless there are babies that we can roast on spikes, in which case, the order is: Sheish-kababy, sue, ask questions."

"We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization"

Believe it or not, it is a business model.

I know quite a few slimeballs that will sue anyone big with money because they know that they often prefer to settle just to get rid of them.

(I call them slimeballs because it's the only way they know how to make money. They sometimes run for years with negative margins, but those settlements keep them alive.)

And yet this was the reverse--someone big with money suing someone small without it.

If I remember correctly, according to the book Inside Intel (Tim Jackson), the lawyers in Intel's legal dept were reviewed by how many lawsuits they initiated per quarter. Not necessarily by how many they won, but how many they initiated. The goal, of course, to slow down any potential competitors.

It doesn't surprise me at all that there are companies who work like that. But it does surprise me to hear a company spokesman admit it so freely.

And that it would sue one of its own customers - not a competitor.

In this case, it is hard to think of it as a business model. They are blowing money on lawyers, getting bad press and suing someone who may not have 50K to pay back (if they win the case in courts). How do they justify spending so much money?

BUT... they're getting press. Have you heard of them before today? Doubt it. Now you do.

It's how Viacom became the company it is today.

That may go down as one of the worst public statements made by a company. Certainly a "teachable moment" for the PR books.

Well to be honest, I think it was just said at the wrong time. I could picture apple doing the same thing and everyone saying "I saw that one coming". The thing is that the company is making a bid deal over nothing, it's kind of like a fly bumping into me and I declare war on the species by launching flaming balls of deet into the public. -> Basically it's a huge overkill. It seems like the company is making the mistake of applying the perfectly acceptable business model to something that would not damage the company. Like in my ridiculous example, the fly bumping into me does not harm me, but my "counter-attack" is just ridiculous for the situation.

If Apple announced it was a "sue first" company after filing against someone who complained about one of their products there would be even more outrage. Smart companies don't sue their frustrated customers, they improve their products.

Well, I was talking about a more large scale situation, not a "tweeter" who has 22 followers. I was also referring to an insult to the company, slander, not just to one of their products. I simply don't see a company like Apply handling the "lies" by doing nothing. However, I could be wrong, It's quite possible that Apple would just wink at the person and walk away.

Not commenting is Apple's standard operating procedure. They got the lawyers after ThinkSecret, but that was to close a trade secrets hole. Much different than a random internet rant.

I think Apple would have real trouble claiming the moral high ground if someone was insulting their products or company.

http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/

In this case, to cast this as an "overreaction" is to let these people off the hook. They are engaging a calculated action against those they see as weaker than them. It's not ridiculous to them if it works and it's worth seeing that it doesn't.

They are bullies, self-described bullies in this instance.

When I read that quote, I was like, "Okay, okay. This is some kind of joke." Check the date. Nope, not April 1st. Check the URL. Not the Onion.

Really? A spokesperson said that??

And now, that's way more official than he would have liked.

Just the kind of people I want to involve in the most financially weighty purchases of my life (I a home). Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I'd avoid these people like the plague.

I think it's really funny when combined with the next sentence:

'Michael added that the company has a “good reputation it wants to preserve.”'

Not anymore!

The article commentary on that is priceless also: "Horizon may be breaking new ground in public relations with its response."

Well, they're certainly digging themselves deep enough to need a backhoe.

The Streisand effect has not been published broadly enough it seems.

If you are that nervous about the rest of the world thinking you are renting out mouldy appartments I'm sure being seen as litigious bastards is only a minor inconvenience.

Perhaps they can break new legal ground and sue themselves. Their actions have done far more damage than a single post on Twitter.

It would not be new legal ground. Here is a company that did just that: (suing themselves)

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/al-lewis-wells-farg...

Did he ever work at SCO?

According to their hastily uploaded press release, the comment was "tongue in cheek":

http://www.horizonrealtygroup.com/UserFiles/file/PressReleas...

Not the kind of thing to make light of when you're the bad guy!

That's not even the best part. They immediately followed it with:

Michael added that the company has a “good reputation it wants to preserve.”

Reputation -> FAIL

LOL,

"I would first like to take this opportunity to apologize for tongue in check comments that were made previously made regarding our approach to litigations"

http://www.horizonrealtygroup.com/UserFiles/file/PressReleas...

Yeah, how's that working out for them?

<LAWSUIT BAIT> Some Horizon Realty apartments have mold. And dirty carpets. And cockroach infestations. And non-working fire alarms. The maintenance staff often move at a glacial pace. Their leasing agents may lie to you or stand you up. The company is, IMNSHO, one of the worst property management companies in Chicago. </LAWSUIT BAIT>

Edited: Removed 'proven douche-nozzle' and 'reputed to have crabs' sentence that was inflammatory and only added in an attempt at humor. The faux tags are just social commentary. (And an attempt to garner startup publicity should they take the bait.) So...as a Chicago broker that is sick of dealing firsthand with certain nasty property management companies, I welcome the downvotes from the sensitive lily-type readers for what remains. I just wanted to explain myself since I got a few quick downvotes. I'm always interested in why people hit the arrows in either direction...

PR nightmare in the making: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23horizon

Retweeted the story, hoping to get in on the lawsuit action.

“We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.” Michael added that the company has a “good reputation it wants to preserve.”

Something here has to be taken out of context. Surely no one whose goal was to preserve their company's reputation would say something so silly as that first statement.

At any rate, looks like it's going to be a fairly clear cut Streisand effect here.

Streisand effect, FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Mike Masnick originally coined the term Streisand effect in reference to a 2003 incident where Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million in an attempt to have the aerial photo of her house removed from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs, citing privacy concerns. Adelman stated that he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project. As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially and it became popular on the Internet, with more than 420,000 people visiting the site over the next month.

This entire situation is just truly unbelievable. I can't fathom how Horizon thinks they could have benefited from suing a tenant over such a ridiculous thing as a twitter post.

A good company would have immediately contacted her and solved the problem with no questions asked. Getting a cleaning crew out there and a free month's rent would have been the right move. Then, instead of posting about a crappy moldy apartment she might have posted about the outstanding customer service and then her "massive" collection of 20 followers might remember Horizon Realty the next time they need an apartment.

Could have turned this SMALL negative into a positive if they played it right. Instead they did something incredibly foolish and sued her. nice

On a side note, I'm thinking about starting a blog to review products and businesses. But I'm kind of worried about this kind of stuff. If I report a true incident that happened at a business (e.g., Best Buy not accepting a returned computer because I installed software on it), is there any danger of libel suits?

If you were to get a twitter following like this suit is getting - my bet is they'll drop the suit. In any case - it's not libel if it's factual information that benefits consumers. That's free speech. Libel is like calling a political opponent a child molester just to give him bad publicity.

It doesn't even have to benefit consumers (I'm pretty sure). If it's true, it's free speech. Now the question is, was the apartment moldy?

Just to clarify - I didn't mean to say that benefiting consumers is a necessary attribute - it just adds weight to their case. Wanting to silence such speech would be against consumers interests (and in this case - health/safety) and would surely be protected speech.

I'm not a lawyer, but under U.S. law, libel generally means that you've written something you knew to be false, or should have known to be false, and that you had malicious intent in doing so. There are some exceptions (e.g. food libel), but as a defendant in a libel case, you're usually better off in the U.S. than in most developed countries.

Yes, generally truth is a defense to a defamation action in the United States, by a precedent that goes back to colonial times, so when you publish, what you have to do to protect yourself is make reasonable efforts to publish true rather than false statements.

I wonder if they will be suing reviewers on Yelp next.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/horizon-realty-group-chicago-4

Check the comments to the article. It appears that the commentators are RT first, ask questions later - Questions like, "well was the apartment actually moldy?"

Has twitter forgotten #Savejon?

I'm not saying sue first, ask questions later is the right response, but the company may be in the right to defend itself.

Noone actually claimed there was mold in any apartment. Just that the company thought it was ok to sleep in one that had mold.

Which makes this a legitimate libel case - the woman was in no way qualified to make comments on company policy. If she said something like "Horizon is making me sleep in a moldy apartment" she'd be in the clear, but now she is speaking on behalf of the company, which is unjustified.

I also will hold off on bashing the company here just yet until we have the whole story. Wasn't it, like, yesterday when we found out the internet went berserk over censorship that turned out to be nothing?

oh please. Only in the USA would a company sue over something this silly. Anywhere else they'd be laughed out of court and their lawyers would get slapped with a fine.

Until they made an issue out of it nobody had even heard from her, about them or about their policies, now they have a disaster on their hands.

This is simple abuse of the court.

This is simple abuse of the court.

Do we know this? All we know is 1 tweet and a couple of quotes (possibly) taken out of context. Was there a history of tweets by this woman regarding Horizon? Sure, she only had 20-something followers, but her message was publicly available. This could actually be an interesting precedent-setting case for how courts define tweets. Is it comparable to a newspaper article, or a conversation between parties?

I wouldn't be so quick to judge the company or the woman in question. Something else to consider: Who told the media about the lawsuit?

Sure, because $50,000 sounds like a reasonable number to come up with when somebody tells their friends that you expect them to sleep in a moldy apartment.

These people need to lighten up a bit, it's a tempest in a teacup and a total waste of time and energy.

It'd be interesting to know if she was shown a moldy apartment and declined to rent it (in which case it becomes a he-said-she-said deal), or if she was already renting one and has documentary evidence of mold and unserviced requests to remove it, in which case Horizon Realty is toast.

Any lawyers here want to comment on the case? Is this libel?

And if so (uninformed legal commentary here), is it illegal to express negative opinions in writing? "My landlord doesn't care that my apartment is moldy" seems pretty tame and commonplace.

If it is a mere opinion, it would not constitute libel. For something to be libelous, it must be an assertion of fact - it must also be false and tend to injure the reputation of the party within the community.

The company would here argue that her tweet asserts that company policy deems it acceptable to expose tenants to serious health risks. It would say this is false and highly injurious to its reputation in the community.

Had this firestorm not arisen, the company might easily win through intimidation in such a lawsuit by coercing a settlement. A court could let the case get to a full trial, meaning that it would (if nothing else) take many thousands of dollars to defend it.

For this reason, it is not wise to use Twitter as a forum to vent in this way.

That said as a general matter, in this case, the company's patently idiotic response did far more to hurt its own reputation than the original statement possibly could have done. Unless it has lost its mind, it will drop the case pronto.

Thanks for the helpful response.

Isn't every opinion an assertion of fact? If I say "American cars suck" or "Apple mistreats its developer community", I'm expressing what I believe to be the truth, not just my opinion.

What's the distinction between opinions and assertions of fact?

I don't think every opinion is an assertion of fact in that true opinion is by its nature unprovable: "I think Apple makes lousy products" may be what I think (which I don't, by the way) but no one would take it as anything beyond that. Opinion is basically non-actionable under libel laws as long as it falls in the unprovable category.

You make an excellent point, though, in picking up on this issue. No less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court (in the 1990 Milkovich case) expressly rejected what it called "the creation of an artificial dichotomy" between fact and opinion and held that statements couched as opinions can be libelous if they imply false and defamatory facts.

So, if you say, "In my opinion, politician x is a drug dealer," your statement could be found to be defamatory.

For a good discussion on this, see http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/opinion-and-fair-comm....

This may be somewhat off topic, but it's also somewhat on topic. A former co-worker of mine recently posted a status update on Facebook claiming that her former boss "was the devil". The bosses name was not mentioned in the status update, but could be inferred by other co-workers, employees and etc.

Her former boss emailed her and sarcastically thanked her for the kind words, to which she replied "you're welcome". This, in effect, confirmed who she was speaking about - though it was not in a public forum for anyone else to read. He quickly threatened to file a lawsuit against her for slander, though I do not know if anything has come of it.

I'm no lawyer, but based on what I've read here and in some of the linked articles, he has no case. Obviously this is libel and not slander as it's written word and not spoken, so my assumption is the "boss" was just using scare tactics on here as had he gotten the advice of a lawyer, he would've known this. Not to mention, there is no way to prove that someone is or is not the devil, therefore the remark can't be used in case citing deformation of character, correct?

Just curious if anyone wanted to weigh in on this.

On topic: I'm curious to see if this lawsuit pans out. I'm honestly hoping it doesn't, but it will be interesting to see the outcome. Personally, I agree with most that the company should be trying to make their customers happy, not suing them over something like this.

That's real BS. I hope the judge rules the case in favor of the lady. I don't think someone with 20+ followers on twitter is going to cause so much damage enough to warrant a court case.

What an unbelievably botched response for a company that wants to protect its reputation... wow. Their spokesperson looks like a complete idiot and by drawing such attention to this otherwise minor/nothing situation, they've reaped tons of bad PR.

The Steisand effect continues to live and flourish!

I hope that article becomes #1 hit after googling for "Horizon Realty"

The OP should include "Horizon Realty" in the title of the article. That would probably seal the deal on Google.

People that have sites dealing with related topics (real estate/apartments and communications/PR) could also give them some link love. Companies that are so heroically stupid deserve to have their statements haunt them.

Well, it is now a trending topic on Twitter, that didn't take long!

no wonder.. i felt obliged to retweet the story

Horizon Realty Group can be reached at 773-529-7200

hahaha, I don't even care if if wasn't actually moldy. If Horizon Realty's policy is "sue first, ask questions later" they don't deserve good PR. Congratulations Jeffrey Michael, you're prince among spokespeople... no not really.

Better for us entrepreneurs that they are suing the Twitter user as opposed to Twitter itself.

I guess most media 'executives' still believe 'any publicity is good publicity'

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