@Horizon_Group_Management You have made a horrible mistake #frivolouslawsuits

Jul 28, 2009

By Charles.

Not everyone gets to live in paradise. Some people have to live in Chicago. Living in Chicago isn't cheap, so if your apartment sucks you probably need to vent about it. And sometimes you need to vent 140 characters at a time.

Amanda Bonnen needed to vent her frustration that her landlord, Horizon Group Management, didn't seem to care about the mold in her apartment. The 20 followers on her twitter account saw Ms. Bonnen tweet "… Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment is bad for you? Horizon realty thinks its okay."

Then Horizon Group sued her for libel.

There are signs that Hardt Stern & Kayne are not experienced libel practitioners, chiefly that they allege that Bonnen's statement was "liable [sic] per se," but also that their website notes that they typically represent "automobile dealers and real estate developers". I wonder, when Horizon Realty Group turned to Hardt Stern for "cost effective, logical, creative and commonsense litigation services," if they expected to be counseled to brew up a massive shitstorm that resulted in the whole country – instead of Bonner's 20 followers – knowing that they had a moldy apartment and an indifferent management company. The long list of fields in which Bret Rappaport claims expertise does not include libel law, nor does it apparently include damage control. Perhaps he should stick to wildflowers.

Since being sued, Bonner has closed her twitter account, a chirpy chronicle of a happy-go-lucky girl for whom things keep going wrong (See the suit here: Twitter lawsuit Horizon Group Realty v Amanda Bonner). On May 4, she tweeted "abonner Isn't into this whole legal process thing". She had no idea.

Via The Awl

Last 5 posts by Charles

Your Friday Afternoon Encourages You to Hang On - July 22nd, 2011
Everyone Follows Instructions, Right? - June 30th, 2011
To Catch a Predator - February 9th, 2011
The War on the War on the War on Christmas Just Got a Little Harder - December 18th, 2010
Fine, I'm a Sheep - November 23rd, 2010

9 Comments

internet, Lawyers Behaving Badly, unintended consequences

7 Comments

Jag • Jul 28, 2009 @10:28 am

Look out Tweeters. Hardt Stern is liable to sue you.
Ken • Jul 28, 2009 @10:34 am

Welcome to the Streisand Effect.
dawn summers • Jul 28, 2009 @12:20 pm

What does Streisand effect mean?
Patrick • Jul 28, 2009 @12:27 pm

Unduly publicizing a minor problem or annoyance by making attempting to suppress it through litigation, or by complaining on the internet, thus publicizing it to a far wider audience than it originally had.

The internet is a megaphone for good or evil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Jag • Jul 28, 2009 @2:56 pm

Oh internet, you are just a never ending source of entertainment:

"Jeffrey Michael, whose family has run Horizon for more than 25 years, said: "The statements are obviously false, and it's our intention to prove that."

He said that while she moved out recently, the company never had a conversation about the post and never asked her to take it down.

"We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization," he said, noting that the company manages 1,500 apartments in Chicago and has a good reputation it wants to preserve."
http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1687436,CST-NWS-twitter28web.article

And either Ken is prophetic or he already knew that the Wiki entry for the Streisand Effect already included this story.
Shaunbacca • Jul 28, 2009 @11:53 pm

Do Horizon actually have a chance in hell of winning this suit?
Windypundit • Jul 29, 2009 @7:34 am

The lawsuit is already in the number 3-through-whatever results for "Horizon Group Management". (The first hit, by the way is for the apparently unrelated and unfortunately named Horizon Management Group.)