Legal Research

Love Twitter Defamation

By Shaunna Mireau

Thumper’s law: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all”.

The cost of not being nice was recently measured in a recent social media defamation settlement. The New York Times (among others) recently reported a $430,000.00 settlement was reached in Simorangkir v. Love.

The Citizen Media Law Project has a great deal of information on this saga, including pleadings.

I would like to see a judicial decision address the issue of whether there is defamation via a 140 character tweet. I don’t think media reports of a settlement are quite enough to settle this argument. Or are they? I look forward to being educated through comments.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on March 08, 2011 (boomark / email).