A Chicago judge has dismissed the first libel case involving a single Twitter posting, finding that an apartment renter's gripe about her landlord was too vague and imprecise to be construed as defamatory.

Horizon Realty Group, which manages 15 buildings in Chicago, filed the libel suit in July after Amanda Bonnen wrote in a Twitter post, “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay.” The suit seeks at least $50,000 in damages, alleging the Tweet was “wholly false” and damaged Horizon's reputation.

The case raises the issue of whether Tweets are “pointless babble” that an average reader would not take literally. “When one considers Ms. Bonnen's allegedly defamatory tweet in the social context and setting in which the statement was published, its nature as rhetorical hyperbole is apparent,” Bonnen argued in a motion to dismiss.

In October, a Los Angeles judge refused to dismiss a Twitter-libel case against rocker Courtney Love, who described a fashion designer as an “asswipe nasty lying hosebag thief” in a series of Tweets.

But after a hearing last week, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane J. Larsen found Bonnen's Tweet was “nonactionable as a matter of law” and granted the motion with prejudice -– which means the case cannot be amended and refiled.

Larsen did not issue a detailed ruling but Bonnen attorney Leslie Ann Reis says the judge “found the Tweet to be vague, imprecise, having no [factual] context in that it was not sufficiently connected to the plaintiff, and could be innocently construed.”

Illinois law allows judges to find a statement is not defamatory if it is capable of being reasonably interpreted in an “innocent” way. “This really wasn’t a case about Twitter,” Reis tells On Point. “It was a case about defamation and whether the content of Ms. Bonnen’s Tweet fit the legal definition of defamation under Illinois law.”

Reis's comments suggest Larsen did not put much weight on the broader argument about the “social and literary context” of Twitter postings in general.

Bonnen's Tweet was certainly less personal than Love's Twitter-tirade against designer Dawn Simorangkir, aka “Boudoir Queen,” which consisted of no fewer than 10 allegedly defamatory tweets posted within the space of 21 minutes.

“She provides no background for her statement, nor does she accuse Plaintiff of any action,” Bonnen said in her motion. “She simply speculates about 'Horizon realty's' thoughts without any context.”

According to Horizon, no mold was ever found in Bonnen's apartment in the Buena Terrace building. In a brief opposing dismissal, the company argued that the term “moldy” is libelous and “the 'mere opinion' rationale Bonnen asks this Court to adopt should not serve to save a person making a libelous statement from responsibility.”

Bonnen struck the first blow in the legal battle, filing a housing law class action against Horizon in June. Another Chicago judge denied a motion to dismiss that case in November.

In another Twitter-libel case, the creator of the Cookie Diet weight-loss program has sued reality TV star Kim Kardashian for describing the diet as “unhealthy” in a Tweet. Dr. Sanford Siegal alleges Kardashian had a “commercial motive” to defame him because she is a paid spokesperson for the Quick Trim diet.

By Matthew Heller
1/29/10