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If
you're not putting too much thought into what you share on Facebook and
your other social media accounts, this might be a good time to remember
you must think before you post.
Take
this as a cautionary tale: A North Carolina woman is being forced to
pay $500,000 to settle a defamation lawsuit over a post she wrote on
Facebook, local TV station WCNC reports.
A
couple of years ago, Jacquelyn Hammond allegedly posted just one
sentence about a former co-worker, without actually mentioning the woman
by name. That in itself shouldn't be a problem. Right?
Well, not exactly. The post said, "I didn’t get drunk and kill my kid." According to the complaint,
Hammond was referring to the son of a colleague, who died in a gun
accident with another boy back in 1976. That colleague, who is the
plaintiff in the current case, Davyne Dial, was not drunk when she lost
her son, and she wasn't responsible for his death, either.
She
therefore had grounds to say that Hammond's post actually constituted a
libelous statement, and sued her in 2015. (These type of defamation
lawsuits can be made on grounds of libel, which means a written statement is defamatory, or slander, which is a spoken defamatory claim.)
Last
month, the women finally settled the lawsuit. Now, Hammond will have to
pay Dial $250,000 in actual damages for the defamation and emotional
distress, and she will also have to shell out an extra $250,000 in
punitive damages. Her single sentence post came at a cost of a whooping
$500,000.
Was
it worth it? We're going to take a stab and say that no, it wasn't. It
might seem that because something you share lives online, it's not
"real" and doesn't have real consequences. But that's just plain false.
So
do yourself a favor and abide by the golden rule: Think twice before
you post. And just like my mother would say, "If you don't have anything
nice to say, don't say anything at all."
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
- #social-media
- March 31,
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