La Russa & The AP Claims Twitter Settled Lawsuit... Twitter Sets The Record Straight
from the that's-not-quite-right dept
Last week, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter over a fake account made in his name. La Russa had no case. Multiple lawyers chimed in, and I've yet to hear from any who thought he had even a remote chance to win this case. However, the AP reported that Twitter settled, deleted the account and agreed to donate an undisclosed sum to a La Russa-backed charity. This seemed like a really bad idea, because it would just encourage others who had fake accounts opened up to sue. Hell, if someone were really sneaky, they could get a friend to open up a fake account, and then go and sue Twitter to get some settlement money. Giving in to bullies with no legal basis can come back to haunt you.But... Twitter is claiming the story is not true. It does say that it deleted the account, but that's because of the terms of service violation -- not because of any settlement. Instead:
Reports this week that Twitter has settled a law suit and officially agreed to pay legal fees for an impersonation complaint that was taken care of by our support staff in accordance with our Terms are erroneous. Twitter has not settled, nor do we plan to settle or pay.Now that is a lot more like it. In the meantime, it's worth noting that La Russa still doesn't seem to recognize the case still has no chance:
With due respect to the man and his notable work, Mr. La Russa's lawsuit was an unnecessary waste of judicial resources bordering on frivolous. Twitter's Terms of Service are fair and we believe will be upheld in a court that will ultimately dismiss Mr. La Russa's lawsuit.
"There is a law against improperly using a person's name without authorization and it wasn't authorized."I'm curious (a) which law he's talking about specifically and (b) how this was "improper use." The account was clearly a parody (and said so in the bio). There was no implied endorsement of anything or other misuse of La Russa's name. And, even if La Russa's statement was true, the liability would certainly be on whoever created the account -- not Twitter. While the details of what actually happened still aren't clear... I'm guessing that after Twitter deleted the account, La Russa simply assumed they "settled." Most likely, his lawyers will drop the lawsuit, but it would be interesting to see if Twitter pushes to keep the lawsuit in place in order to try to get a favorable ruling and use it to prevent other, similar, frivolous lawsuits.
Oh, and in the meantime, isn't the Associated Press supposed to fact check things like "Tony La Russa and Twitter have reached a settlement in his lawsuit against the social networking site" and "Twitter has agreed to pay legal fees and make a donation to his Animal Rescue Foundation" both of which appear not to be true? The AP keeps telling us that only its "professional" journalists get things right -- whereas those "amateur" bloggers out there screw up the news all the time. Or did the AP figure that it could get away with not fact checking, since it could just threaten to sue any blogger who quoted its erroneous report?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: cybersquatting, lawsuits, misappropriation, tony la russa, trademark
Companies: associated press, twitter
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Well, to be fair to Tony, he'd had fourteen martinis and drove a car into a tree on the property of Mark McGuirre, who went into 'roids rage and slapped him with his man-mammaries....so cut him some slack.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
couldn't twitter sue AP?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Fact Checkers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Fact Checkers
Papers have debt because they were trying to "return value to shareholders" through dividends and when debt was some how the financial fashion statement. Of course, that's unrelated to the comment here.
How in the world is AP not to blame if the quote from the beginning goes like this:
"ST. LOUIS (AP) — St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and Twitter have reached a settlement in his lawsuit against the social networking site."
Note the letters in parenthesis.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Fact Checkers
I had always thought that meant it was a synthesized report. I didn't realize that AP had its own reporters on staff.
OK, I take it back. Blame away at AP. They really have no excuse for not staffing a copy desk.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Fact Checkers
It seems perfectly fair to me. The product that the AP provides is accurate news. If the AP provides innacurate news, not only does their overall reputation and marketability decrease, but they've failed to provide a quality product which makes it perfectly fair to criticize them. Saying it's unfair to criticize the AP for publishing erroneous information is like saying it's unfair to blame St. Louis Cardinals when they lose a game.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Fact Checkers
And hence the real problem with the AP - if all you do is pass around stories in the Internet Age, aren't you pretty much irrelevant at this point then? Where is the value add in today's Internet World for that?
Freedom
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AP Fact Checking?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AP Fact Checking?
Crappy reporting.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Batting Next...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Thank goodness
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just think
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I believe everything Twitter says but...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I believe everything Twitter says but...
Prepare for a hacking charge next.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You kids have fun now.
Don't give Tgeigs too much crap. You don't want his impersonator hunting you down. After all, they may turn out to be the opposite of Tgeigs-- socially conservative and fiscally liberal. What a horrible thought!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Notice the typo?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
what if...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Blame the driver not the car
Next time I search Google Images with Safe Search off and a topless woman shows up in my results, I'm going to sue Google.
Where's the common sense? Thank you Twitter for standing your ground.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Blame the driver not the car
Actually, people do that all the time and win. Showing that a product had a defect in it and was not corrected creates liability.
Twitter has knowingly created a system where anyone can take on the personality of a celeb and claim to be them, making false statements or otherwise causing harm. Knowing that this defect exists, Twitter hasn't done anything to fix the issue, thus creating the potential for liabilty (under your example).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Blame the driver not the car
Umm, yeah they have, you can request to remove the fake profiles.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Journalism?
Recently an article (AP? Think so) by a "professional" journalist said (paraphrasing) "vitamins are useless". The ScienceDaily article that was plagiarized from (even some of the same grammatical mistakes) went on to say "for heart attack prevention" and "known to be beneficial for other reasons", etc. TOTALLY different result!!!
Professional? I don't think so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]