Tony La Russa Twitter Lawsuit Ended For Real

from the let's-try-this-again dept

Last month, we noted that baseball manager Tony La Russa had sued Twitter over an obviously fake profile pretending to be him (the profile bio even said it was fake). Even if there was any sort of claim here, it would be against the person who created the account, not Twitter itself. Oddly, a few days later, La Russa announced that Twitter had settled the case, and was donating money to La Russa's charity. That seemed like it would set a bad precedent in that it would just give others incentive to sue Twitter. Except... it turned out it wasn't true. Even though La Russa said it happened, Twitter said there was no truth at all to the settlement or the charitable donation (quick question: would that make La Russa guilty of defamation?)

However, as Michael Scott alerts us, the lawsuit has now ended for real, with La Russa dismissing the charges after a "settlement" was reached, with no money exchanging hands either way. Hopefully, others quickly realize that suing Twitter for the actions of its users is a dead end, but I get the feeling this is not the last of these sorts of lawsuits.

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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.

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.

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:

"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?

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Tony La Russa Sues Twitter Over Fake Profile

from the let's-try-this-again... dept

Video Savant has sent in the news that St. Louis Cardinals' manager Tony La Russa is suing Twitter, claiming that the company is guilty of trademark infringement, cybersquatting and misappropriation of likeness and name, because someone set up a fake Tony La Russa profile. He claims that he tried to contact the service and was unable to get them to take down the fake profile (which seems odd, since the company has apparently been pretty good about taking down fake accounts upon request). However, when he was unable to do that, he filed the lawsuit. Either way, it's difficult to see the lawsuit going very far. While (tragically) there is no section 230 or DMCA-type safe harbors for trademark, common sense should make it clear that it's not Twitter that's the liable party here (if there's any liability), but whoever created the account. Even then, it's difficult to see this getting very far. The use wasn't "in commerce" which should preclude most trademark claims, and the nature of the fake La Russa tweets suggests that anyone who read them would likely realize that it was a parody of the real La Russa. Still, there was a similar issue recently with Kanye West getting angry over fake users on Twitter -- but it hardly seems like something worth suing about. If the person is so famous, then it's not hard for them to (as West did) point out that the profile is fake, and it shouldn't much matter any more.

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