Missing apostrophe in Facebook post lands NSW real estate agent in legal hot water – The Guardian

A real estate agent’s failure to use an apostrophe in a Facebook post could prove costly after a New South Wales court declined to dismiss a defamation case against him on the basis it was trivial.Late on 22 October last year, Anthony Zadravic posted that another real estate agent was “selling multi million $ (sic) homes in Pearl Beach but can’t pay his employees superannuation”.“Shame on you Stuart!!! 2 yrs and still waiting!!!” the post read.There is a suggestion the NSW Central Coast realtor meant to have an apostrophe after the word employee and was only referring to his experience.He says the post, written about 10.30pm, was deleted within 12 hours and wasn’t capable of defaming the people as claimed.The legal costs and court resources required to determine the claim would also be out of all proportion to the interest at stake, he claimed.But the NSW district court last week turned down his application to dismiss, pointing to the seriousness of the claims in the post and finding the alleged defamatory meanings reasonably capable of being conveyed.Judge Judith Gibson said the difficulty for Zadravic was the use of employees in the plural as it suggests “a systematic pattern of conduct”.“To…
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