Prof. McGeveran Quoted by Star Tribune on $370K Facebook Venting Verdict

Professor William McGeveran was quoted by the Star Tribune in an article about the verdict against a Minnesota beekeeper who took to Facebook to air his grievances about a Texas couple who sold him bees that died while he was transporting them back to Minnesota. The jury awarded the couple $105,000 for business losses caused by the libel, $240,000 for loss of reputation and $25,000 in punitive damages, for a total of $370,000.

McGeveran said that these types of cases are likely to expand as the social media continues to grow.

"Social media makes it a lot easier to shoot your mouth off," he said. "And sometimes people aren't as careful when they're posting on Facebook or Twitter as when they're giving a quote to a newspaper reporter or writing an essay for a magazine. But what they say is just as public and the legal risk is just the same."