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Court Rules Parents May Be Liable For What Their Kids Post On Facebook

Posted by samzenpus on from the sticks-and-stones-may-break-my-bones-and-fake-profiles-will-always-hurt-me dept.

schwit1 writes Parents can be held liable for what their kids post on Facebook, a Georgia appellate court ruled in a decision that lawyers said marked a legal precedent on the issue of parental responsibility over their children's online activity. The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled that the parents of a seventh-grade student may be negligent for failing to get their son to delete a fake Facebook profile that allegedly defamed a female classmate.

38 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. Why not? When you have kids.. by saloomy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If your kids happen to make money, parents control that money until they are 18. They should also suffer the liability as well. You can't have one without the other. Either children are responsible or they are not.

    1. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The internet isn't some zone that is free from libel and slander laws just because "it's on a computer."

    2. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by sumdumass · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is a principle in most states that place limits and in some cases indemnify parents from some acts committed by children due to the fact that children are thinking creature capable of acting on their own will. It's sort of like school, you can teach them all day long but will they learn and will they put what they learned to use or will they attempt something they have not even learned yet.

      In some cases, your kid may be the only one liable for the broken window.

      But this case isn't exactly like that. It was a defamation case over a fake facebook profile and it wasn't the fact that it existed that made the parents liable. It was that it remained up for 11 months and viewable after the parents were contacted and the two students behind it was suspended from school as well as disciplined by their own parents.

      This is more sort of more like if your kid kept swinging balls into the neighbors window for 11 months after being told he broke it the first time.

    3. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So, when I start publishing about how you're a pedo, and now you can't get a job because of it, you're cool with it, right?

    4. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      fustakrakich is a convicted repeated child rapist who has never expressed remorse or guilt for his crimes. This is fact.

    5. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      That's OK, as long as you don't post his credit card information.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    6. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by jklovanc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I am just glad that most countries disagree with you. Libel and slander has been in Common Law for centuries and I doubt it will ever change.

      Sanction the believers who act, not the preacher who speaks.

      How do you sanction someone who decides not to vote for a candidate due to the lies posted about the candidate? How about the people who shun the citizen due to the lies making him out to be a pedophile? Most time the actions of the believers are not sanctionable but they still harm the person libeled.

    7. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by fustakrakich · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Quite simply, my beef is with the morons who would believe you. To you yourself, the only proper response would be crafty verbal one. I might need to hire a writer for such a purpose...

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    8. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's right. Words != action... The word 'hate' has been appropriated way too much to justify witchhunts. If your safety is threatened, call the police. People need to stop equating every little bullshit insult as 'threatening hate speech'. They also need to learn the concept of hyperbole.

    9. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by jklovanc · · Score: 2

      It must be nice to never be effected by the statements of others. Libelous statements can effect carriers, political office, social interactions, etc. Why should someone be able to publish lies about someone else? Please note the difference between a negative opinion and a lie. For example, "I think he is an idiot" is an opinion while "He diddle small children" is a lie if he didn't actually do it.

    10. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In this particular issue, the kids who posted this page had already been suspended for a few days, the school and the parents all knew about this FB page for 11 months! It would be one thing if the page had only been up a little while, and no one knew about it. But it was up for almost a whole year AFTER the whole incident had come out in public. The page was identity theft, making the "user" look like a slut, very racist, made her look "fat" via some app. The school gave the kids two days in-school suspension, but refused to tell the victim's parents who it was even though they knew. 11 months where two sets of parents AND the school administration knew what was happening but just...ignored it? Why the perp's parents didn't force them to take it down either means the parents endorsed the page or their SO absent that, even though their kids got in trouble for a FB page, didn't care enough to do anything about it for almost a whole year.

    11. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by Zak3056 · · Score: 2

      Well, now that's just not true. None of the amendments in the Bill of Rights are absolute. Not one. They were not intended to be absolute, either, according to the Founders. Every single one has exceptions.

      The constitution, as written, is a whitelist of things the government is allowed to do. The bill of rights is a list of examples of things it is not allowed to do. This suggestion that there are exceptions has no basis in the text of either one. I'll never understand how some people can read, "congress shall make no law," "shall not be infringed," "no person shall be deprived of life liberty or property without due process of law," and other similar statements and come up with "this isn't absolute."

      --
      What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
    12. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This suggestion that there are exceptions has no basis in the text of either one.

      The Founding Fathers loved exceptions. Remember,

      We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

      ...except you black guys over there, and you Native Americans over there, and you women over there, just shut up and get back in the kitchen. Oh, and only people with money get to vote. God bless America.

      "Self-evident truths" my ass.

      Seriously, you can find a lot of the ratification debates on the Internet if you care to ever learn a little bit about the founding of this great nation. It's pretty clear that the whole Bill of Rights thing was a stop-gap to get a handful of slave-owners to ratify the Constitution, or the whole thing would fall apart. They meant the entire damn Constitution to be a first draft, maybe to last a decade at most, and then get replaced by something that made sense and wasn't so full of holes. It wasn't supposed to become some kind of civic holy scripture.

      The very first Supreme Court established exceptions to the Bill of Rights. Congress "shall make no law" infringing your rights, as long as you behave. And guess what happened. People didn't behave. Somebody started shooting up the town when they got drunk and all of a sudden laws to keep guns out of irresponsible hands were made. People libeled other people and instead of letting them go down to the river to shoot it out in a duel, libel laws were created to infringe on that First Amendment. And even the very first Supreme Court, guys who not only hung with the Founding Fathers, but who were Founding Fathers themselves said, "Well, of course. Because some people don't know how to fucking behave."

      What part of "two hundred plus years of precedent" is so hard to understand?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    13. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      So you don't believe that speech is an action? It's somehow divorced from human behavior to such an extent that it has no effect on other people?

      If your rights extend only to the nose of the other person, don't they also extend only to the ears and the eyes?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    14. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by Pfhorrest · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's the Declaration of Independence you're quoting, which was not authored by precisely the same people, not subject to the approval of the same people, as those who wrote and ratified the Constitution, which was written 11 years later and wasn't even a document of the same type. Jefferson and those he presumed to speak for may well really have found it self-evident that all men were created equal, at least self-evident enough to pronounce the fact to the British while effectively declaring war against them. But that's a far cry from convincing a continental convention of representatives of legislatures of thirteen recently-sovereign states, legislatures elected by and representing, in part, wealthy land- and slave-owners, to enshrine such principle in the nigh-immutible supreme law of the lands in which said electorate lived.

      In other words, it's one thing for a small handful of people to profess principles to their enemies; it's another thing entirely to get whole societies to agree to bind themselves to those principles. The fact that the professed principles of the founders were immediately ignored says nothing about the intent of those founders, and everything about our collective disrespect for principle in general when the rubber hits the road.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    15. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by fustakarkich · · Score: 2

      Is it okay to impersonate somebody and make them look bad? I, fustakrakich, thinks it's just nigga-ass-fucking awesome.

    16. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by mwvdlee · · Score: 2

      This isn't mere libel.
      This is a case of one person impersonating another.
      Not parodying, but with the intent of making the world believe he is that person.
      This is a case of identity theft.
      There are no freedom-of-speech conflicts here.

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    17. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not all bad words can be ignored.

      Let's say a young women is raped and killed. I bear false witness and tell the police that I saw you rape and kill her. Even without going to court, I've gotten you arrested. I convince thirty friends to also say they saw you rape and kill her. We all tell our stories repeatedly to the grief-stricken father who then beats you half to death.

      None of us did anything but use speech. Of course, it's the father who would be liable for your injuries, but would you really say that we weren't complicit by taking advantage of a man's grief in order to see you injured?

      Remember, libel laws are civil laws, not criminal. They indicate culpability in damages, not the commission of a crime.

      Not all bad words can be ignored. And bad words, on their own can do real damage.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. I don't get it. by BitterOak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the remarks were truly defamatory, then couldn't the girl or her parents simply get Facebook to delete the fake profile?

    --
    If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
  3. You have it wrong. by tlambert · · Score: 2

    If your kids happen to make money, parents control that money until they are 18. They should also suffer the liability as well.

    You can't have one without the other. Either children are responsible or they are not.

    You have it wrong.

    The page was created on a school computer while the school was acting in loco parentis for the child. If anyone should be held responsible *instead of the child, whose fault it is*, it would be the school, with "contribution to the delinquency of a minor" by the "friend" who helped them create the page.

    At worst, the parents are guilty of "contributory negligence" for not being software engineers.

    1. Re:You have it wrong. by saloomy · · Score: 5, Informative

      At worst, the parents are guilty of "contributory negligence" for not being software engineers.

      Nonsense.

      If your kid is in a park, grabs a rock, throws it at someone and causes harm, then you are responsible. Not the parks office, not the city, not the state, and not in the case of this incident, the school.

      As a parent you are responsible for the actions of your kids in place of themselves since they are children. If you want to understand if the school should be blamed, ask yourself, would the school be blamed if the person was an adult? No. Of course not, that would be silly. The School had as much to do with the activity as the ISP serving the school. It isn't accepting full liability because you chose to exercise their facilities to perform your actions. Just like an ISP isn't responsible if you use their network to organize a murder (see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act). The school is not liable, the person is. But, because the person is underage, the person's parents are responsible. Its as simple as that. You are responsible for your kids actions, you in place of them. Don't like it? Don't have kids. Having kids involves accepting responsibility for them. Its that simple.

      So, no sir, you have it wrong.

    2. Re:You have it wrong. by tlambert · · Score: 2

      If you want to understand if the school should be blamed, ask yourself, would the school be blamed if the person was an adult? No. Of course not, that would be silly. The School had as much to do with the activity as the ISP serving the school.

      They didn't control access to the computers in such a way as to prevent this kind of usage by students. In the case of an adult in the same situation, the school is guilty of, at a bare minimum, presenting an attractive nuisance in the form of a computer that could be used for this.

      But this is all hemming and hawing about "how can we blame someone other than the kid for the actions of the kid?", which is pretty stupid on the face of it. In any other bullying situation, such as assault and battery, you don't blame the parents; you send the kid to juvie, and they get to go to school there, with all of the other genetic sociopaths.

    3. Re:You have it wrong. by Mr.CRC · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You are advocating that one person should be liable for the actions of another person.

      This is sloppy without clarifying how the different categories of criminal vs. civil liability should be handled.

      Holding parents criminally liable is intractable because there is no certain way to control a child or any other person. I'm talking absolute control. Any law that holds you responsible for forces that you cannot control must be invalidated, or else societal disintegration will eventually result. Such inherent contradictions predictably lead to disaster.

      Furthermore, there are also laws making it felony child abuse to employ nearly any sort of corporal punishment (not that I advocate that) and laws are interpreted so liberally that nearly any attempt to employ physical force to restrain, control, or restrict the behavior of a child may be interpreted as felony child abuse. So our society wants a person to be liable for the actions of a child, and also makes them criminally liable if they try to use force to discipline a child.

      Also, as has been mentioned by others, children are legally mandated by the state to attend school. Parents cannot possibly control a child while they are at school. Yet they should be prosecuted if the child commits a crime while under state mandated separation from the parents?

      This is all complete insanity. Of course, I only expect matters to get much, much worse...

    4. Re:You have it wrong. by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In any other bullying situation, such as assault and battery, you don't blame the parents; you send the kid to juvie, and they get to go to school there, with all of the other genetic sociopaths.

      For any other bullying situation, such as assault and battery, the perpetrators are jocks and they don't get punished at all, but the kid who got beat on gets told that he shouldn't do whatever he did to make them angry.

      You're acting like schools do something about bullying, but that's complete bullshit. Only when there is a lawsuit do they give a fat flying fuck. And that's why we're hearing about this now. I was bullied from sixth grade on and literally nothing was ever done about it. I was consistently blamed for the bullying. Mental health is the last illness we consistently blame on the victim.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. Re:Why is the school involved? by gatfirls · · Score: 2

    Was any of this done on school grounds or using school equipment? From what I read it was all done at their homes.

    The school has absolutely no business mediating online shenanigans, or really anything at all that happens off school grounds that don't directly affect the school. That's a massive slippery slope and them compelling him to make a statement is now a legal problem for him and his parents.

    We have courts and police for this stuff. Schools need to be focused on what happens on school grounds.

  5. The Actual Issue by hduff · · Score: 5, Informative

    The parents were notified of the defamation and took no action to close the FB account, which remained available for another 11 months. The parents were held directly liable for failing to act once notified, not for what was posted on the fake FB account.

    It's all in the PDF of the decision linked in the summary above, if you're not too lazy to read it.

    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
    1. Re:The Actual Issue by JonSchell · · Score: 2

      And they shouldn't have been. It's up to the person who created the FB account to close it, or for FB to close it for them if the court ordered that.

    2. Re:The Actual Issue by BitterOak · · Score: 2

      The parents were notified of the defamation and took no action to close the FB account, which remained available for another 11 months. The parents were held directly liable for failing to act once notified, not for what was posted on the fake FB account.

      And Facebook was notified of the defamation and took no action for 11 months. Why is Facebook not liable? After all, Facebook had the technical ability to delete the account; the parents did not. For all we know, the kid may have even forgotten the password.

      --
      If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
  6. Re:Why is the school involved? by jklovanc · · Score: 2

    The school has absolutely no business mediating online shenanigans, or really anything at all that happens off school grounds that don't directly affect the school.

    It probably started on the school ground where the children met and will continue on the school grounds where the children will interact every day.

    We have courts and police for this stuff. Schools need to be focused on what happens on school grounds.

    Do you really want a 7th grader hauled off to juvenile court for posting a Facebook page when it can much more easily be solved within the school? A school's job is education and educating a student that online bullying is withing that purview. The schools are focusing on what happens on school grounds as Facebook bullying leads directly to school grounds bullying.

  7. Re:Responsibility yes, automatic liability no by gnasher719 · · Score: 2

    If you are going to make me liable for something then I has to be something under my control. Short of tying my kids up in chains and never letting them do anything there is no way for me do absolutely guarantee that they will never do anything which causes liability. Not only would I refuse to do that it would be illegal and society does not want parents to do that: kids have to learn to control their own behaviour and that means giving them the freedom to do things wrong.

    If you read at least the summary, the parents weren't liable for their kids making a post (which kids can do since you can't control them permanently). The parents were liable for their kids not removing a post, which is something the parents should have been able to control.

  8. Summary is _grossly_ wrong. by jthill · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Among the "undisputed facts"::

    The unauthorized profile and page remained accessible to Facebook users until Facebook officials deactivated the account on April 21, 2012,, not long after the Bostons filed their lawsuit on April 3, 2012 [3]. During the 11 months the unauthorized profile and page could be viewed, the Athearns made no attempt to view the unauthorized page, and they took no action to determine the content of te false, profane, and ethnically offensive information that Dustin was charged with electronically distributing. They did not attempt to learn to whom Dustin had distributed the false and offensive information or whether the distribution was ongoing. They did not tell Dustin to delete the page. Furthermore, they made no attempt to determine whether the false and offensive information Dustin was charged with distributing could be corrected, deleted, or retracted.

    [...]
    [3] Indeed, Facebook's records showed that, months after Dustin's principal notified the Athearns that Dustin had been disciplined for creating the unauthorized account, the fake persona continued to extend or accept requests to become Facebook Friends with additional users and that other users viewed and posted on the unauthorized page until the day before Facebook deactivated the account.

    From the court's discussion of the legality of the lower court's grant of summary judgement in favor of the Athearns:

    Under Georgia law, liability for the tort of a minor child is not imputed to the child's parents merely on the basis of the parent-child relationship. Parents may be held directly liable, however, for their own negligence in failing to supervise or control their child with regard to conduct which poses an unreasonable risk of harming others.

    Since the parents knew for almost a year that their child had posted (no kidding, chase the link) grossly offensive, defamatory, libelous information and admit they not only did nothing, at all, ever, to even so much as look at it, they didn't even tell the kid to take it down, the appeals court's reversed the summary judgement in their favor, because it seems apparent that a jury might find them negligent for that.

    --
    As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
    1. Re:Summary is _grossly_ wrong. by flopsquad · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Indeed. The GA Court of Appeals did not say that (quoting TFS) "Parents can be held liable for what their kids post on Facebook." What they did say is that the parents' 11 months of inaction, after they were given notice of their son's defamatory FB profile, could constitute negligence. A reasonable jury could possibly find that not telling your kid to take such content down was negligent, and it's a question for the jury. Thus the subject matter of this case is on the internet, but it's not really about the internet. The parents could be liable under the same theory if they knew their son was handing out flyers with this defamatory content and did nothing for 11 months.

      For those less acquainted with the trial process in the US, this appeal by the plaintiff parents (of the defamed girl) was from the trial court's granting of summary judgment in favor of the defendant parents (of the defaming boy). This is type of motion usually happens before any of the actual "trial-y" kinds of things like impaneling a jury and witness testimony, and it's based only on each side's contentions and the undisputed facts that both parties have agreed on. The defendant parents essentially argued, "Based on all the facts we stipulated to, and looking at the plaintiffs' assertions in a light most favorable to them, they still can't win. Even if what they're arguing is 100% right, no reasonable jury could find against us. Judge, can you just end this thing now?"

      Specifically, here, it appears they argued something like "The defamation occurred when junior posted that stuff, and we had no actual knowledge, nor reason to believe junior would do such a thing, until after the school told us--long after the defamatory act!" And the trial court judge said, roughly, "Yup, I'm not even going to let a jury hear this, no jury could find you liable for what your kid did. Parents aren't vicariously liable for their kids' torts, etc etc."

      The appellate court said, in response, "Um, yeah fine, you're not on the hook for the acts that occurred before you knew. But after you knew, you did nothing to stop it or even inquire into it, and the defamation was ongoing that whole time. This is not an automatic slam dunk for you, defendants; you need to present your evidence and arguments to a jury."

      Note that at the actual trial, the parents may be able to present a decent argument for why they didn't do anything (which behavior was very curious to me). Maybe the parents are luddites and they asked their son if he ripped all the bad pages out of the Facebooks and flushed them down the interweb tubes, and he said, "yeah sure." I don't know, but those are the kinds of factual arguments they'll have to make to a jury to explain why they let this go on so long after they knew.

      --
      Nothing posted to /. has ever been legal advice, including this.
  9. Re:Responsibility yes, automatic liability no by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 3, Interesting

    it wasn't just a "post", it was a whole fake profile complete with racial comments, sexual perversions, morphed photos, etc. Really it's identity theft and libel.

  10. Re:7th grade? by vic-traill · · Score: 2

    In the UK that equates to a 12 year old.

    The minimum age for a Facebook account is 13. It's right there, in their terms and conditions.

    Parental fail.

    Maybe the *kid* was failing. He could be 15 if he's been held back enough.

    --
    [17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
  11. Yawn by swillden · · Score: 2

    Haven't parents always been liable for the actions of their children? I've always figured I was. If my kids made some mess they couldn't clean up, I knew I was on the hook for it. I suppose I shouldn't speak in the past tense, because I still have two who aren't yet legal adults.

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    1. Re:Yawn by flopsquad · · Score: 2

      That's entirely incorrect. In both the civil and criminal realms, there are only specific circumstances in which a parent is liable for a child's actions. States say it all different kinds of ways, with different age thresholds for a child's responsibility generally, but one formulation is "A parent is only liable for the tort or violent act of the child if that parent knew or had reason to know the child [had a history of doing X]/[presented a danger to because of condition X]/[was planning to do X]/[was actually in the act of doing X]."

      As is the case here, the parent's initial defense was "We didn't have reason to know until it had already happened!" and the appeals court said "Yeah but you had actual knowledge of the ongoing defamatory act and a jury might find you had a duty to stop it."

      But in general, no. In the US, if your always-peaceful child spazzes out and punches someone, or does some property damage, or shoots someone (with $notYourGun), you're not generally ("vicariously") liable (as an employer might be) in either civil or criminal law. Another example: you are not liable if they somehow manage to obtain a credit card in their own name and rack up debt, and neither are they (contract is voidable at the minor's will), which is why CC companies don't give credit cards to minors without mom or dad cosigning.

      In the sense that sibling AC means, yes, you are "responsible" for raising your kids to not do shitty shit, and for disciplining them when they do. And most parents of conscience would take moral responsibility and pay for the broken window, apologize (and get junior to apologize) for the rude remarks he made to his teacher, or make sure the nasty FB page was taken down.

      --
      Nothing posted to /. has ever been legal advice, including this.
  12. Re:Why is the school involved? by jklovanc · · Score: 2

    Either we have unfettered freedom of speech, or we do not. This is true.

    You are correct but where does it say "unfettered freedom of speech" in the US Constitution? As far as I can tell it just says "free speech". It also says "freedom of association" when most conditions of parole state that the parolee can not associate with known criminals. All rights have limits. Also, since this is a civil suit not a criminal suit, where does it say one is free from liability for the damage caused by that speech.

    The right to popular speech doesn't need to be protected.

    That is correct but the right to lie and cause damage to someone else is not, and should not be, protected.

    I am saying that these laws do degrade the freedom of speech to "the freedom of non-libelous and non-slanderous speech as determined by hundreds of years of Common Law and a large number of judges and elected officials".

    FTFY. Libel and slander laws have been around for a very long time and there is plenty of case law to define exactly what it is and is not.

    I am also not saying that speech is never bad. I am saying that the "cure" for bad speech of degrading freedom of speech is worse than the disease.

    That is your opinion and, thankfully, an opinion held only by a few.

  13. Re:School != Parents, in any way shape or form by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

    That you don't think they do a good job of it doesn't mean it doesn't apply.

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