Missing apostrophe in Facebook post lands man in legal trouble, costs him millions
An Australian real estate agent's failure to include an apostrophe in his Facebook post has landed him in legal trouble.
FollowHave you ever thought a wrongly placed or missing punctuation can do you harm? Any random person and most people would say it’s not a big deal on social media.
However, an Australian real estate agent's failure to include an apostrophe in his Facebook post has landed him in legal trouble.
The real estate agent, Anthony Zadravic failed to include an apostrophe in his Facebook post which was meant to criticise his former employer who had failed to pay him the retirement funds and the post landed him in legal trouble, reported The Guardian.
The incident took place in October last year, when a realtor, Anthony Zadravic of New South Wales (NSW) Central Coast shared a post on Facebook against Stuart Gan, his employer. In the post he wrote, " "Oh Stuart Gan!! Selling multi-million $ homes in Pearl Beach but can’t pay his employees superannuation. Shame on you Stuart!!! 2 yrs and still waiting!!!"
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The problem with the post is that the word 'employees' didn't have an apostrophe. Superannuation is a retirement system that is followed by many companies in Australia. In it, money is paid by employers into accounts of employees.
As his post missed an apostrophe for the word employees, it indicated that he was referring to several employees of the real estate agent rather than only himself.
If the post was only meant for his non-payment of dues, the sentence should have been ‘can’t pay his employee’s superannuation.
Though Zadravic deleted the post within 12 hours, Gan was made aware of it and he filed a defamation case against his former employee, the report further said.
Zadravic pleaded the court to dismiss the petition, saying the failure to punctuate social media post was trivial. But the court last week allowed the case to proceed pointing to the seriousness of the claim in it, said The Guardian report.
Judge Judith Gibson said the missing apostrophe suggests "a systematic pattern of conduct", saying that the failure to pay looks deliberate.
The judge also noted such instances where Facebook posts cost their authors dearly, the report added.
Zadravic is now facing the prospect of paying more than $1,80,000 in damages.
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