Punctuation matters. An Australian man is being sued by his former employer over a Facebook post which read "employees" instead of "employee's". The distinction is that, as published, the implication is that the employer didn't pay any his employees' required pension contributions. The man claims it was a typo and he meant to type "employee's", referring to himself.
The New York Times (paywalled) has more details as well as a discussion of Australia's notorious defamation laws.
Less than 12 hours after the post was published on Oct. 22, Mr. Zadravic, who is based on the Central Coast in New South Wales, deleted it. But it was too late. Mr. Gan became aware of the message and filed a defamation claim against Mr. Zadravic.
On Thursday, a judge in New South Wales ruled that the lack of an apostrophe on the word “employees” could be read to suggest a “systematic pattern of conduct” by Mr. Gan’s agency rather than an accusation involving one employee. So she allowed the case to proceed.
It could cost him 180,000 Australian dollars.
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