Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and former Michigan Republican Party Chair Saul Anuzis have threatened to sue a pro-Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) group over a posting on Twitter using their names.
Attorneys for Gingrich and Anuzis wrote a pro-EFCA group on Wednesday, asking them to disable a posting by the anonymously-owned “EFCANOW” handle, which asked followers to sign a petition supporting the labor legislation, and included Gingrich’s and Anuzis’s Twitter handles.
The suit marks a first for the political use of Twitter, which has taken off amongst lawmakers, political figures and interest groups since earlier in the year. The complaint gets to the heart of one of the most common practices of the site: directing a message toward another user — even if the two don’t know each other — by using an “@” sign.
“The posting falsely purports to have been written by Messrs. Gingrich and Anuzis and includes the Mark as well as the Twitter ‘handles’ of the foregoing individuals,” attorneys wrote in a letter. “The posting is deliberately designed to fraudulently induce readers into believing that…Messrs. Gingrich and Anuzis all support EFCA.”
The attorneys alleged that the posting, of which the authorship is unknown, violates the pair’s trademark and publicity rights, and invokes tresspassing and wire fraud laws, and maybe even so-called “RICO” laws, which are traditionally used to target organized crime groups.
The attorneys threatened a lawsuit by next Thursday, May 21 to seek to block the posting and claim monetary damages if EFCANOW has not replied by then.
“How dare someone imply that Newt Gingrich has been spending his time fighting for justice in the workplace, rather than his true passion: starting frivolous lawsuits,” Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU) spokeswoman Christy Setzer shot back Thursday afternoon. “We stand with Twitterers everywhere when we say, thank you Newt, for sparing us a Kanye West-like all-caps rant on binding arbitration.”
Updated 11:45 a.m. to correct the target of the threat.
Updated 1:11 p.m. to include quote from the SEIU.