Parents may be held responsible for their kids' posts on Facebook, an appellate court in Georgia ruled.
The court decision, according to lawyers, will serve as a legal precedent over the issue of the liability of parents on the online activities carried out by their children.
The Georgia Court of Appeals decided that the parents of a child in seventh grade showed negligence in not being able to have their son take down a fake profile that he made on Facebook, which was allegedly created to defame a female classmate.
The incident began in 2011 when the boy, through the assistance of a fellow student, created a profile on Facebook that pretended to be that of the girl.
The boy then used an app to make the girl look fat, and then made sexually explicit and profane posts in her name to make the girl look promiscuous and racist, according to documents released by the court.
Upon the discovery of the fake account, the girl told her parents. The parents then spoke to the principal of the school on the matter, who decided to place a punishment of in-school suspension of two days on the boy. The boy's parents, once informed of what the child did, grounded their son for one week.
However, for the following 11 months, the court said that the fake profile page stayed online. The account would not have been deleted if the girl's parents had not requested for the removal from Facebook, the court opinion said.
The lawyer representing the family of the girl said that the parents were not able to immediately talk to the boy's parents about the matter because the school did not agree to release the identity of the boy, to uphold confidentiality on the issue.
"Given that the false and offensive statements remained on display, and continued to reach readers, for an additional eleven months, we conclude that a jury could find that the [parents'] negligence proximately caused some part of the injury [the girl] sustained from [the boy's] actions (and inactions)," Judge John Ellington wrote in the opinion.
The appeals court, however, agreed with the dismissal of another portion of the complaint filed by the girl's parents that looked to have the parents of the boy responsible for the creation of the fake Facebook profile.
Edgar Mangiafico, the Atlanta litigator that led the defense of the parents of the boy, said that the decision of the court was filled with inconsistencies and that an appeal on the ruling will be made to the Georgia Supreme Court.
