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When a Houston restaurant patron was unceremoniously shown the door after posting an unflattering tweet about the bartender, it reignited the debate over what constitutes libel and slander in the era of Social Media. "Twitter brags that it currently has more than 200 million tweets a day, so applying legal standards is extremely difficult, and even more so since this communication phenomenon does not fit nicely into accepted legal standards of libel and slander," says Dallas technology attorney Peter S. Vogel of Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP. He adds that the cybersmear litigation that has evolved at the courthouse limits liability if there is a grain of truth to the Internet statement. "But until actual cases are brought to court it's not clear that libel and slander will ever apply to tweets," says Vogel, who also serves as a Law of the Internet Adjunct Professor at SMU's Dedman School of Law. For more information, contact Rhonda Reddick at 800-559-4534 or rhonda@androvett.com.