Incidentally, my husband was once threatened with a suit after he mentioned on his blog that another blogger wasn’t backing up his facts with sources and that if the blogger were his student (hubby’s a prof) he’d fail him for plagiarism. Apparently the blogger wasn’t very happy even with the “if he were my student” caveat and threatened to sue. So husband took down the post since he was mostly just interested in the phenomenon of uncited writing and not the particular blogger.

Riscario- if one has a blog with a lot of comments, I suspect one would be able to pick up what would be acceptable and not acceptable comments. As I alluded to above, there are defenses available to bloggers under first amendment rights in the U.S.

I will lead with this comment in the next post but let’s take a step back for a second. The chances that one would be sued would be quite remote if the blog is very personal, full of opinions and generally positive in nature. Being a regular reader of FJ and Riscario’s blog, neither of you are calling attention to yourself. The blogs that attract the wrong type of attention would be those that are critical of someone/corporation/government, full of over-arching statements that may pass itself as fact, taking other’s ideas and passing it off as its own and the poster generally antagonizing the entire world.

Blogging, in and of itself, is not going to attract legal liability. Its how the blog is run that is key.

Removing advertising as FJ is pondering would seem to reduce liability since there’s no direct financial gain. However, posting anonymously — the preference of many casual financial bloggers — would seem to give reasonable protection. I toyed with advertising but found the ads (from Google Adsense) were for companies and products that made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be seen as endorsing them. So I removed advertising.

Beside using common sense, what are other ways I can adopt to lessen liabilities? Would stripping my ad revenues help? I don’t make much from my blog and am perfectly happy to part from the income. Also, are there liability insurance for bloggers?

Riscario Insider- you raise a good point on the difference between advice and information. However, I do not tell anyone to do anything other than use their common sense (and if someone is going to sue someone for using their common sense then we truly like in a crazy world). I know you are a regular reader of the blog- you notice how few posts deal with reader questions? I avoid anything that gives anyone direction that is particular to their personal situation. The difference is really between “here’s some information on life insurance” (information) to “buy this insurance” (advice). This is also part II so I don’t want to give too much away!

On the topic of being sued, a big concern is whether a disclaimer is enough. Almost everything comes with warnings nowadays (coffee might be hot? Gee, what a shock!?!).

You write that “these posts are written for informational/entertainment purposes only and should not be considered to be advice of any kind whatsoever”. Yet ideas from someone with relevant experience seems like advice.

Can a reader do something silly and sue? Even if the suit is unsuccessful, the blogger’s time and money get wasted. This is more of an issue for someone with professional credentials using a real name.