A Georgia Court of Appeals has ruled that parents can be held liable for what their children post on Facebook, a decision lawyers are calling a new legal precedent.

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog is reporting that the case involved a seventh grade boy who defamed a female classmate by posting a phony profile about the girl that made her look obese, said sexually explicit things about her and called her promiscuous and racist.

When the girl saw the page, she complained to the school principal who punished the boy with an in-school suspension and also alerted his parents who grounded him for a week. But the page remained on Facebook for the next 11 months and wasn't deleted until the account was deactivated at the urging of the girl's parents.

“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),” wrote Judge John J. Ellington in the opinion handed down on October 10.

On the subject of whether the boy's parents could be held responsible for their son's posting in the first place, the appeals court agreed with a trial court's decision to dismiss that particular charge.

Edgar S. Mangiafico Jr., who represented the boy's parents, told the Law Blog that the decision was "marred by inconsistencies" and said he planned to appeal the ruling. He also said that he could find no precedent for finding a parent negligent for failing to supervise a child's on-line activity.

However, Natalie Woodward, the attorney representing the girl, called the ruling "novel".

She believes the ruling shows that in “certain circumstances, when what is being said about a child is untrue and once the parents know about it, then liability is triggered.”

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