Blogger Down: Saving Kelly Kreth
By now everyone has heard the story from Curbed about Kelly Kreth regarding her doocing from Dwelling Quest. I figured that both parties would part ways. Dwelling Quest would go on forever bitterly existing in the shadow of Citi-habitats and Kelly would get a gig writing for All My Children. But according to Kelly’s most recent entry her former company has decided to pursue a legal vendetta against her.
As far as I am concerned this lawsuit smacks of personal not business interests. From what I have read of the entries there is no mention of the company she works for, neither does she reveal any type of trade secrets. In fact what trade secrets exist for Real estate PR? Does Dwelling Quest have a WREB (Weapon of Real Estate Brokerage) that allows their agents to extract a full fee from their clients? It is all quite ridiculous. She doesn’t even name names and unless you knew the people, whom probably the majority of the people who read her journal do not, there is no way to identify them.
The Grunt has had his share of corporate drama and what Kelly has described in her entries before her doocing, is straight out of anyone’s life in corporate America. Her words were her observations of the behavior and interactions in her former office. Her co-workers were annoyed with what she wrote, which is understandable. But is that grounds for legal action? I don’t think so.
There is definitely a personal motivation behind this lawsuit since they are demanding among other things an apology from her blog. Apology for what? Dwelling Quest has not provided any evidence that she named names or did anything to violate company policy. All they are doing is turning an ugly day in the office into an international incident.
They already fired Kelly with no severance. She is broke and currently has no job prospects in a field that she loves. Enough already. You made your point. Just because you have Kelly on her knees does not mean you can demand a BJ.
I believe Dwelling Quest’s primary objective is to ruin Kelly’s life by forcing her to declare bankruptcy, which is probably the only way for her to protect herself. That is absolutely despicable, because she will never be able to rent an apartment in Manhattan and she will have a very, very difficult time getting a mortgage. Rather than letting her close this dark chapter in her life they want her to remember her humiliation and impotence every time she gets rejected for an apartment.
Kelly is a regular Erin Brokovich who fought tooth and nail from welfare beginnings to get where she is. Which is the reason why the Grunt has decided to rally to her cause. How can you help Kelly? Simple. Tell everyone you know about the injustice she is facing. The more people know her story the better.
Bloggers should also be concerned about this situation because the implications is that Dwelling Quest is making an example of Kelly, sending a message to bloggers like myself and Curbed to step softly.
What this company has to understand is that bloggers are master to no man, no corporation and no government. We go where we want to go. If you don’t like it, well too bad. We are protected by the Constitution. Got a problem with that? Well do the letters ACLU mean anything to you? These lawyers will be more than happy to educate Dwelling Quest on the subject of free speech and not only do they have deeper pockets but they have an eternal hard on for these type of cases. Bloggers, particularly real estate bloggers should be concerned about Kelly’s situation because an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.
As far as I am concerned this lawsuit smacks of personal not business interests. From what I have read of the entries there is no mention of the company she works for, neither does she reveal any type of trade secrets. In fact what trade secrets exist for Real estate PR? Does Dwelling Quest have a WREB (Weapon of Real Estate Brokerage) that allows their agents to extract a full fee from their clients? It is all quite ridiculous. She doesn’t even name names and unless you knew the people, whom probably the majority of the people who read her journal do not, there is no way to identify them.
The Grunt has had his share of corporate drama and what Kelly has described in her entries before her doocing, is straight out of anyone’s life in corporate America. Her words were her observations of the behavior and interactions in her former office. Her co-workers were annoyed with what she wrote, which is understandable. But is that grounds for legal action? I don’t think so.
There is definitely a personal motivation behind this lawsuit since they are demanding among other things an apology from her blog. Apology for what? Dwelling Quest has not provided any evidence that she named names or did anything to violate company policy. All they are doing is turning an ugly day in the office into an international incident.
They already fired Kelly with no severance. She is broke and currently has no job prospects in a field that she loves. Enough already. You made your point. Just because you have Kelly on her knees does not mean you can demand a BJ.
I believe Dwelling Quest’s primary objective is to ruin Kelly’s life by forcing her to declare bankruptcy, which is probably the only way for her to protect herself. That is absolutely despicable, because she will never be able to rent an apartment in Manhattan and she will have a very, very difficult time getting a mortgage. Rather than letting her close this dark chapter in her life they want her to remember her humiliation and impotence every time she gets rejected for an apartment.
Kelly is a regular Erin Brokovich who fought tooth and nail from welfare beginnings to get where she is. Which is the reason why the Grunt has decided to rally to her cause. How can you help Kelly? Simple. Tell everyone you know about the injustice she is facing. The more people know her story the better.
Bloggers should also be concerned about this situation because the implications is that Dwelling Quest is making an example of Kelly, sending a message to bloggers like myself and Curbed to step softly.
What this company has to understand is that bloggers are master to no man, no corporation and no government. We go where we want to go. If you don’t like it, well too bad. We are protected by the Constitution. Got a problem with that? Well do the letters ACLU mean anything to you? These lawyers will be more than happy to educate Dwelling Quest on the subject of free speech and not only do they have deeper pockets but they have an eternal hard on for these type of cases. Bloggers, particularly real estate bloggers should be concerned about Kelly’s situation because an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.
posted by Grunt at
11:30 PM
