Woman sued over online review: 3 tips to avoid a lawsuit

It seems harmless enough. You have a bad experience with a company and post an account of the experience on Twitter, Angie's List, Yelp or some other consumer review site. If you're lucky, the complaint may fix your problem. But if you complain about the wrong company, you may end up at the wrong end of a lawsuit.

That's what happened to Helen Maslona of Chicago who gave local concrete company All Fields of Concrete Construction an "F" rating on consumer review website Angie's List. Maslona claims All Fields refused to give her an estimate on a new gangway and patio because they claimed they didn't work in her area -- a claim she found odd considering that her home was five miles away from the company's offices. The review would have mixed in with others, allowing consumers to take in all of the reviews and make up their own minds, but as CBS2 Chicago reports Michael Fitzgerald, the owner of All Fields of Concrete is singling out Maslona and suing her for $10,000, plus court costs alleging that she, "willingly and maliciously tried and succeeded in damaging my company's reputation."