Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Katie Allison Granju, who writes a blog on parenting and current events, was worried a barbed post could get her sued. So she bought media liability insurance to protect her home and savings.

“You wouldn’t publish a newspaper without liability insurance, so you should take the same precautions with blogging, if you have any kind of audience or readership,” said Granju, 41, a Knoxville, Tennessee, resident.

U.S. lawsuits over Web postings jumped 70 percent in 2008 from 2006, when the social networking site Facebook Inc. was opened to anyone with a valid e-mail address and Twitter Inc. began. The data comes from the Citizen Media Law Project, which is affiliated with Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The cost of defending against legal action can range from $5,000 to at least $100,000 if the case goes to trial, said Ron Coleman, a trademark lawyer at Goetz Fitzpatrick in New York. Of the 256 lawsuits dating as early as 1994 through April tracked by the New York-based Media Law Resource Center, damages were awarded in 17 cases, totaling $43.9 million.

Blog posts and comments on sites such as Facebook, based in Palo Alto, California, News Corp.’s MySpace in Santa Monica, California, and San Francisco-based Twitter, are often written quickly and informally, said Kim Isbell, a staff attorney at the Citizen Media Law Project. They can also be stored indefinitely and may be taken out of context, so social media may lead to more liability issues than traditional print, Isbell said.

‘More Nets’

Social networking sites are used by 46 percent of adult internet users compared with 29 percent a year earlier, according to an April survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington.

“There are more people online and more tools available to monitor what’s being said online -- so you have more fish and more nets,” said Robert Cox, president of the New Rochelle, New York-based Media Bloggers Association, which provides legal support to bloggers. Cox faced legal action by the New York Times Co. in 2004 for his blog that parodied the newspaper’s correction policy.

Wealthy online users are more vulnerable to being sued, especially amid a struggling economy, said Bill Densmore, director of the Media Giraffe Project at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Most Web-related lawsuits center on claims of defamation or copyright infringement. Seventy-six of the lawsuits followed by the Media Law Resource Center were related to libel, a written fact that injures someone. As an example, a Chicago tenant was sued by a management company in July for complaining about her allegedly mold-infested apartment via Twitter.

Love’s Tweets

Singer Courtney Love was sued earlier this year in California for Tweets about fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir that the designer claims are false and defamatory. Love Tweeted that Simorangkir sold drugs, had a record of prostitution and was an unfit parent, according to the complaint. Love filed papers asking the court to throw out the complaint and the suit is pending.

“The lawsuit against Ms. Cobain was primarily a preemptive move by a woman who knew she was going to be sued by Ms. Cobain for trying to bilk Ms. Cobain because she is a celebrity,” said Keith Fink, a lawyer for Love, based in Los Angeles.

A 31-year-old blogger in New York, Adam Robb Rucinsky, received a cease-and-desist letter in April for his mocking of Danyelle Freeman, the former restaurant critic for the New York Daily News. He said he would never buy blog insurance and continues his posts.

Check Fine Print

“I would worry possessing such insurance would only serve to put a price on my head,” Rucinsky said. “I imagine with blog insurance now six months later, I’d have nothing to show for my parody but a higher premium.”

Some bloggers may be covered for online lawsuits under the personal liability coverage of their homeowners or renters insurance policies. MetLife Auto & Home, a unit of New York- based MetLife Inc., and Chubb Corp. in Warren, New Jersey, include coverage for damages caused online.

Homeowners should check the fine print of their homeowners’ policies or ask their brokers to see if social media liability is covered, said Isbell of the Citizen Media Law Project. Umbrella policies, which provide additional liability coverage and fill in gaps where coverage is missing, cost about $250 for $1 million in coverage, according to the New York-based Insurance Information Institute.

Claims Will Rise

Consumers who blog for pay have no coverage under personal excess liability policies because it’s considered a commercial risk, said Loretta Worters, a vice president at the Insurance Information Institute. Bloggers who intentionally post something defamatory or humiliating won’t have their legal costs covered by insurance, according to Pete Spicer, a personal risk specialist at Chubb.

Separate media liability insurance is an option for bloggers who make money. Bloggers should expect to pay from $500 to $1,000 annually for $300,000 of coverage a year on average, said Cox of the Media Bloggers Association. Granju, who works as the director of social media for a public relations firm, said she pays $250 a year for $1 million in coverage for a separate media insurance rider because her blog, mamapundit, generates revenue.

Insurance claims will rise as social interaction increases, said Coleman, the trademark lawyer who has worked on about 20 Web-related cases as general counsel for the Media Bloggers Association. Insurers may increase premiums or reconsider coverage entirely, said Douglas Griess, a business lawyer at Greenwood Village, Colorado-based law firm Dymond Reagor Colville.

‘Diciest Parts’

Almost one third of the 256 cases studied by the Media Law Resource Center were dismissed by the courts and plaintiffs withdrew 33 cases after filing them. Plaintiffs have to demonstrate a post was an intentional, factual misstatement as well as prove damages, which is one of the “diciest parts” of litigation, Coleman said.

“You’re not going to inadvertently defame someone in the course of describing your lunch or how drunk you were last night or posting photos of cats with silly captions,” said Elizabeth Spiers, a founding editor of Gawker.com. “And that’s 99 percent of blogging.”

Bill Singer, a 58-year-old securities lawyer at Lawrenceville, New Jersey-based Stark and Stark, who runs the Wall Street blog Broke and Broker, tells his clients it costs as much to defend an innocent person as a guilty one. He said he was considering buying insurance.

“If it’s something I can get for a few thousand dollars a year, I may opt for the sleepful night.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexis Leondis in New York aleondis@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 18, 2009 00:01 EDT