SANTA MONICA—A local public relations business owner found herself swept into the chaos of ongoing litigation between Google Inc. and a Los Angeles county woman of the same name.
Lauren Rosenberg of LA County was taking a walk in Park City, Utah, and utilized Google Maps on her cell phone to provide her with directions. Following the directions led her to a busy highway with no sidewalk, and Rosenberg was struck by a vehicle. Rosenberg is now suing both the driver of the vehicle and Google for her damages.
However, the litigation is affecting more than just those involved. Lauren Rosenberg, founder of Lauren Rosenberg Public Relations, has been receiving sometimes up to 20 scathing e-mails, phone and Facebook messages a day, and even one handwritten letter deemed by Rosenberg as “impressive.”
“I wanted to tell the author to send it to the real Rosenberg; it was that good!” said the PR executive in an interview with Canyon News. “People have left angry phone messages saying that I would ‘have the audacity to sue Google’, or called me litigious.” Although most were mild, some of the insults were best left unrepeated.
Rosenberg considers most of the messages to be a mere nuisance, but when one of them commented that the litigation’s publicity would threaten her business’ integrity, Rosenberg went to the press.
“Once they mentioned my business, that’s when it went too far,” she stated.
The fear that the unnecessary negative attention might affect her business and livelihood caused Rosenberg to contact the press and do some “damage control,” as she referred to the efforts on her blog.
“I need support,” she commented. “The scathing messages definitely outnumber the positive, supportive ones.”
The disturbance to Rosenberg has been somewhat minimal so far, but whether the nature of the harassments against her will affect LRPR’s business is yet to be known.
