I am a big fan of pizza. Maybe it’s my New York / New Jersey roots but there’s nothing like a really well done pizza with (insert favorite topping(s) here) sitting in front of a ballgame of some sort. You get the picture right?
Well, since pizza is a borderline spiritual occurrence for me it pains me to see a purveyor of pizza pie being thrown into the middle of a thin crusted legal battle. It appears as if there was something cheesy going on in Knoxville, TN as of late around the Facebook and Twitter rants of the owner of the Pizza Kitchen, Travis Redmon.
It appears that Mr. Redmon was feeling a little slighted by his marketing company, Low & Tritt, and he didn’t appreciate that. Personally, I can’t imagine that kind of thing ever happening in this day and age but I digress. The marketing company decided that the actions of Mr. Redmon merited a $2 million lawsuit. That’s a lot of dough 
!
According to the Knoxvillebiz.com site
According to the suit, Redmon defamed the marketing firm in two Aug. 17 Facebook entries that said, “Do not EVER use Lowandtritt mktg. firm!” and “CROOKS! – Stolen email list, and have tried to pressure me by threat of lawsuit to sign a ‘license agreement’ to use their mktg materials.”
The following day on Twitter Redmon posted, “Lowentritt mktg firm has done it again…” and “Can you believe that they have not only stolen my email list, but have now hacked Pizza Kitchen’s facebook page taking it offline?”
There are 300 or so fans on the Pizza Kitchen page and so the folks at Lowe and Tritt decided to do the simple math of saying that each one of those 300 must be worth $6,666.66 apiece in future lost business. It was at this point in the story where my pizza went cold when I realized that maybe this great Knoxville pizza Facebook faceoff was the related to the number of the beast, 666. I’ll have my pizza topped with the Four Horseman and a side of Armageddon, please! But once again, I digress.
On a serious note here, I think these folks in Knoxville must be upset with the play of the University of Tennessee’s football team or something because this is out of hand. Social media never plays well when it becomes social mudslinging. You can look at the PDF of the court papers filed by Lowe and Tritt at the Knox news site and decide for yourself if this is as stupid (or overcooked) as it looks.
Low & Tritt also is suing for breach of contract for continuing to use promotional materials without permission and for fees accumulated when it failed to pay its invoices on time.
So two million bucks over a Facebook rant that likely no one saw or cared about? My question is what kind of monthly retainer was being charged to merit that kind of a number? Apparently the Pizza Kitchen sells pizzas topped with gold dust and diamonds. I think that’s their extra crunchy style.
