A few weeks ago we received a tip from a reader about a guest house in Camps Bay – Whale Cottage – operated by one Chris Von Ulmenstein. We published a story, following an investigation, and Ulmenstein refused to comment. Today we received this lawyer’s letter.

You can read our original article here.

Then before you read the lawyers letter, below, we would like to mention a few things:

1) It is interesting to note that this same person who is arguing “emotional abuse” and “distress” is notorious as the day is long, and also happens to have a whole quiver of Twitter accounts and websites that are dedicated to doing her harm (here, here, here and here). There is even a petition against her (here). She gets written up regularly, sometimes even because of her habitual use of handicap parking zones. So you can tell this is not a first for Ulmenstein. Exactly how much extra “distress” do you think we have added with our genuine piece of news reporting? Those websites about her are made by people who have actually paid money to set them up. Think about that for a second. And it’s not just locals – have a look at the response from tourists who have stayed at her establishment – published on Tripadvisor (here). 

2) Our article was a properly reseached and handled piece of journalism – hardly a personal attack. Given those websites mentioned above, does a basic article like this really harm her “reputation”? We didn’t even publish her face at the time.

3) Ulmenstein responded with a thorough personal attack via her blog here, which featured quotes from an interview with Seth Rotherham in the current March issue of Playboy magazine (get three months subscription free here). She did not respond to the City rates/tax allegations which prompted our initial article.

4) Following that article on her website, we gave zero response – not in public, nor private. We had moved on. She also censored all the non-favourable comments under the article. But we did manage to capture some tweets that were written about it (on a public platform called Twitter) including tweets from the likes of Daily Maverick writers, Ivo Vegter and Jacques Rousseau. Apologies if there are some repeats – it’s a magical day outside and I’m in a bit of a rush making this. 

5) Chris Ulmenstein then started SMSing me (Seth Rotherham), asking questions for another article she was writing. Some of the messages were sent at night time and on weekends. Again, I did not respond, but I did consider charges of harassment. Eventually the messages stopped.

6) But a good horse runs true to form, and there was no way Von Ulmenstein would leave it at that – which is probably why so many people have created websites about her (links above). So she went to her lawyers, and got them to send the following letter.

As you can see, a large portion of the lawyer’s letter has to do with comments written under our well-researched and published article. Does anyone know what the law is regarding comments made by other people under an article? If I leave a comment about someone under a News24 article, can that person sue Media24 for defamation?

And also, why does this online Fake Twitter Followers service, say that 78% of Whale Cottages apparent 24,000 Twitter followers are fake?

You can read about the exposé we did on SA’s fake Twitter users here.

Follow 2oceansvibe on Twitter @2oceansvibe

You can follow Seth in his personal capacity on Twitter – uncensored @sethrotherham

Otherwise, you well?

__________

ps. Chris Von Ulmenstein’s face is freely available on the internet.