Mark....

.........or "I think company X has acted unprofessionally and in violation of our contract by not paying for services rendered for over 3 months". It's not illegal to say this because you are exercising your first amendment right of free speech to voice an opinion(at least in the USA you are). Fairness would dictate that parties mentioned in a posting would have equal right and access to post their side of the story.

I agree with some of what you say and of course your right to say it!

However, our first amendment rights do have limitations and one of them has to do with slander.

You are correct that the company could have access to tell "their" side however if company x could prove that the post caused them to loose business or prevented them from being able to get qualified consultants and that caused them to loose money AND the story was not true... they would clean up the poster AND the UT! The legal ramifications are just too scary and I can not imagine MF wanting to get into this.

The frank and open discussion of issues seems to be a daily part of the UT and that is good and as it should be. Listing bad clients gets past that and becomes accusation and (in my opinion) that is different from discussing issues.

Now, on a practicle level...I wish there was a way to verify past payment records of clients. Most of us have gotten burned at one time or another. I'm just not sure that the UT is the place to do it.