Yelp is appealing a defamation lawsuit to the California Supreme Court after a lower court ruled that Yelp must remove a post criticizing a San Francisco law firm. The firm’s lawyer Dawn Hassell claims it just wants to remove defamatory content from the site, but Yelp is worried that the ruling could make it easy for anyone to remove negative opinions rendering the review process toothless. Hassell won a default judgement in the early round of the case since the defendant did not have the time or resources to fight in court. Hassell subsequently asked Yelp to take down the review. (Associated Press, September 21, 2016, by Sudhin Thanawala)
In a similar case, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week in a libel lawsuit that Yelp was not legally responsible for negative reviews produced by its users. (New York Business Journal, September 20, 2016, by Riley McDermid)
Eugene Volokh filed a letter with the California Supreme Court on behalf of a number of law professors in support of Yelp’s position. The letter read in part, “…the decision [by the lower court]…offers plaintiffs a roadmap for violating these speakers’ rights. Say a business dislikes some comment in a newspaper’s online discussion section. The business can then sue the commenter, who might not have the money or expertise to fight the lawsuit. It can get a consent judgment (perhaps by threatening the commenter with the prospect of massive liability) or a default judgment. And it can then get a court to order the newspaper to delete the comment, even though the newspaper had no opportunity to challenge the claim, and may not have even heard about the claim until after the judgment was entered. This is directly analogous to what plaintiff Hassell did in this very case.” (The Washington Post, September 21, 2016)