Yelp Can't Be Ordered To Remove Posts, Court Rules (apnews.com)

Yelp cannot be ordered to remove defamatory posts against a San Francisco law firm, the California Supreme Court said in a 4-3 ruling Monday that overturns one made by a lower court. From a report: In a 4-3 opinion, justices agreed, saying removal orders such as the one attorney Dawn Hassell obtained against Yelp "could interfere with and undermine the viability of an online platform." The decision overturned a lower court ruling that Yelp had said could lead to the removal of negative reviews from the popular website. Hassell said Yelp was exaggerating the stakes of her legal effort. Her attorney, Monique Olivier, said in a statement that the ruling "stands as an invitation to spread falsehoods on the internet without consequence." She said her client was considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Hassell's 2013 lawsuit accused a client she briefly represented in a personal injury case of defaming her on Yelp by falsely claiming that her firm failed to communicate with the client, among other things.

Comments

Seems a wrong decision to me.

[msauve]

To summarize: someone says bad things about someone else. They sue for defamation, claiming untruth. The suit goes undefended, so the court orders the defamation removed.

That wouldn't, in any way, "lead to the removal of negative reviews from the popular website," as Yelp claims (at least not truthful, subjective opinions).

Same with "Yelp said the removal order violated a 1996 federal law that courts have widely interpreted as protecting internet companies from liability for posts by third-party users and prohibiting the companies from being treated as the speaker or publisher of usersâ(TM) posts." No one claimed Yelp was liable, they were simply told to remove the offending item. That doesn't "interfere with and undermine the viability of" Yelp. Someone who wants a legitimately libelous posting removed still needs to go through the courts.

Re:Seems a wrong decision to me.

[ShanghaiBill]

They sue for defamation, claiming untruth. The suit goes undefended, so the court orders the defamation removed.

The original suit was undefended, but Yelp had not been named as a defendant. Should a default judgement apply to a 3rd party? At least one justice thought it should not, and sided with Yelp on that basis.

So this case was really 3/1/3 rather than 4/3, and does not set any clear precedents.

Re:Seems a wrong decision to me.

[MobyDisk]

Wouldn't it make more sense to have the defendant remove or edit the review? Or does Yelp not support amendment a review after it was written?

Re:Seems a wrong decision to me.

[Wrath0fb0b]

Associate Justice Leondra Kruger said in a separate opinion that she agreed that the removal order against Yelp was invalid, but for a different reason. Hassell did not name Yelp as a defendant, so the company did not get its âoeown day in court,â Kruger said.

This is the main problem though. Yelp was not a party to the lawsuit, so it's patently unfair to bind them to the judgment between two totally other parties.

What's more, these sort of third-party orders create the incentive for sloppy or outright fraudulent behavior. For instance, Google will voluntarily de-list a webpage if a court has found it defamatory. Sounds good, but what happens is that folks will find or invent a defendant that claims to have authored the webpage and who settles the lawsuit with an admission of libel. And this is where the "not a party" thing comes in -- when a court sees a plaintiff and a defendant agreeing to a settlement, it doesn't look too hard at it because the court (rightly, in most cases) assumes the parties have represented their own interests.

So you have an entire cottage industry of reputation-management companies filing real lawsuits against fake defendants in order to either request or demand takedown.

In a few cases, the lawyers have gotten in trouble (their defense: the reputation-management company did it, and while we didn't look too hard we were also not required to), but it's a reasonable guess that many more are getting away with it. The costs are basically zero, since there's no investigation or trial. Hell, from top to bottom they've gotten these done in 4 days, which in court terms is roughly equivalent to ludicrous speed.

This is getting way TLDR, but the only legal recourse is to say that if Alice sues Bob, she can only get an order binding Bob. If she wants an order binding Carol as well, she has to give Carol proper notice, in advance, and an opportunity to scrutinize the case and be heard in court.

I think that invitation ...

[fahrbot-bot]

... the ruling "stands as an invitation to spread falsehoods on the internet without consequence."

... has already been accepted by many. One person comes immediately to mind -- and it would a shock if he ever said something true and/or suffered consequences for lying or, to be kind, misrepresenting things. Time will tell.

The Court Opinion [PDF]

[SeattleLawGuy]

... which law firm to avoid.

It's a small business that made a classic business mistake of attacking a bad review rather than saying they're sorry the person was disappointed.

After the firm filed the defamation case, there was a default judgment, which usually means the defendant didn't fight it in court (they didn't get a lawyer or fight it without a lawyer). Then the law firm tried to use that judgment to force Yelp to take the review down. Yelp didn't, claiming they were protected by the Communications Decency Act, which says they're protected from being considered the "publisher" of third-party content someone posts on their site. The California Supreme Court Agreed. (They also claimed that they had not had due process because they were not part of the original case, but the CA Supreme Court did not need to rule on that issue because the Communications Decency Act determined the outcome of the case).

The law firm could still petition SCOTUS on this (contrary to what the AP coverage says, you don't "appeal" to the United States Supreme Court, you petition them for a writ of certiorari and they choose whether or not to grant it). It would be a fun argument, academically speaking. Very few people actually practice much First Amendment law, but it's a very interesting area. Obviously it's also important for a lot of businesses, because while there are lots of businesses out there with legitimately bad reviews, there are also lots of businesses out there with a couple of terrible customers who never give them a fair shake.

And because the article ridiculously didn't include a link to the court opinion, here it is: http://www.courts.ca.gov/opini...