{"id":127,"date":"2016-06-30T20:31:33","date_gmt":"2016-07-01T00:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/?p=127"},"modified":"2020-08-04T17:37:02","modified_gmt":"2020-08-04T21:37:02","slug":"how-to-take-down-bad-reviews-on-yelp-and-win-a-500000-judgment-hint-dont-sue-yelp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/2016\/06\/30\/how-to-take-down-bad-reviews-on-yelp-and-win-a-500000-judgment-hint-dont-sue-yelp\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Take Down Bad Reviews On Yelp and Win a $500,000 Judgment — Hint: Don’t Sue Yelp"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Constantine Mittendorf<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Yelp
\nWant to remove bad reviews posted on Yelp that are hurting your business?\u00a0 Want to win a half million dollar judgment against a malicious reviewer?\u00a0 Here\u2019s how one person did it \u2013 and they did it without suing Yelp.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The case of Hassell v. Bird<\/em> began back in 2012 when Ava Bird consulted with a lawyer, Dawn Hassell, regarding a personal injury case.\u00a0 Hassell briefly represented Bird in the case, but she withdrew citing \u201ctrouble communicating\u201d with Bird.\u00a0 Hassel v. Bird (Yelp, Inc.), C.A. 1st<\/sup> A143233 (June 8, 2016)<\/u><\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Bird then posted several negative and false reviews about Hassell\u2019s law firm on Yelp.\u00a0 Hassell asked Bird to take down the bad reviews, but Bird refused.\u00a0 So, Hassell sued Bird for defamation.\u00a0 And this is important \u2013 Hassell did not sue Yelp.<\/p>\n

Bird completely ignored the lawsuit.\u00a0 Bird didn\u2019t respond to subpoenas, Bird didn\u2019t go to court, and Bird lost the case.\u00a0 In fact, Bird lost big-time.\u00a0 Hassell was able to secure a default judgment against Bird after proving defamation to the Court.\u00a0 The Court awarded $557,918 in damages, ordered Bird to take down the bad reviews, and issued an injunction stating \u201cYelp.com is ordered to remove all reviews posted by AVA BIRD \u2026 and any subsequent comments \u2026 within 7 business days of the date of the court\u2019s order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yelp was not happy.\u00a0 Yelp refused to take down Bird\u2019s reviews and appealed the order.\u00a0 Yelp tried to have the whole case thrown out.\u00a0 It argued to the Appellate Court that Yelp wasn\u2019t a party to the lawsuit, so it didn\u2019t have a chance to defend itself.\u00a0 Earlier this month, Yelp lost its appeal.<\/p>\n

The Appellate Court found that Yelp didn\u2019t have standing to have the whole judgment thrown out, but it did agree to narrow the ruling slightly to only cover past libelous posts.\u00a0 However, the Appellate Court also ruled that if Yelp didn\u2019t take down Bird\u2019s defamatory reviews, then Yelp could be held in contempt of court.<\/p>\n

In general, Yelp is protected by the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. \u00a0As we\u2019ve reported earlier<\/u><\/a>, Yelp does not and generally will not remove negative reviews.\u00a0 Scores of lawsuits have tried to force Yelp to take down bad reviews with limited success.\u00a0 The interesting thing about the Hassell v. Bird<\/em> is that it shows you don\u2019t need to sue Yelp to make Yelp take down defamatory and fake reviews.\u00a0 So if you\u2019re thinking about suing Yelp over some fishy reviews of your restaurant, consider the case of Hassell v. Bird<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Constantine Mittendorf Want to remove bad reviews posted on Yelp that are hurting your business?\u00a0 Want to win a half million dollar judgment against a malicious reviewer?\u00a0 Here\u2019s how one person did it \u2013 and they did it without suing Yelp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[46,124,121,81,133,13,131,115,129,125,126,136,123,130,127,96,134,135,69,132,114,128,137],"ppma_author":[201],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-appeal","tag-bad-reviews","tag-california-court-of-appeals","tag-california-restaurant-law","tag-communications-decency-act","tag-constantine-mittendorf","tag-court-order","tag-defamation","tag-default-judgment","tag-fake-reviews","tag-false-reviews","tag-first-amendment","tag-hassell-v-bird","tag-injunction","tag-libel","tag-restaurant-law","tag-section-230","tag-section-230-of-the-communications-decency-act","tag-social-media","tag-standing","tag-yelp","tag-yelp-inc","tag-yelp-com"],"authors":[{"term_id":201,"user_id":6,"is_guest":0,"slug":"duanemorris3","display_name":"Duane Morris","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/843ff6e7a8fe5fc92109b47a45f34b6cf0ea499e6e788db23456c838b0ae6747?s=96&d=blank&r=g","author_category":"1","last_name":"Sullivan","first_name":"Margaret","job_title":"","user_url":"http:\/\/www.duanemorris.com","description":"Visit the Duane Morris website.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/thelegaldish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}