'Dietary Supplement' Company Tries Suing PissedConsumer, Citing Buyer's Agreement To Never Say Anything Negative
from the good-thing-we-never-bought-anything-from-roca-labs dept
Roca Labs is a company that describes itself as a manufacturer of "dietary supplements" some of which they label with highly questionable claims that I imagine would not be supported by anything the FDA would consider to be credible evidence. In particular, they have something called "Gastric Bypass Alternative" which claims to help people lose weight -- though I would treat such claims skeptically without further proof. Indeed, it appears that many of Roca Labs' buyers are not happy about it. The Better Business Bureau gives Roca Labs an F grade due to the large number of complaints, many of which remain unresolved. Meanwhile the site PissedConsumer also has a bunch of complaints about Roca Labs and its products -- and it appears that the PissedConsumer page ranks rather highly on Google for searches on Roca Labs. Roca Labs is -- apparently -- not happy with that.So it has now sued the parent company of PissedConsumer, Consumer Opinion Corp, trying to get the reviews taken down. The lawsuit is worth reading. It claims that PissedConsumer is engaged in "deceptive and unfair trade practices" and that part of this is... because customers of Roca Labs agree to never say anything negative about the company.
Roca sells its products directly to the public and in exchange a discounted price, Roca's customers agree under the terms and conditions of said purchase that regardless of their outcome, they will not speak, publish, print, biog or write negatively about Roca or its products in any forum.Of course, any such agreement is of questionable legality. However, we've certainly been seeing a lot of these questionable "no negative reviews or you pay" agreements showing up lately.
But, you say, PissedConsumer isn't the issue here, right? After all, the company never agreed to those conditions, even if the buyers did agree to them (whether or not they're legally sound). Roca is trying to get around that by arguing that because it has this clause and because PissedConsumer urges angry consumers to complain, the company is "tortiously interfering" with Roca's business because it's encouraging people to break the agreement. I'm not joking.
Defendants deliberately and tortiously interfere with Roca Lab's customers by encouraging them to breach their customer agreement with Roca as Defendants author or co-author false, malicious and negative posts about Roca that are published on their subject website and Twecred to Twitter's 271 million users.Where to start? First of all, no. Almost everything there is ridiculous. Presenting a platform for people to express their own opinions is not encouraging them to break any contract (which, again, is of dubious legality in the first place). Second, the site is not authoring or co-authoring the posts. Third, there's no evidence that anything being posted is "false." Fourth, what does Twitter's total user base have to do with anything? It appears that @PissedConsumer's account has a few thousand followers.
None of this matters anyway, because even if any of the other arguments made sense (and none of them seem to make much, if any, sense) PissedConsumer is clearly well protected by Section 230 of the CDA, which protects websites from the actions of their users. And, of course, PissedConsumer and its legal team are well aware of all this having hit back at previous bogus legal threats in the past. I don't expect Roca Labs will get very far with this complaint. However, if you'd like to see which complaints Roca Labs especially wants deleted, check page four of the complaint below, where the company conveniently lists out the statements it doesn't like. And, because they're so wrong on just about every other legal claim, it seems worth noting that many of them are clearly statements of opinion, rather than anything that would be clearly defamatory anyway (and if they were defamatory the company would need to go after those individuals who made them in the first place, rather than the company hosting the content).
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Filed Under: dietary supplements, gastric bypass alternative, opinion, pissed consumer, reviews, secondary liability, section 230
Companies: consumer opinion corp., pissedconsumer, roca labs
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Paging Ken...
The hardest game on the internet is one I call "C/S/T", which is short for "Crazy, Stupid, Or Troll?"
Whoever is running the internet-threat operation under the name "On Press, Inc." has certain defining characteristics — truculence, functional illiteracy, and a grasp of law cobbled together by listening to 13-year-olds swearing at each other on Xbox Live.
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That's not called a discount. That's called a price.
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Their own brand of dyspepsea
Better Business Bureau, West Florida - "This business is not accredited," followed by:
Additional Complaint Information
It has come to BBB's attention that the company will demand the removal of any complaint, web post or other publication that constitutes a breach of the terms and conditions agreed to by the consumer at the time of purchase, regardless of whether or not the consumer complaint is resolved.
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First of all, just because Roca Labs has it written that you cannot post negative comments about its products after you purchase them, doesn't mean that Roca Labs has a leg to stand on. Any court in this country, on this planet, would laugh Roca Labs out of their court for being so restrictive on consumers in the first place. Why? Because that violates an individual's first amendment right to free speech. Roca cannot claim that your purchase of their product prevents you from speaking negatively about their company. After all, if that were true, then why aren't they suing the Better Business Bureau?
I don't even see this passing the laugh test with any competent court because any judge in this country would dismiss any such lawsuit before it could even get put on the docket.
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Of course, if the allegations about PissedConsumer are correct in that they sell "reputation management" where they ask companies for money to take down complaints, then PissedConsumer is hardly an innocent victim here. It's possible that this case is two bad actors going against each other.
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No. Roca's unfounded claims and poor products are interfering with their business.
Maybe they should just sue themselves.
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Just an Idea
Instead of the we suck so we're going to ignore you business model they have now
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Puffery or Buggery
With 50 percent of our GDP (I think that is the number) dependent on consumer spending should we change the the word "puffery" to "buggery" so that people will better understand what unfettered marketing really is?
I think we should.
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EULAs
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This is not true as a blanket statement. You can absolutely contractually agree to restrict your first amendment rights and be sued if you break that agreement. Pretty much every job I've had has included a non-disclosure agreement, for instance. That restricts my first amendment rights, but should I break it I can expect a lawsuit.
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The PDF has more readable and less twecred text.
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Because we business, we have a right nto perfect glowing reviews, even when we fail our customers.
If you dare tell anyone how we failed you, you owe us money because we lost potential sales.
Our dropping sales figures are because people said mean things online and not because we are a company so shitty we have to attempt to gag you into silence with the threat of lawsuits.
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Until recently it was the copyright industries whining about "lost sales" in arguments that would never fly in the analog world. And now suddenly everyone is arguing that consumers should never be allowed to say anything bad about any product, because "contract law" and "lost sales".
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Other progressive states will follow.
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Really? Or is the actual case that Roca are simply too cheap to buy a better rating from the BBB?
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$800?
How can such a thing be unregulated?
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Roca Labs, should be shut down for fraud and deceptive trade.
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Re: Roca Labs, should be shut down for fraud and deceptive trade.
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Suits/Freedom of Speech
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