Virginia's Top Court Refuses To Unmask Anonymous Yelp Reviewers, But Not For First Amendment Reasons

from the technically-a-'win' dept

The long-running defamation suit against anonymous Yelp reviewers -- brought by Hadeed Carpet Cleaning -- finally has produced some good news… sort of. Hadeed's lawsuit defines "problematic," seeing as it both threatens anonymous speech and is predicated not on actual defamatory statements, but on the allegations that the reviewers were never actual customers of the business. Hadeed has argued that a review from a non-customer is defamation in and of itself, which obviously contains some very negative implications for free speech -- anonymous or not -- if he succeeds in his legal efforts.

Two lower courts chose to apply Virginia state law rather than the Dendrite Rules, and ordered Yelp to turn over identifying information. That decision was appealed by Yelp, and the state's Supreme Court has responded by rejecting Hadeed's unmasking request… but not for First Amendment reasons. Instead, its decision is based on a technicality -- one that does little to ensure the future protection of anonymous speech.

[T]he Virginia Supreme Court issued its ruling (PDF) in favor of Yelp, finding that the company doesn't have to disclose any user information, because the lawsuit shouldn't have been filed in Virginia in the first place.

The court's decision to focus solely on the issue of jurisdiction means that the more important public policy argument—whether the Yelp reviewers have a right to anonymous speech in this case—goes unaddressed.
While it is helpful that the court has made it clear that Virginia entities don't possess subpoena power over non-residents, that's pretty much the extent of the good news for Virginia residents. The other silver lining is that if Hadeed continues to pursue these reviewers, he'll have to do it in California, where he'll need to meet a higher standard if he hopes to obtain any identifying information.
"Although we were hoping the court would rule on both jurisdictional and First Amendment grounds, this is still an important win,” said Paul Levy in a statement. "If Hadeed turns to California courts to learn the identities of its critics, those courts will require it to show evidence to meet the well-accepted First Amendment test for identifying anonymous speakers. And so far, Hadeed has not come close to providing such evidence."
Now, the question remains as to whether Hadeed will continue his unmasking efforts in a less-friendly venue. Considering he doesn't dispute the content of the reviews -- just the legitimacy of the reviewers -- this would seem to be an obstacle not worth surmounting.

Paul Levy, however, says Hadeed may have little choice but to pursue this in an unfavorable venue because previous statements leave his company little choice but to continue on its quest to be proven "right."
[I]n light of Hadeed’s previous public statements, it is hard to understand how it could not go forward in California. It took advantage of the pendency of this litigation to mount a public relations offensive portraying itself as an innocent victim of Yelp reviews, making a variety of strong claims about how seriously its business was harmed by negative reviews and speculating about whether Yelp was an “instrument for defamation.” It managed to manipulate a number of reporters at respectable publications into repeating its accusations as truths. And although some of its legal papers were circumspect in admitting that, based on its reviews of its customer database it could do no more than “wonder” whether the Does whom it sued in this case were really customers, in other places it made the affirmative assertion that there was a sufficient basis in its customer database to assert that the reviewers were, in fact, not customers.

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Filed Under: anonymity, dendrite rules, hadeed, jurisdiction, reviews, virginia
Companies: hadeed carpet cleaning, yelp


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  • identicon
    AnonCow, 20 Apr 2015 @ 3:57pm

    Good luck with that BS here. They will get anti-SLAPPed down.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    David, 20 Apr 2015 @ 3:59pm

    That's actually reasonable.

    Yes, there's a precedent to be made, but the V SC is stating that this isn't the proper venue for that inter-State case to be made.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2015 @ 4:30pm

      Re: That's actually reasonable.

      Correct, jurisdiction trumps everything. If the court had continued it'd just be delivering an advisory opinion

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2015 @ 4:46pm

    how is posting a false review not defamation? if the reviewer just said "I hate this company" then that is free speach. if they said " this company did a horrible job and ruined my carpets" then that should not be allowed and they should be un masked and that is a false statement of fact with obvious intent to harm the company.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2015 @ 5:01pm

      Re:

      "And although some of its legal papers were circumspect in admitting that, based on its reviews of its customer database it could do no more than “wonder” whether the Does whom it sued in this case were really customers"

      Maybe the customer moved, then wrote the review, maybe they didn't. Still doesn't mean they should 'out' themselves.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonomouse, 20 Apr 2015 @ 6:27pm

      Re:

      Or the company ruined the carpets and would not admit it so the reviewer should not be unmasked. Troll? Or just unsympathetic to the common man?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2015 @ 7:14pm

        Re: Re:

        I think it can go both ways. but if a person that was never a customer wrote a false review with false factual claims what recourse does a company have? what are the legal avenues to stop these if not to unmask? thats all I am curious about. it could have been a legit customer it could not the only way to know is to sue yea?. have the company submit to the judge their client list and have the identity given to the judge in camera and let him double check?

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • icon
          Mason Wheeler (profile), 21 Apr 2015 @ 7:19am

          Re: Re: Re:

          Agreed. I don't like legal bullying, but if I was running a business and someone who wasn't even a customer started falsely claiming to be a customer and maliciously spreading negative information about my business, I would view that as defamation and also tortious interference of business.

          To turn one of Techdirt's favorite patent tropes inside-out, why is tortious interference of business suddenly not illegal when you add "on the Internet" on the end of it?

          link to this | view in chronology ]

        • icon
          John Fenderson (profile), 21 Apr 2015 @ 8:22am

          Re: Re: Re:

          I'm really torn by this issue. On the one hand, I agree with what you (and Mason) is saying here. On the other hand, simply getting sued is a pretty extreme and damaging thing to have happen. If someone posts a negative review that is accurate and they get sued for it, 99% of the time they will just remove the review to avoid the lawsuit. That's not a path to justice either.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

          • icon
            Mason Wheeler (profile), 21 Apr 2015 @ 8:40am

            Re: Re: Re: Re:

            If someone posts a negative review that is accurate and they get sued for it, 99% of the time they will just remove the review to avoid the lawsuit. That's not a path to justice either.

            Truth is an absolute defense against a defamation suit. If the problem is that, even being in the right, the lawsuit is ruinously expensive to defend yourself against, that's a completely different issue, and one that I agree sorely needs to be addressed.

            One of the less well-known freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment is the right to "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," or, in the modern parlance, "to have your day in court." The idea is that if you believe you're in the right, you should have nothing to fear in trying to get a judge to set it right. Unfortunately, over the centuries since the passage of the First Amendment, lawyers have completely torn that "guarantee" to shreds by the simple expedient of pricing justice out of the market. But you never hear politicians (a large percentage of whom come from a law background) talking about fixing that...

            link to this | view in chronology ]

            • icon
              John Fenderson (profile), 21 Apr 2015 @ 9:40am

              Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

              This is exactly right. Outside of small claims, when it comes to civil suits the court system is geared so that the winner is nearly always the one that has the larger warchest. Even if you are certain to lose in court, you can drag the pre-trial process out so long that you can bankrupt your opponent.

              This is the primary reason why I consider the US court system to be a force in opposition to justice. It's something to be worked around and avoided. Which is a terrible and dangerous thing.

              link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Just Another Anonymous Troll, 21 Apr 2015 @ 8:32am

      Re:

      Irrelevant to the discussion. We don't know whether or not the reviews contained false claims, only that the company thought they were written by non-customers and they wanted to unmask the reviewers to find out.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2015 @ 4:57pm

    Lower Courts

    Makes on wonder how the lower courts missed the whole improper jurisdiction thing. Were they customers of Haddeed Carpet Cleaning Inc. (at the special prosecutorial rate of $1.00, second room free)?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Kronomex, 20 Apr 2015 @ 5:42pm

    Wah, wah, wah. Sob, sob. We might be a bunch of bastards and rip people off but that still doesn't mean they can say mean things about us!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    DB (profile), 20 Apr 2015 @ 10:17pm

    I'm sympathetic to the issue of false negative reviews.

    There are enough fake positive reviews on Yelp that there must be at least a few fake negative ones.

    But being sympathetic to the issue doesn't mean I would want a world where reviews couldn't be anonymous.

    I think that this case was decided correctly. Venue was not correct.

    Even if venue had been correct, the case appears to have another fatal flaw. They didn't plead that the review was, at its core, false. The claim was that they couldn't match the review to their customer record, and that therefore the review might be libel.

    In other words they weren't claiming that the defamatory statement wasn't true. They were just claiming that some of the irrelevant details might not be accurate. And that they should be able to strip the anonymity from the reviewer because of that.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    DB (profile), 21 Apr 2015 @ 8:56am

    Mason, why is it considered OK for a business to be able to buy fake positive reviews but it is "defamation and also tortious interference of business" when there are negative reviews?

    No one has standing to sue over the fake positive reviews. Even with standing, there it would be an overwhelming cost for a trivial improvement. But a business should be able to track down and financially ruin anyone that posts a negative review?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mason Wheeler (profile), 21 Apr 2015 @ 10:37am

      Re:

      Where did I say it's OK for a business to buy fake positive reviews? Please don't put words in my mouth.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2015 @ 1:56pm

    How can a company prove that Yelp users were not customers without knowing who the reviewer is?

    In terms of defending a lawsuit, it someone ruined my carpet, I would imagine it would be an open and shut case, they either did or didn't ruin the carpets, if the reviewer was actually a customer, why would they need to hire a lawyer to defend themselves?

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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