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.

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

EFF Files Amicus Brief In State Supreme Court Appeal Of Case Threatening Anonymous Speech

from the should-be-protecting-all-speech,-not-just-the-stuff-you-like dept

The EFF has filed an amicus brief in a case involving a business suing anonymous reviewers for defamation. In 2013, Hadeed Carpet Cleaning took seven anonymous Yelp reviewers to court over allegedly defamatory reviews. It asked the court to unmask the people behind the reviews, claiming that they weren't customers and therefore, their reviews were false and defamatory per se. Yelp, the host of the contested reviews, refused to comply with the subpoena, arguing that it didn't meet the constitutional requirements needed to override First Amendment protections.

Unfortunately, the state of Virginia has a much lower bar for plaintiffs to hurdle in unmasking anonymous commenters and reviewers. The Dendrite rules, which have been applied in a number of states, weren't used in this case. Instead of having to prove that these reviewers had definitely broken the law, all Hadeed had to do was show the court that it had a "good faith basis" for believing the reviews were defamatory. Hadeed never contested the content of the reviews, but rather relied on the assumption that these reviews weren't posted by actual customers and, almost solely because of this, were actionable.

The EFF notes in that the lower court decisions took this low bar and went even lower, threatening to make Virginia a very dangerous place for anonymous speech, especially if it continues to place its state laws above the First Amendment.

Hadeed alleged that the reviewers aren't actually customers, but the lower courts didn't require it to provide proof. Nor did Hadeed show how the reviews were defamatory. Whether or not what Hadeed claimed was enough under Virginia law, the First Amendment requires significantly more evidence of defamation.

The brief itself points out that stripping away the protection of anonymity will just encourage further bad behavior from a variety of bad actors, who will be able to use subpoenas to expose their critics and subject them to further harassment.

Amicus EFF has witnessed these tactics at work firsthand. By bringing an ultimately frivolous lawsuit, litigants often seek to unmask anonymous speakers in order to humiliate them or discourage their speech. Thankfully, most courts have been aware of the harm that would flow from allowing such baseless subpoenas to issue without first considering the justification for unmasking these individuals…

The use of harassing subpoenas is also a favorite tactic in online copyright infringement litigation. In a typical case, the owners of adult movies file mass lawsuits based on single counts of copyright infringement stemming from the downloading of a pornographic film, and improperly lump hundreds of defendants together regardless of where their Internet Protocol addresses indicate they live. The motivation behind these cases appears to be to leverage the risk of embarrassment associated with pornography, as well as the accompanying costs of litigation, to wield as a sword to coerce settlement payments of several thousand dollars from each of these individuals…

The brief also argues that while anonymity is not guaranteed and can be removed under certain circumstances, the plaintiff's arguments haven't met these requirements.

All parties to this dispute agree that the constitutional privilege to remain anonymous is not absolute. Plaintiffs may properly seek information necessary to pursue reasonable and meritorious litigation. As the Court of Appeals put it, “if the reviews are unlawful in that they are defamatory, then the John Does’ veil of anonymity may be pierced, provided certain procedural safeguards are met.” (“Certain classes of speech, including defamatory and libelous speech, are entitled to no constitutional protection.”).

Rather, the dispute is as to the proper standard to apply in deciding whether to uphold the reviewers’ anonymity. The Court of Appeals rejected the guidance of numerous other state courts, including the leading case of Dendrite, and instead held that Virginia Code § 8.01-407.1 provides the sole standard for Virginia courts faced with unmasking anonymous speakers. This conclusion should be reversed because this interpretation of § 8.01-407.1 fails to meet the minimum standards of the First Amendment.

And if all of that fails to resonate, the EFF says there's also some jurisdictional questions with further First Amendment implications. Yelp's headquarters are in California and Hadeed should be filing its subpoenas there. Of course, the higher standard in California most likely means they would be rejected. But if the lower court's decision holds, people and companies looking to unmask anonymous commenters and reviewers will be making libel tourism stops in Virginia.

The lower court’s departure from standard practice means that Yelp is now subject to Virginia’s subpoena standards, rather than California’s. Under the rule that the lower court has adopted, Virginia’s subpoena jurisprudence can apply across the country. An enterprising plaintiff could file subpoenas in Virginia, knowing that Virginia has adopted a more lenient standard than its fellow courts. Non-parties would have to fight their requests in Virginia courts rather than the courts where the documents were stored, at additional and considerable expense. This is particularly problematic where, as here, the subpoena requests implicate First Amendment interests, which states are obligated to uphold on behalf of their citizens…

While there are many people who argue that online anonymity is just a way for people to say whatever they like without consequence, there's much more to it than insults, trolling and 4chan. The protections of anonymous speech date back to the founding principles of this country, predating the internet's rise as the simultaneous best/worst thing to happen to the world.

Online anonymity needs more protection than the state of Virginia is willing to afford it. The lower court set the bar for unmasking at toe-stubbing level and, if the state Supreme Court upholds it, will make Virginia the new home for the "tyranny of the majority." Hopefully, the state's top court will realize that it's also protecting the rights of American citizens, not just local businesses whose approach to criticism is to start filing lawsuits.

Filed Under: anonymity, dendrite rules, free speech, reviews, virginia
Companies: eff, hadeed carpet cleaning, yelp

Dangerous Ruling In Virginia Allows Cleaning Company To Identify Anonymous Yelp Critics

from the getting-it-wrong dept

Last year, we wrote about a troubling case in Virginia, in which a cleaning company, Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, sued seven anonymous Yelp reviewers in an attempt to discover who they were. Hadeed did not dispute the contents of the negative reviews, but rather said that, comparing the information to their own database, they could not identify the reviewers, and thus believed that they might not actually have been customers. Thus, Hadeed claims, the reviews would be defamatory since they didn't actually represent the experiences of actual customers. Yelp fought back on behalf of its users, pointing out that the First Amendment protects anonymous speech. Yelp pointed out that 11 different states had adopted the so-called Dendrite rules concerning the high bar necessary to force a company to reveal anonymous commenters. The basic idea is that you need to really show that the law has almost certainly been broken before you can identify the individuals.

Unfortunately, the Virginia state court of appeals has decided that it won't follow those rules, but rather will follow a Virginia state law that may be a bit out of date and (much worse) that it will interpret that law to have a very low bar, thus requiring Yelp to identify the commenters just because Hadeed Carpet Cleaning has "a good faith basis" to believe that the comments were defamatory. That's a very low bar, and allows for all sorts of mischief by those looking to unmask anonymous critics. There is a brief dissent in the case, in which one of the judges on the panel notes that, while he agrees that Virginia's law is the important one, he's troubled by the claim that Hadeed had a "good faith" basis, noting that the law requires "reasonable efforts... needed to advance the claim" but that in court Hadeed's lawyer simply said they really "don't know whether that person is a customer or not...." It would seem like "well, we just don't know" is not exactly a "good faith belief" that they were not a customer and that the comment is defamatory. Unfortunately, the majority of the court didn't seem to understand this point.

Yelp is apparently considering appealing the decision. But, at the very least, this may lead to the Supreme Court eventually having to weigh in on a better standard for protecting anonymous speech.

Filed Under: anonymity, dendrite, first amendment, free speech, reviews, virginia
Companies: hadeed carpet cleaning, yelp

Yelp Fights Back Against Carpet Cleaning Service That Sued Anonymous Critics For Defamation

from the good-for-yelp dept

We've seen plenty of lawsuits involving people upset about Yelp reviews, but here's a fairly extreme case. Apparently, a DC-area carpet cleaning service named Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, which is somewhat infamous in the area for its "pervasive advertising" and direct mail coupons promising a $99 cleaning special, does not have the greatest reputation on Yelp. The key issue: apparently that $99 deal is often not honored. Also, there are multiple reviews of people getting a quote, dropping off a carpet, and then being told later if they want the carpet back they have to pay much more -- with various excuses being offered as to why they're charging more than the quote.

Hadeed then decided to sue seven anonymous reviewers for defamation. Here's the oddity: Hadeed does not appear to be suing them over the contents of the bad review. In fact, the company doesn't seem to dispute the various complaints about its pricing practices. Rather, it argues that it could not match these seven reviewers to actual customers within its database, and therefore, the reviewers are defaming them by misrepresenting that they were ever Hadeed customers. Hadeed appears to suggest that they reviews were really written by a competitor.

As we've discussed, many courts have adopted the so-called Dendrite rules for identifying anonymous speakers. The rules require giving the anonymous users a chance to respond and (more importantly) require the plaintiff to present enough evidence to prove there's an actual case. However, the court in Virginia chose to not apply any such rules, but rather allowed a subpoena to Yelp ordering it to identify the posters. Yelp has refused, and the court ordered compliance, which Yelp again refused, leading to the court saying Yelp was in contempt.

Public Citizen has now filed a brief on behalf of Yelp with the appeals court, arguing both that the Virginia court had no jurisdiction over Yelp, a California company, and that Yelp was correct to ignore the order since the First Amendment (which protects anonymous speech) requires much more proof before an anonymous speaker can be revealed.

When pervasive advertisements from a local merchant feature prices that seem to be just too good to be true, they may, in fact, not be the price that the average consumer will pay. Dozens of consumers who have used pseudonyms to post about their experiences with appellee Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, Inc. (“Hadeed”) on the popular website www.yelp.com, maintained by appellant Yelp Inc. (“Yelp”), report that Hadeed routinely fails to honor the advertised discount prices. Hadeed’s responses to several consumers on Yelp suggest that it recognizes the problem; yet its complaint for defamation singles out the authors of seven reviews posted on Yelp that say the same thing as the other online detractors of Hadeed and its sister business, Hadeed Oriental Rug Cleaning. Based on that allegation, Hadeed invoked the court’s subpoena power to strip its pseudonymous critics of their First Amendment right to speak anonymously.

The main question on this appeal—an issue of first impression at the appellate level in Virginia—is whether the trial court applied the proper legal standard in overriding the anonymous speakers’ First Amendment rights. Courts elsewhere have recognized that, given the valuable role played by the First Amendment right to speak anonymously in encouraging ordinary people to express themselves fully, it is necessary to balance that right against a plaintiff’s right to seek redress for wrongful speech by adopting a standard requiring a plaintiff to do more than articulate a good faith belief that the speech “maybe tortious.” Before stripping the defendant of a First Amendment right, these courts take an early look at the merits of the plaintiff’s claim to determine whether a valid claim has been alleged and whether there is a prima facie evidentiary basis for that claim. In this appeal, Yelp urges Virginia to adopt the same approach, and to remand this case to give Hadeed an opportunity to pursue its subpoena by meeting the proper standard.

In the meantime, though, we have yet another case of a company suing over Yelp reviews -- which just makes me wonder how they ever expect to get more customers. Any company that sues over online reviews someone makes is clearly a company not worth doing business with, since they might, potentially, sue you over any bad review you write online about them.

Filed Under: anonymity, carpet cleaning, defamation, dendrite, disclosure, privacy, reviews
Companies: hadeed carpet cleaning, yelp