Reputation Management Revolution: Fake News Sites And Even Faker DMCA Notices

from the the-dishonest-leading-the-dishonest-into-a-new-world-of-unaccountability! dept

Pissed Consumer has uncovered another apparent case of bad reputation management, this one revolving around bogus websites facilitating bogus DMCA takedowns. It previously exposed a pair of lawyers using shell companies and highly-questionable defamation lawsuits to force Google to delist negative reviews hosted around the web. These faux litigants always managed to not only find the supposed "defamers," but to also obtain a signed admission within 48 hours of the lawsuit being filed -- a process that usually takes weeks or months, especially if the alleged "defamer" utilizes anything other than their real name when posting negative reviews.

In this case, the reputation management scheme involves the use of hastily-set up "news" sites that contain a blend of scraped content and negative reviews hosted at sites like Yelp, Ripoff Report and Pissed Consumer.

Frankfort Herald, frankfortherald.com is a newspaper website that, despite its trustworthy name, has never really existed, for all intents and purposes, before January 2016 (according to archive.org). However, this did not stop them from sending a DMCA notice to Google claiming that they were the owners of the copyrighted material from Pissed Consumer that was published back in 2012.

On April 15, 2016 Pissed Consumer received a takedown notice for a review where frankfortherald.com claimed that they originally wrote the piece of news in question back on January 5, 2012. The review is about Brad Kuskin, and they claimed they had it published only 2 days prior to the article appearing on PissedConsumer.com.

Here's the supposed news article Frankfort Herald claims it owns in its bogus DMCA takedown notice.

The scheme is just as stupid as convicted fraudster Sean Gjerde's rep management Hail Mary: post copies of reviews or articles you want to see vanished at your own website and then issue DMCA notices claiming you own the words of others. It seldom works and tends to draw more attention to the content someone's trying to hide. (Of course, Sean Gjerde went the extra mile and tried to have the FBI's press release about his conviction delisted by Google…)

That's not the only negative content masquerading as "news" at the Frankfort Herald. There's also a negative Yelp review about a Spanish language school, a Ripoff Report review of a Georgia law firm and a CBS story about an apparent scam artist who suckered parents into shelling out thousands of dollars by pretending he was scouting talent for Disney. Disney disavowed any connection to the event. All of these have been targeted by bogus takedown notices under several names linked to the definitely-not-a-local-news-site "Frankfort Herald."

Whoever's behind that site has issued bogus takedown notices under the name "Heart Broadcasting" (a name that can only be found in the Frankfort Herald's site footer), "Frankfort Herald News Corp.," and "Frankfort News Corp." Perhaps most idiotically, it has co-opted the name of one of the world's biggest publishers in hopes of giving its bogus takedowns a veneer of respectability: "Hearst Media LLC."

Other fake "news" sites containing a jumble of scraped content and completely unrelated negative reviews have also issued bogus takedown notices within the last 30 days.

AthaNews sent one on March 25th where the sender claims the following is the result of their journalistic efforts:

Bought a house from Lala Ragimov and her “Developer” Husband “Tod”. On the surface their renovatinos seem solid but there were several red flags that I now wish we listened to. 1) “The Ragimov’s” are effectively the same entity. The claim of a seperate relator vs. develoiper and the games they play about “checking with the developer” are a joke. They are husband and wife! 2) We were told our roof was new but the condition was listed as “unknown” in discolsures. We were told this is common since the roof was repaired not replaced. The building was also conviently too tall to bring an inspector with a ladder without a special fee. The result? Leaks almost immideatley! [...]

Of course, the alleged infringer is none other than Ripoff Report, which shamelessly claimed this "journalist's" misspelling-laden "exposé" into a local realtor as its own. [eyeroll] AthaNews' mission statement -- found in the website's footer -- is lorem ipsum translated into English.

SEI World News is doing the same thing. It issued a DMCA notice to Google on April 7th, claiming one of its "news articles" was being "copied."

I am senior editor and my article is copied . Just to harm my reputation online . The article owner anonymously copied my content . Please look into this matter .

Once again, Ripoff Report is home to the targeted URL. SEI World has been playing this game for several months now, targeting negative reviews at other site with bogus claims of "copied" articles.

Searching Google's DMCA database using Ripoff Report as the target uncovers all sorts of "news" sites claiming negative reviews hosted elsewhere are the genuine byproduct of their journalistic endeavors. "Mass Communications Inc.?" Bogus takedown of a Ripoff Report review. Some site called "Global Girl Magazine" wants Ripoff Report to stop ripping off its "journalist's" work -- which is apparently something about a fund manager with an alleged penchant for scamming clients after taking their retainer fees, written in the first person. The same thing goes for the "Lewisburg Tribune." And so on...

The clustering of DMCA notices seems to point to a single reputation management bozo pulling the strings on multiple websites like a more focused Patrick Zarrelli. On the other hand, the scattershot approach and slippery grasp of the English language exhibited in the DMCA notices may indicate this is nothing more than a bunch of Fiverr freelancers making reputation management promises they can't keep. In some cases, it appears to have worked. Several of the bogus takedowns show Google has taken action and delisted links. But those victories will only be temporary. Any challenge from a legitimate site should see these decisions swiftly reversed.

Filed Under: censorship, dmca, fake news, reputation management, takedowns
Companies: frankfort herald, pissedconsumer

Roca Labs Sues Anonymous Commenters In Convoluted Plot To Get Negative Comments De-Indexed From Google

from the try-that-one-again dept

As we've noted in the past, every time we think the Roca Labs story can't get any more bizarre, it does. Roca's lawyers have an amazing talent to come up with totally wacky legal theories that appear to have little basis in reality. However, all of it seems pretty focused on one thing: stopping anyone from saying anything negative about the company's goop that it claims will help you lose weight. The original lawsuit that got our attention was an attempt to get PissedConsumer to delete negative reviews, followed by a bogus DMCA notice to Google, in an effort to get the negative reviews removed from Google's search results.

The latest move is equally creative and wacky. Adam Steinbaugh has the details, in which Roca Labs is now suing 11 anonymous commenters [pdf] who posted comments to PissedConsumer.com. The filing is in a Florida state court. Now, upon hearing such a thing, my first thought was that, like many defamation claims against anonymous commenters, the goal here was to try to unmask them. However, as Steinbaugh notes, that sort of legal trickery is nothing compared to what Roca Labs appears to have up its sleeve. Instead, it doesn't seem all that interested in who wrote the comments, it just wants to get a court order that it can use to pressure Google and others into no longer linking to those reviews. How it's intending to do so is complicated (and legally questionable).

First, Roca builds on its classic misunderstanding of what "defamation per se" means, asking for a variety of comments to be declared as such. You can see the statements in the complaint itself, or on Steinbaugh's site, where he helpfully transcribed them, along with notations about why most of the comments are not, in fact, defamatory (most are either opinion or basic hyperbole):
Now, given this, how does Roca Labs hope to get these comments off the internet? Here's Steinbaugh's summary:

Roca is seeking an order requiring that, at Roca’s request, any “search engines, Web Hosts” which are provided with a copy of the injunction be required to “cease facilitating access to any or all websites through which Defendants post defamatory content.” While vaguely worded, if such an order were indeed entered, Roca could require a search engine to remove sites like PissedConsumer from their index. This will never happen.

While that request is vague, Roca’s declaratory relief cause of action expands upon it. Roca alleges that the internet comments are a “res.” That’s a term of art for real property (e.g., land and buildings) used in the context of determining whether a court has jurisdiction:

The Digital Defamation is digital property and should be considered a res which has been continuously located since the date of its publication in Broward County, Florida, as a result of its continuous publication or republication in Broward County, Florida through various internet search engines such as Google.

This would turn jurisdictional questions — whether the defendant can be hauled into a court in Florida for something they said elsewhere — on their head. This is insane.

Okay, now take the wacky legal theories up yet another notch. Roca Labs not only isn't really interested in identifying those anonymous commenters, it actively doesn't want to identify them, because it believes that if it "publishes" a "legal notice" about this and those commenters don't respond, it will then be able to get a default judgment against those commenters, requiring Google to delete its search results:

Google has adopted a voluntary policy that it will de-index (remove from its search algorithm and its search pages) defamatory postings from other internet service providers such as PissedConsumer.com so long as Google is presented with a judgment that the anonymous posting is in fact defamatory. If this Court enters an order finding the Statements posted by Defendants are defamatory, the Statements will only be removed by the search engine pursuant to its voluntary policy but will remain posted on PissedConsumer.com. [...] In essence, this claim for Declaratory Judgment is merely requesting that pages containing the Digital Defamation be removed from the search engines, i.e., de-indexed. [The order] will not remove the commercially defamatory statements from PissedConsumer.com[. ...] This scenario creates a defacto balancing test between the rights of the Plaintiff not to be defamed and the First Amendment rights of Defendants to be heard.

In other words, the company isn't trying to uncover anyone actually doing anything defamatory -- and probably doesn't really want those statements reviewed by a court to see if they're actually defamatory. It just wants to get a court to issue a default ruling -- based on the anonymous commenters not showing up (and possibly not even knowing about it) -- so it can present Google with an order saying it needs to delete links to those comments (most of which are not actually defamatory, but rather people's opinions).

Once again, we're amazed at the lengths that Roca Labs appears to want to go to stop anyone from finding any negative comments about the company and its products online.

Filed Under: anonymous commenters, defamation, default judgment, florida, pissed consumer, reviews
Companies: consumer opinion corp., google, pissedconsumer, roca labs

Roca Labs Sues Blogger; Faces Legal Challenges In NY & Florida

from the slow-down-guys dept

Keeping up with the ongoing Roca Labs saga appears to require full-time effort, as there are a bunch of updates. First up, though, is that Roca Labs has decided to sue blogger Tracy Coenen for the articles she published about Roca Labs. Earlier this month, we wrote about Roca Labs' threats against Tracy Coenen, a fraud investigator, who wrote about Roca Labs on her Fraud Files blog. As in the past, it appears that Roca Labs believes statements that are clearly opinions or hyperbole are somehow defamatory if they reflect negatively on Roca Labs. Before filing the lawsuit, Roca sent a second threat letter with a very brief deadline, complaining that she "publicly mocked" them. Coenen's response was to publish a new blog post explaining why she believes "Roca Labs Must Be Mocked."

In the actual lawsuit, Roca also claims that because Coenen sent us Roca's threat letter and we published it, that she was using Roca's letter to "harass and mock" the company. Who knew that merely publishing the threat Roca Labs sent is harassment of Roca Labs? And, of course, mocking Roca Labs is not against the law, no matter how much the company might wish it were so.

In the meantime, it appears that Coenen actually did -- at least temporarily -- give in to Roca's demands and removed the blog post in question -- but Roca Labs claimed it was not enough because she "did not retract [her] Defamatory Statements or otherwise comment publically [sic] concerning the defamatory Statements' lack of fact and merit." Further, the lawsuit accuses her of trying to "conceal the truth and cover-up [her] bad acts."

So, to keep this straight: Roca Labs sent her threat letters claiming what she wrote was defamatory, and after she removed the post (temporarily), the company is using that as evidence that she's trying to conceal the truth? Really? Good luck with that one. Oh, and also, it appears that Roca's attorney in this case, John DeGirolamo, is still somewhat confused about what defamation per se means. Hopefully, the court will sort it out for him.

In the meantime, some other things have been happening in various other Roca Labs court proceedings. Up in New York, where PissedConsumer (Consumer Opinion Corp.) had originally sued Roca Labs for declaratory judgment of non-infringement, Roca Labs had been trying to get out of the case arguing that the jurisdiction is improper. But, as you may recall, Roca also recently sent a questionable DMCA takedown letter to Google, claiming that content on PissedConsumer was infringing (something we find unlikely to be true... but...). However, as PissedConsumers' lawyers in New York note, in filing that takedown, Roca Labs has effectively made itself subject to PissedConsumer's local court's jurisdiction. This is based on a ruling in another nutty case we covered for a while, the effort by Gina Crosley-Corcoran to use the DMCA to silence a critic. In that case, the court noted that, in serving a DMCA takedown notice, the sender "purposefully and voluntarily directed [its] activities toward the forum so that [it] should have expected, by virtue of the benefit [it] received, to be subject to [this] court's jurisdiction based on these contacts."

When PissedConsumer's lawyers notified Roca Labs' lawyers of this, Roca Labs stood by its argument that the court has no jurisdiction, but Roca Labs' lawyers didn't seem to understand the significance of this. In response, PissedConsumer is now seeking to go after Roca Labs for DMCA 512(f) penalties, for misrepresentations in filing a DMCA takedown.

And, finally, just to complete this trio of stories, we'll also note that, down in the Florida case, PissedConsumer has filed a humdinger of a motion for summary judgment, laying out why Roca Labs has no chance in its case, and why the case should be put to rest quickly. Given everything else going on, we won't go into a more detailed analysis of that motion, other than to suggest you read it, and note that, as we predicted, it relies heavily on Section 230. It's written by Marc Randazza, so it's got that readable style he's become known for.

Filed Under: copyright, defamation, dmca, john degirolamo, jurisdiction, lawsuits, marc randazza, paul berger, takedowns, tracy coenen
Companies: consumer opinion corp., pissedconsumer, roca labs

Roca Labs Issues Bogus DMCA Takedown Notices To Google To Try To Hide PissedConsumer Reviews

from the keep-digging dept

Yes, we're back again with another Roca Labs story already. Lawyer Ron Coleman alerts us to the latest ridiculous legal strategy by Roca Labs: send a DMCA notice to Google to try to hide the negative reviews of Roca Labs on PissedConsumer.com. As you know, Roca Labs is suing PissedConsumer because it hosts some negative reviews of Roca's product (a claimed "alternative" to gastric bypass surgery). The DMCA notice in question claims that thumbnails used on the PissedConsumer reviews violate its copyright, and further, that PissedConsumer violates Roca Labs trademarks by using Roca Labs in the URL for the Roca Labs reviews.

The thumbnail image of Roca Labs copyrighted website that can be seen at the URL below. This thumbnail also contains the image of Roca Lab's product that was photographed by Roca Labs and all copyrights are owned by Roca Labs (original studio image is not online). Furthermore, PissedConsumer.com directly uses the name Roca Labs which is a Registered trademarked property (US Registration No. 4145897). To be more specific, pissedconsumer.com uses our company name in the URL and pages.

Like many of the legal arguments from Roca Labs, these seem to be almost entirely bogus.

First, thumbnail images in this manner are almost certainly fair use -- something Google knows darn well, since it was the key defendant in the case (Perfect 10 v. Google) that established this point. Even outside of that authority, a basic four factors analysis would easily show that using thumbnails for reviews is fair use.

Second, the DMCA is not to be used for trademark claims, as the DMCA does not cover trademark.

Third, even if it did, the URLs are clearly not infringing, as a huge number of rulings concerning "gripe sites" that use the name of the company they're criticizing in their URL have found. When such sites are clearly not the originating company and there's no likelihood of confusion, such URLs are nearly always found to be non-infringing.

Either way, this seems to fit Roca's pattern of doing anything it can possibly do to try to suppress criticism of its product. It really makes you wonder why the company is so worried about letting customers give an opinion about their product, doesn't it?

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, fair use, thumbnails, trademark
Companies: google, pissedconsumer, roca labs

Roca Labs Sues Opposing Lawyer, Marc Randazza, Because Of What We Wrote On Techdirt

from the i'm-still-trying-to-figure-it-out-myself dept

So, the Roca Labs story continues to get more and more bizarre. There are these stories that we follow, sometimes, that we think can't get any more bizarre... and then they do. Joseph Rakofsky, Righthaven, Charles Carreon and Prenda Law all seemed to have trouble recognizing the infamous first rule of holes¹. And it would appear that Roca Labs is very firmly in that camp as well. Roca Labs has chosen to sue Marc Randazza, the lawyer representing PissedConsumer in Roca's case against PissedConsumer. Roca is suing him for defamation, but, as Ken "Popehat" White points out, not for anything specific that Randazza has said, but mostly for stuff that we wrote on Techdirt (and some of what was written by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing) on the bizarre, and simply wrong, assumption that Randazza somehow fed us what to say. Adam Steinbaugh summarizes the situation nicely:

Roca Labs’ theory is that Randazza made defamatory statements to the media, which published them, and then proceeded to make the above statements in pleadings against the company.  The litigation privilege does not extend to statements made outside the litigation — such as statements to the media.

But this position is circumspect at best: Roca Labs is vague about the statements supposedly made to the media. Roca Labs simply notes that two media outlets — Techdirt and BoingBoing — published articles before Randazza filed the pleadings, and those articles contain statements that are also critical of Roca Labs for similar reasons: that the complaint is ridiculous and that the product has the aura of being snake oil — a miracle product that will let its consumers shed weight like a snake sheds skin.

Roca Labs has pulled a bait-and-switch, essentially saying: “look, the media criticized us for similar things that Randazza criticized us, so let’s assume Randazza said those same things to the media.“ Except each of those statements are observations that anyone familiar with free speech issues would probably have made on their own.  The Techdirt article doesn’t even quote or mention Randazza, and it’s not exactly surprising that either outlet would slam Roca Labs’ complaint: these types of half-baked lawsuits are something of a cause célèbre for Mike Masnick (who, himself, is not exactly a scrivener sycophant of Randazza.)  As for the BoingBoing article, it did little more than quote Techdirt, adding, in total:

Roca Labs sells dubious snake-oil like a “Gastric Bypass Alternative,” and their terms of service forbid their customers from ever complaining; they say that Pissedconsumer.com committed “tortious interference” by providing a place where disgruntled buyers could air their grievances.

Calling something a “snake oil” is clearly an opinion no journalist would formulate on his own without talking to the defendants’ counsel, right? Much less BoingBoing, which never calls anything snake-oil.

You can read the lawsuit itself at the link above or embedded below. It makes a huge number of assumptions -- basically all incorrect -- that Randazza spoke to us in particular for our post. He did not. Either way, the Popehat analysis explains why this whole thing is ridiculous:

On to the substance of the claim, if I may use the term very generously. Roca — through Johnny G. — asserts that Marc has been defaming Roca Labs during this litigation by making statements to the press (or, as Johnny G. puts it, to "webzines") and then putting those same statements in court pleadings. They imply he's trying to cloak his statements to the media with litigation privilege by repeating them in court filings. This theory is . . . odd.

Moreover, Johnny G. and Roca Labs are conspicuously vague about exactly what statements are defamatory, and exactly how. Other than complaining that Randazza defamed Roca Labs through a very clearly satirical tweet on Halloween, there are few specifics. Roca Labs complains that Randazza's purpose is to "mock, ridicule, humiliate, harm, and continue his war against ROCA," but that's not very specific. Roca Labs complains about statements in articles by Techdirt and tries to attribute them to Randazza, but doesn't explain exactly what Randazza said and exactly how it was wrong. That lack of specificity is probably deliberate — if Roca Labs admitted they were mad over the term "snake oil," they'd have to confront the fact that the phrase is obviously protected opinion. See, e.g., Phantom Touring v. Affiliated Publ'ns, 953 F.2d 724, 728, 730–31 (1st Cir.1992) (holding that description of theatre production as “a rip-off, a fraud, a scandal, a snake-oil job” was no more than “rhetorical hyperbole”). Moreover, in some parts of the complaint Roca Labs is attacking statements that are clearly, objectively true based on Roca Labs' own court documents. For instance, Roca Labs angrily quotes a paragraph in which Techdirt accused them of trying to silence customers. Which is what they are doing.

Finally, the complaint attaches a motion for a temporary injunction, in which Johnny G. demands that Randazza cease and desist saying mean things about Roca Labs, retract prior mean things, and remove any online content about Roca Labs. At this point I have to admit that I don't know whether Roca Labs and Johnny G. are powerfully stupid, breathtakingly cynical, unapologetically unethical, or all three. Despite the fact that they are suing a renowned First Amendment lawyer, despite the fact that they are demanding an injunction silencing him, despite the fact that they have lost a similar injunction request in which Randazza schooled them on the First Amendment and prior restraint issues, and despite the fact that it is clear those issues will arise again, their motion makes no mention whatsoever of the overwhelming First Amendment and prior restraint issues presented by their demand.

So there's that. The complaint against Randazza also seems to try to smear Randazza for the fact that he's represented the First Amendment interests of some pornographers and "supported" other "undesirable" folks, including writing about the first amendment rights of a pro-pedophilia author.

As Popehat further points out, Roca's lawyer also appears to use "defamation per se" incorrectly. We've noted in the past that Roca has used that claim based on a clause in its terms of service that says if you say negative things about the company it will count as defamation per se (which is not how defamation per se works), but Roca again seems confused with it in regards to Randazza. Popehat provides the primer:

Most people who use "defamation per se" use it wrong. That is the case here. "Defamation per se" does not mean "this is automatically defamatory." It means that certain statements, if proved false with the requisite mental state (malice or negligence), do not require extra proof of special damages.

I can't imagine this particular lawsuit will go far, but I do wonder if Roca Labs and its lawyers will ever recognize that first rule of holes.

^{1. Stop digging ↩}

Filed Under: defamation, defamation per se, intimidation, litigation privilege, marc randazza
Companies: consumer opinion corp., pissedconsumer, roca labs

Roca Labs Sues Witness Who Came Forward In Its Lawsuit Against PissedConsumer

from the scorched-earth-strategy dept

Roca Labs just keeps going and going. If you don't recall, the company sued PissedConsumer (a part of Consumer Opinion Corp.), claiming that the site had engaged in "tortious interference" with Roca's business by encouraging people to complain about a Roca Labs product (a kind of goop that it claims will fill your stomach making you less hungry). In its response to Roca's lawsuit, PissedConsumer also supplied declarations from a former Roca customers who were unhappy with their experience, complained about it, and got threatened with lawsuits in response from Roca Labs. Soon after, Roca Labs threatened three of those individuals with defamation lawsuits, even though it had been years since the company had communicated with two of the three.

It appears that Roca Labs finally made good on that threat and recently filed a lawsuit against all three individuals in Florida State Court. The lawsuit (pdf), which includes a demand for a temporary injunction, seems destined for federal court rather than state court since none of the defendants are in Florida. Either way, the lawsuit accuses all three of "breaching" the contract by daring to complain to the Better Business Bureau, tortious interference for alerting others to the fact that they didn't like Roca Labs' product and "defamation per se" based on Roca's rather interesting interpretation of defamation law. As we've noted in the past, the gag order in Roca Labs' terms of service does say that if you complain about its product, it will automatically be considered defamation per se, but that's not how "defamation per se" works.

Roca Labs is seeking declaratory relief and a temporary injunction. Once again, the request for the temporary injunction is an interesting legal argument, seeing as the company is asking the court to prevent speech from the three individuals -- and it's generally considered improper to issue a temporary injunction for speech (the whole First Amendment/prior restraint thing becomes an issue).

Frankly, this looks like a fairly standard SLAPP suit -- a lawsuit designed to shut someone up. Unfortunately, Florida only has a ridiculously narrow anti-SLAPP law, meaning that it won't be effective for the three women in question.

On a separate note, in my last post on Roca Labs, I mentioned that the company appeared to have incorrectly told the court in Florida that its case against PissedConsumer there was unrelated to any other case, when that clearly was not the case, given the lawsuit in NY that PissedConsumer had filed against Roca Labs even earlier, seeking declaratory relief. Apparently, Roca Labs recognized its mistake the very next day after I wrote about it, and filed an amended filing, noting the case in NY. I'm sure it's a coincidence.

Updated:: I've updated this post slightly, after discovering that not all three of the new defendants were involved in the PissedConsumer case -- just one was, but all three had complained to the Better Business Bureau.

Filed Under: defamation, defamation per se, florida, lawsuits, slapp, tortious interference
Companies: consumer opinion corp., pissedconsumer, pissedconsumer.com, roca labs

Roca Labs Threatens Other Sites For Writing About Its Case, Files Another Questionable Document

from the just-keep-digging dept

The saga of Roca Labs continues. If you're unfamiliar with it, I recommend reading the previous stories, rather than having me rehash it here, but the Florida company, which makes a substance that it claims will help people lose weight is suing PissedConsumer.com because Roca gets many of its customers to agree to a questionable clause barring any negative statements about the product, and Roca claims that PissedConsumer's encouragement of negative reviews is somehow tortious interference. Roca also has a history of threatening lots of people with defamation claims, including all three former customers who came forward as witnesses in the PissedConsumer case... and us at Techdirt for merely covering the case and quoting some of the filings. There was also this weird tangent involving a failed accusation that PissedConsumer's lawyer, Marc Randazza tried to "bribe" a state Senator (that got tossed out pretty quickly).

Apparently, though, Roca Labs just keeps threatening people for covering the case. We've heard from a few others who received similar threats to the one we received, and the latest is Tracy Coenen, a fraud investigator who writes the Fraud Files blog, where she covered the Roca lawsuit, the lawsuit against a former customer and the fake implied endorsement from Alfonso Ribeiro.

Apparently, Roca's "independent general counsel" Paul Berger didn't like that, and sent her a legal nastygram last week, claiming that she made "numerous false and defamatory statements." Coenen has now responded to Berger's letter, declining to retract the original, noting that the statements in question are either statements of opinion, quotes from the pleadings in the case or factual statements.

At this point, I'm just kind of curious as to why Berger thinks this particular strategy is effective. Is it just the only remaining hammer in his toolbag, and thus every bit of coverage looks like a nail he has to bang?

In the meantime, the case continues with yet another new lawyer representing Roca (I've lost track of how many there have been). The latest lawyer, James Hetz, who also lists himself as "independent general counsel" for Roca Labs (how many of those do they have?) recently filed a statement that the PissedConsumer case "IS NOT related to any pending or closed civil or criminal case filed with this Court or any other Federal or State court..."

That struck me as somewhat interesting, given a blog post from lawyer Ron Coleman last week, in which he revealed that... before Roca had sued PissedConsumer in Florida, PissedConsumer had actually sued Roca Labs for declaratory judgment in New York, after Roca had begun sending PissedConsumer threatening letters demanding it remove all those negative reviews (and apparently claiming, hilariously, it had "suffered damages in excess of $40 million" from the negative reviews). According to the docket on that case, Roca Labs is trying to get it dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, but otherwise the case is proceeding. Given that these appear to be about the very same issue, I'm not sure how the Roca Labs filing in Florida by Hetz is an accurate statement.

Filed Under: defamation, james hetz, paul berger, pissedconsumer, threats, tracy coenen
Companies: consumer opinion corporation, pissedconsumer, roca labs

'Doctor' Promoting Roca Labs Actually A Pediatrician Who Lost His Medical License For Child Porn

from the this-company-seems-so-trustworthy dept

Over the last few weeks we've been writing a bit about the legal efforts of Roca Labs, the company selling an "alternative" to gastric bypass surgery, which is actually a bunch of "industrial food thickening agents" that the company claims will fill up your stomach and not make you want to eat. Whether or not that actually works, the company has a bizarre gag order that it pushes on buyers which forbids them from ever saying anything negative about the company (and requiring them to allow Roca to share any positive results). That was already sketchy enough, but what caught our attention was that the company sued PissedConsumer claiming it was "tortious interference" to request complaints about the company, since so many of its buyers had agreed to this gag clause. We found that legal theory to be quite questionable, in our opinion. Things got even more bizarre after Roca decided to threaten with lawsuits the three former customers who agreed to provide evidence for PissedConsumer (even though it hadn't communicated with two of them for more than three years).

There was a hearing on Wednesday where the court rejected PissedConsumer's request to stop Roca from threatening to sue those customers, though the reasoning is unclear right now (I assume it will come out soon). The court is still considering Roca's request for an injunction against PissedConsumer.

In the meantime, however, Adam Steinbaugh has decided to dig into the Roca Labs story, and found something rather horrifying. A guy that Roca Labs was using to promote their stuff was actually a pediatrician who had lost his medical license because of his involvement with child porn. When Steinbaugh asked Roca about this, Roca suddenly pulled down any and all content on their website and on YouTube (there was a video of "Dr. Ross F." promoting Roca which had been here, but it has now been set to "private"). Steinbaugh summarizes how Roca used Dr. Ross F.:

Roca Labs’ website and YouTube channel are saturated with images of attractive men and women wearing lab coats emblazoned with the caduceus – a symbol commonly associated with doctors and medical professionals — leaving the viewer with the impression that these are educated, licensed professionals. This is a product I can trust!

Until yesterday, Roca Labs held out one such doctor — “Dr. Ross” — as its “Director of Medical Team”, hailing from “NJ, USA.” The company rarely identified him by his full name, instead severing his last name to a mere initial. In a “Letter to Your Doctor”, Dr. Ross described himself as “an independent medical consultant” describing the “Roca Labs Formula” to assure his “fellow doctor” as to its benefits. The letter was signed with his full name, followed by “MD” – medical doctor.

But, he notes, Dr. Ross (whose full name Steinbaugh has redacted) no longer has a medical license:

This allegation is corroborated by an Order of Revocation from the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners, which incorporates a plea agreement, and an Order for Non Practice of Medicine from the New York State Department of Health. The substance of the agreement was that the Dr. Ross — a pediatrician — surrendered his licenses to practice medicine in New Jersey and New York and was prohibited from seeking a “license to practice medicine in any jurisdiction at any time in the future.”

The New Jersey order also includes prohibitions which “not only bar[] a licensee from rendering professional services, but also from providing an opinion as to professional practice or its application” and requires “affirmative action to stop advertisements by which his/her eligibility to practice is represented.”

And yet, until earlier this week, "Dr. Ross" claimed to be the medical director at the company and claimed to "review each case for medical accuracy."

In addition to the advertisements above, there’s also this now-deleted post, under the “ask the doctor” in which Dr. Ross F. recounts his role in the company:

I have reviewed thousands of formal inquiries from the public that request to begin using the Roca Labs Formula for weight loss. [...] I review each case individually for medical accuracy. I have been the medical director at Roca Labs for the past year. I was in clinical medical practice for 10 years before moving into pharmaceutical management. I have been involved in the development and ongoing monitoring of the Roca Labs Formula. I work directly with the staff and customers to maintain the highest levels of medical accuracy and safety.

And while it’s unclear whether the feature ever launched, a now-deleted page advertised that the company would soon offer, for thirty-five dollars, online consultations with Dr. Ross to provide “consultation and medical advice.” Another now-deleted post advertised that for a mere $380, the “online medical staff will be at your service with detailed answers and advice 24/7″ — an option known as “be my doctor”, although it’s unclear whether Dr. Ross was employed by Roca at the time.

Of course, all of this disappeared right after Steinbaugh asked Roca about it. In response, Roca (in a long rambling email) said that the removal was not because of his request, but because Roca was "a serious company that acts according to its plans." Steinbaugh asked about those plans but didn't get an answer. As Steinbaugh notes, it's entirely possible that what Dr. Ross was doing for Roca was legal, but it certainly looks sketchy.

To be sure, the orders of New Jersey and New York explicitly do not require Dr. Ross F. to “affirmatively advise patients or others of the revocation, suspension or surrender” except in response to an inquiry, nor is it entirely clear whether the order prohibits his association and work with Roca Labs. In fact, his precise relationship with the company is entirely unclear: was he merely there to give the appearance that someone whose name is preceded by “Dr.” endorses and gives legitimacy to the company’s “formula”? Or did he have a greater role in the company’s product? If so, did those acts — whatever they were – constitute the practice of medicine? And if there are other doctors — posts on the BBB site by Roca indicate that a doctor reviews qualification forms — what are their qualifications?

Nevertheless, this is the conduct of a company which says that it is “completely transparent” and that “nothing is hidden“: intimidate critics with ominous (and likely baseless) threats of legal action and, when questions are raised, refuse to answer.

Filed Under: contracts, dr ross, gag, gastric bypass surgery, nutraceuticals, reviews
Companies: pissedconsumer, roca labs

Roca Labs Lawsuit Gets Even More Bizarre: Now With An 'Unauthorized' Guest Appearance By 'TV Celebrity' Alfonso Ribeiro

from the hey-everyone,-it's-carlton-from-the-fresh-prince dept

The Roca Labs saga continues to get more and more bizarre -- and now it's got an "unauthorized" appearance by "television celebrity" Alfonso Ribeiro, perhaps better known as Carlton Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, whose Carlton Dance has become the stuff of TV legend. On Monday, Roca Labs filed a motion in a (failed, but we'll get to that) attempt to file an affidavit from Roca's "director of marketing," Don Juravin, supposedly about how the PissedConsumer site is acting unfairly. The affidavit repeats a bunch of claims from the original questionable lawsuit against PissedConsumer's parent company, Consumer Opinion Corp., but then adds the following:

On September 22, 2014 I purchased a promoted review on pissedconsumer.com for a monthly fee of $5.99 (See Exhibit C attached).

I placed an approved statement by television celebrity Alfonso Riberio [sic] who is currently a contestant on Dancing with the Stars about Roca Labs.

On September 22, 2014 I received a notice from Pissedconsumer.com that my review was canceled.... I received no explanation of why it was canceled.

Roca Labs is using this as a (rather weak) attempt to argue that PissedConsumer is engaged in some sort of unfair practices because it (Roca claims) "will not allow positive information to come forward."

This filing was quickly rejected by the court for procedural issues, focused on the failure of Roca Labs' lawyers to first confer with opposing counsel. However, before even that happened, Roca Labs filed another motion to "shorten time" for when Roca can file a motion for sanctions against PissedConsumer's lawyer, Marc Randazza. The reasoning behind the claim of sanction is not clear (it says a draft is attached, but it does not appear in PACER right now), but it seems to suggest that it's because of Randazza filing for a temporary injunction against Roca Labs threatening or suing the witnesses that have come forward on behalf of PissedConsumer and against Roca Labs. As we mentioned in our previous post, within days of PissedConsumer's legal response to Roca Labs, the company's "general counsel" had sent legal threat letters to all three former customers who had filed statements, even though Roca Labs hadn't had any dealings with two of them for over three years.

It's difficult to see how anything Randazza did was sanctionable (Roca Labs' lawyers' actions, on the other hand...). Either way, Randazza has now filed a rather revealing response, opposing the motion to shorten time, noting that it fails for the same procedural issue (and more) as the earlier filing and because there's basically no chance that the sanctions succeed. It notes that the court has reviewed his motion for the injunction and passed it along to a magistrate judge, who has asked Roca Labs to respond -- something that would be unlikely if the court felt his filing was somehow frivolous. It also fails to actually cite any legal authority for shortening the length of time.

And then there's this:

Finding its bullying tactics unsuccessful, Roca filed an unsupportable complaint, along with it, an unsupportable motion for injunctive relief. Thereafter, Roca began trying to intimidate witnesses. Then, Roca got even more desperate – submitting an affidavit... that contained demonstrable perjury – that the actor Alfonso Ribeiro (“Carlton” from “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and current “Dancing with the Stars” contestant) endorsed the Roca product..... See Exhibit A, a demand letter from Ribeiro’s attorneys attesting to the perjurious nature of Roca’s claims that their client approved any such statement.

Whoops. As can be seen in this letter, Ribeiro's lawyers appear rather upset about his likeness being used in this way and make it clear that it's unauthorized:

Ribeiro unequivocally is not, has never been and has no intention of ever becoming a paid spokesperson of the Product [Roca Labs]. Furthermore, Ribeiro has never personally used the Product and in no manner whatsoever endorses the Product.

The unauthorized Review and deceitful use of Ribeiro's name, image, likeness and falsely attributed quotes violates California Civil Code Section 3344, invades Ribeiro's common law rights of privacy and publicity, amounts to unfair competition, is an unfair business practices, and constitutes copyright infringement, among other causes of action.

I'm not sure that Roca Labs' usage would actually be "unfair competition" or "copyright infringement," but that might depend on other specifics. However, they make it clear that he has not and will not endorse the product, which would make this a total slam dunk publicity rights case (this is the exact type of situation that publicity rights law was designed for, even if people keep trying to stretch it). It is worth noting that the letter in question is to PissedConsumer, concerning its hosting of the review. That review -- which was up earlier this week when I saw it, has since been removed, noting the letter from Ribeiro's attorney.

Much more tellingly, a page that used to be on Roca Labs' own website showing the very same endorsement from Ribeiro has also disappeared from the site, though (as of this posting) it's still viewable via Google cache. Here's a screenshot to show that it absolutely existed: There is a photo of what appears to be Ribeiro holding Roca Labs' product -- so there may be some questions raised about whether he did or did not endorse the product at some point, but his lawyers seem fairly definitive in saying he did not. The fact that Roca has removed the page from its own site also says a lot (and none of it good for Roca Labs).

And, we're not done yet. Roca Labs' lawyer, Paul Berger, also sent threatening emails to Randazza himself, suggesting that Randazza had been "making defamatory comments" to the media. The email exchange, which Randazza filed as an exhibit with his filing, shows Randazza responding to Berger asking what specific defamatory quote he's talking about. Berger instead quotes PissedConsumer's legal filing (about calling Roca Labs' product "snake oil"), which we (and, I believe) other news publications, quoted. Randazza pointed out to Berger that it was not a quote from him but rather in his pleadings, and then asked (one assumes, sarcastically) if Berger is truly asking Randazza to retract a statement from his motion for preliminary injunction. I would assume that Berger is aware of the concept of litigation privilege, so either he didn't fully read Randazza's earlier filings, he forgot about litigation privilege, or he's just blustering for the sake of blustering. Randazza's latest filing suggests the latter may be the case:

The desperation continued with Roca threatening personal claims against the Defendants’ attorney for statements made in the course of litigation.

Also, for whatever it's worth, Berger accuses Randazza of distributing the filings to reporters, perhaps unaware that we reporters are also allowed access to PACER and can (and do!) download documents ourselves. Shocking, I know.

Either way, the Roca Labs case is taking on the stench of Righthaven- and Prenda-like desperation. Given what's happened so far, I imagine there are still more interesting things to come.

Update: And... just like that, the court has denied the motion to shorten time on the procedural issues around the failure to confer with opposing counsel.

Filed Under: alfonso ribeiro, endorsement, marc randazza, opinions, paul berger, publicity rights, reviews, sanctions
Companies: consumer opinion corp., pissedconsumer, roca labs

Roca Labs Sues Customer For Posting A Negative Review

from the that'll-win-new-customers,-i'm-sure dept

We've been covering the saga of Roca Labs for a few days now. This is the company that claims to make an "alternative" to gastric bypass surgery in the form of some "industrial food thickening agents" that (the company claims) will fill up your stomach and make you not want to eat. These claims are not FDA reviewed and an examination of the claims by a doctor found them to be questionable (to say the least). We became aware of the company because it had sued Consumer Opinion Corp., the company that owns the site PissedConsumer.com. The issue? Roca Labs has a terms of service that offers everyone a "discount" on its product if you agree to never, ever, say anything bad about the product ever (you also have to agree to share success stories with Roca and allow them to publicize those stories). In short, the terms of service are designed to only show positive results, and gag any negative results. Roca claims that it has to do this because results may vary, and negative results could be caused by other factors. Of course, doesn't that also mean that positive results could be caused by other factors as well?

Either way, Roca Labs sued PissedConsumer on the hilarious legal theory that by offering a forum for unhappy customers to post their story, it was "tortious interference" because it encouraged people to break the terms under which people bought the product. As we noted, this legal theory is fairly laughable, and PissedConsumer's legal response makes that fairly clear as well.

However, Roca Labs and its lawyers are apparently busy. They're not just suing PissedConsumer, but they're actually suing a customer who complained to the Better Business Bureau for "breach of contract" and "defamation per se." While her filing with the BBB included some statements that might reach the level of defamation, amusingly, Roca Labs does not attempt to show that her comments were false in any way. Rather, it relies on yet another ridiculously questionable term in its terms of service, saying that if you post something negative, it will automatically be considered "defamation per se." Here's the term:

You agree that any such negative claim will constitute defamation per se

I don't think that's how defamation law works. At all. Even if this woman's comments to the BBB are defamatory (and I'm not saying they are), you can't just have someone sign a contract saying that if they do something, they'll be guilty of defamation.

Either way, all of this should make you wonder just what sort of company Roca Labs is in that it seems to not just sue its own customers for negative reviews, but to work so hard to stop negative reviews and to threaten and intimidate those who make complaints about their experience with the company.

Filed Under: contract, free speech, gastric bypass surgery, negative reviews, reviews, tortious interference
Companies: pissedconsumer, roca labs