Is Filing A Defamation Lawsuit Really The Best Way To Respond To A Potentially False Hotel Review?

from the bed-bugs dept

I'm catching up on some slightly older stories and this one was submitted a few times, but I'm just getting around to it. It involves the Carleton Hotel in Oak Park, Illinois, suing a couple for defamation for posting an online review that claimed the hotel had bed bugs -- a big concern for hotels these days. The hotel denies that it has bed bugs. Actually, it goes further than that. It shows the report from the pest control company that came in and inspected the specific rooms that the family stayed in after hearing from them that they had discovered bed bugs in their house, and believed they came from the hotel. That report says: "Not a single bed bug, dead or alive, was observed. Additionally, no fecal, blood evidence was found." Additionally, the hotel notes that the couple its suing are well aware of this, because the hotel's manager sent them the pest control report the day after they contacted him... which was four days before they posted the review to TripAdvisor. In response, the husband told the manager via email: "I will do whatever I can through media outlets or publicity to say that your hotel is negligent in admittance of this bedbug issue."

From the info provided, and without hearing the response from the family, it certainly looks like the hotel has a decent case for defamation here. However, I'm still a bit troubled that it would go after the family, demanding $30,000 -- especially if the family truly believes (even in error) that it got bed bugs from the hotel. If anything, I'm less inclined to stay at a hotel that potentially sues its customers.

Now, of course, others will say, "but what else could be done" in situations where a false and potentially very damaging review is posted. It seems here's a situation where "more speech" should be the answer. The details laid out in the filing are very clear and quite convincing to me (again, not having heard the other side). I don't believe the hotel has bed bugs. So it seems like a better way to handle this would be to post that same info in response to the review, such that people can see that the review itself is not at all credible. Yet, in our legalistic society today, the first move always appears to be to sue. That's unfortunate.

Filed Under: bed bugs, defamation, hotels, reviews
Companies: carleton hotel

Julie Taymor Blames Twitter For Bad Reviews Of 'Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark'

from the denial-runs-deep dept

If you haven't been following the massive disaster that is the Broadway production of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, you've been missing a massive train wreck in slow motion. Julie Taymor, who was the original person behind the effort was fired in March and has finally spoken out about the scathing reviews the show has received all along (apparently, the only reason to go see the show is in the hopes of catching someone get injured). Apparently it's not her fault, the fault of any of the other writers, actors, musicians, etc. No, no. You see, it's all Twitter's fault. Apparently, with people writing bad reviews on Twitter, the producers overreacted:

Breaking her silence about “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the Broadway musical from which she was fired in March, Julie Taymor tacitly criticized her former producers on Saturday afternoon for relying on audience focus groups and said that the rise of Twitter and blogs for instant theater criticism was damaging to shows...

“It’s very scary if people are going more towards that, to have audiences tell you how to make a show,” she said. “Shakespeare would have been appalled. Forget about it. It would be impossible to have these works come out because there’s always something that people don’t like.”

[...]

“Twitter and Facebook and blogging just trump you,” Ms. Taymor said during a moderated discussion at the annual meeting of the Theater Communications Group, an umbrella organization of regional and nonprofit theaters. “It’s very hard to create. It’s incredibly difficult to be under a shot glass and a microscope like that.”

Well, well. It turns out that not only is Taymor not very good at judging the quality of this particular play, but she seems rather ignorant on history as well. Clive Thompson reminds us that the audience in Shakespeare time didn't quietly type their opinion of the plays they were seeing into the internet, they spoke up about it immediately:

Shakespeare's audience was far more boisterous than are patrons of the theatre today. They were loud and hot-tempered and as interested in the happenings off stage as on. One of Shakespeare's contemporaries noted that "you will see such heaving and shoving, such itching and shouldering to sit by the women, such care for their garments that they be not trod on . . . such toying, such smiling, such winking, such manning them home ... that it is a right comedy to mark their behaviour" (Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse, 1579). The nasty hecklers and gangs of riffraff would come from seedy parts in and around London like Tower-hill and Limehouse and Shakespeare made sure to point them out:

These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse,
and fight for bitten apples; that no audience, but
the Tribulation of Tower-hill, or the Limbs of
Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure.
(Henry VIII, 5.4.65-8)

On top of that, Thompson also points out that even audiences for plays in New York City haven't always been so nice, pointing to the famed Astor Place riots that happened as anti-England sentiment in New York City at the time caused audience members to start "loudly voicing their disapproval with booing and hissing" during Shakespeare's plays, leading to the eventual riot:

The most brutal of these eruptions occurred as a result of two rival actors, each of whom was starring in a competing production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Celebrated American actor Edwin Forrest, who patriotically extolled the virtues of the American Dream of self-actualization, employed a performing style that was passionate and visceral. English actor William Charles Macready, on the other hand, had an elitist attitude, a poised stature, and an approach to acting that was more subtle and cerebral. When Macready and Forrest both presented the play on May 7, audience members booed and heckled Macready, then started throwing objects at the stage, and the performance had to stop with almost half of the play unperformed. Macready was ready to go back to England; but as Lawrence W. Levine notes, a letter from individuals including authors Herman Melville and Washington Irving—insisting that Americans would be civilized enough to allow him to perform—convinced him to stay. The result was disastrous: although Macready was able to make it through the full performance at the Astor Place Opera House on May 10, a crowd of working-class men attacked the theatre with the intention of causing severe damage. The rioters backed down only after militia opened fire into the crowd, killing at least 22 and as many as 31 people. As Nigel Cliff notes in The Shakespeare Riots, “Never in the nation’s history had soldiers fired volley after volley at point-blank range into a civilian crowd.” And this infamous event is a disturbing milestone in the lore of the Macbeth curse. Perhaps it is only fitting that the riot resulted from a play that mentions the word "blood" and its variants a whopping 41 times.

It seems like having some fans bitch about a crappy stage production that seemed like a bad idea from the very beginning seems rather tame in comparison, Julie.

Filed Under: julie taymor, reviews, shakespeare, spiderman, theater
Companies: twitter

Duke Nukem PR People Publicly Threaten Those Who Give Bad Reviews

from the total-fail dept

You may have heard that Duke Nukem Forever finally came out after a decade plus of being vaporware. It's no secret that the original team behind the game was somewhat obsessive-compulsive about not releasing a bad game -- so much so that they never released any game, and kept restarting the project entirely. After 3D Realms finally went under, someone else took control and put together a game... but the initial reviews have been scathing, and suggest that the game should have stayed vaporware.

In response, in a moment of pure PR failure, the PR firm repping the game, the Redner Group, publicly threatened to stop giving preview games to those who gave Duke Nukem Forever a bad review.

"Too many went too far with their reviews... we r reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn't based on today's venom."

That's a huge no-no in the business, because it suggests the whole review business is a tit-for-tat setup, where you only get product if you give good reviews. Jim Redner, the guy behind the tweet removed the tweet, and admitted that he got caught up in the emotion:

It is not my intention to bully anyone. I over reacted. I just voiced an opinion. I have poured my heart into this project and I just want it to succeed.

That's all pretty unfortunate. Of course, this is the nature of the game, if you do this kind of thing. It's also one of the reasons we've tended to stay away from ever dealing with PR people. We don't do product reviews like that, and in part it's because we didn't want to have to deal with this kind of thing. Still, in the end, such a reaction tends to reflect even worse on the game because it calls into question any positive reviews.

Filed Under: duke nukem, failure, pr, reviews, threats

Medical Justice Caught Posting Happy Reviews Of Doctors; Claims It's Just Helping Patients

from the uh,-yeah dept

Tim Lee has been doing a wonderful job dismantling the highly questionable claims of Medical Justice, the sketchy company that signs up doctors to give their patients forms that claim to hand over the future copyrights on any reviews that are written. Medical Justice insists that it only takes down "fraudulent or fictional" reviews, but if that's the case, then the copyright wouldn't make any sense. The latest is that Lee has turned up evidence that Medical Justice doesn't just try to take down reviews, but it posts a bunch itself as well:

The first to notice the trend was John Swapceinski of RateMDs.com. Between November 2010 and March 2011, six IP addresses registered to Medical Justice collectively submitted 86 ratings to his site. They reviewed a total of 38 doctors in Florida, New Jersey, California, North Carolina, Hawaii, Texas, Illinois, and seven other states. Several of them appear to be known MJ clients. At our suggestion, Yelp reviewed its logs and found that those same six IP addresses had also been responsible for numerous favorable doctor reviews on Yelp.

Oops. Medical Justice defends this practice by claiming it's not making up fake reviews, it's simply helping patients post their reviews, since it's too difficult for them to do it themselves. Basically, Medical Justice gives doctors forms they can give patients to fill out reviews, which are then entered into these review sites by Medical Justice staff. Now, that seems a bit strange, but perhaps it's legit... until you realize that the only reviews that Medical Justice staff seems to post are ones that are entirely and absolutely positive, with ratings of fives across the board:

There are a lot of unanswered questions. For example, every one of the 86 reviews posted to RateMDs.com gave five stars in every category. Did MJ or its clients filter out more critical reviews? It's hard to say without more details.

Also, different review sites have different rating scales. Yelp has a single 5-star scale, RateMDs.com solicits ratings for "staff," "punctuality," "helpfulness," and "knowledge," and other sites have still other scales. Does MJ ask patients to choose ratings for all of these categories? Or does it "help" users out by filling in those fields itself? Unfortunately, MJ wouldn't talk to us about it.

The deeper Lee looks, the worse this looks. Apparently, rather than be upfront about this, Medical Justice uses "obviously one-off, throwaway" email addresses with each account. Furthermore, it refused to let Lee talk to any of the patients who apparently filled out one of these forms. In other words... the whole thing sounds pretty sketchy. It also appears to violate at least Yelp's terms of service, which says that you cannot create an account for anyone else. Amusingly, Tim Lee also found an old blog post on Medical Justice's site, which it has since removed, in which it claimed "thou shall not impersonate others on the internet. Apparently, Medical Justice only feels that way when those impersonating people rate their doctors poorly. Even more amusing, is that the blog post highlights how impersonating others online can result in criminal liability. No wonder Medical Justice removed the post...

Filed Under: doctors, reviews
Companies: medical justice

Zappos Uses Mechanical Turk To Correct Spelling/Grammar Errors In Reviews... And It Increases Sales

from the fascinating dept

Boing Boing points us to a fantastic story about how Zappos uses Mechanical Turk to fix grammar and spelling mistakes in product reviews. You see, research shows that if a product has well-written reviews, that helps sales -- even when the reviews are negative. The more well-written the reviews, the more people trust them. But, of course, on the internet, you get all sorts of grammatical and spelling errors (I should know, I make both all the time). So, to deal with that, Zappos runs its reviews through Mechanical Turk and lets the "crowd" act as its editor. There's no specific data, but apparently Zappos claims that this resulted in "substantial" revenue improvement, for a cost of a few hundred thousand dollars (across 5 million reviews). The corrections never change the actual intent of the content. They just make sure it's in proper English. I wonder what would happen if we did that for all posts and comments here...

Filed Under: grammar, mechanical turk, reviews, spelling
Companies: zappos

Why Doctors Shouldn't Abuse Copyright Law To Stop Patient Reviews

from the it's-bad-for-business dept

Two years ago, we wrote about a very sketchy operation, called Medical Justice, that was pushing a highly questionable plan to use the DMCA to stop patients from rating their doctors on online ratings sites. The plan works as follows: as part of your visit to the doctor, the doctor makes you sign a "waiver" provided by Medical Justice, which assigns the copyright on any review you might write to the doctor. Then, if you write a bad review, the doctor can claim copyright infringement, and use the DMCA takedown process to remove the bad review.

As we noted at the time, this is clearly not what copyright law was designed for.

We've also pointed out that it's not clear that this process is actually legal, and many reviews might not have any actual copyright anyway -- and in cases where there is copyright, a very strong fair use defense can be made. Still, Medical Justice has continued to convince doctors that this is a good idea, and two well-respected law professors have decided to begin educating doctors and patients about why they should be wary. Professors Eric Goldman and Jason Schultz have launched a new site called Doctored Reviews: Why Medical Justice's Anti-Review Contracts are a Poison Pill, hoping to convince doctors to stay away.

In the announcement, Goldman notes that if the website still fails to stop these kinds of practices, they may need to get more aggressive. Hopefully doctors realize that this is a bad idea. And, seriously, if your doctor made you sign one of these, wouldn't you go find a new doctor? If my doctor is trying to stifle bad reviews, then that makes me a lot more worried than any bad review. As Schultz notes in the press release:

"Doctors who use these gag-order contracts are essentially telling patients 'if you want medical care, you must sign away your right to free speech,' ... "More speech is the answer [to reviews]," he said, "not censorship and copyright abuse."

Filed Under: contracts, copyright, doctors, free speech, reviews
Companies: doctored reviews, medical justice

ProspectMatch Threatens Forum That Hosts Negative Reviews; Says It Will Bury Forum Owner In Legal Fees

from the and-there's-a-great-review dept

Paul Levy alerts us to yet another case of companies looking to abuse the legal process to shut down negative reviews and opinions. In this case, amazingly, someone involved in the company even seems to admit this in writing to the site being threatened. The situation involves a company called Javelin Marketing, but which is doing business as ProspectMatch.com -- a company that supposedly sells leads. Over at InsuranceForums.net, a site run by Melnet Media, there are a few different threads where multiple people give negative reviews of ProspectMatch, which the Javelin Marketing/ProspectMatch folks weren't very happy about.

While Levy has the details of the rather aggressive legal threat sent by a lawyer hired by ProspectMatch, Levy also notes that someone from Javelin Marketing also contacted Insurance-Forums.net's operator directly and explained:

"I really don't care what the law allows you to do. It's a more practical issue. Do you want to send your attorney a check every month indefinitely as I continue to pursue this? Now, we will both spend needless money and when you get sick of paying your attorney, you will take down the posts."

Of course, the case looks like a typical Section 230 deal, where the forum owner has no liability over statements made in the forums -- and it appears that ProspectMatch knows this, but doesn't care. Of course, saying that -- in writing no less -- probably was not a wise move, and might expedite a quick dismissal for any legal action.

On top of that, there are number of interesting moves by ProspectMatch's lawyer, a guy by the name of Richard Newman. First, in his threat letter to Melnet, he tried to avoid the likely Streisanding of the threat by declaring:

Please be aware that this letter is copyrighted by our law firm, and You are not authorized to republish it in any manner whatsoever, including in a posting, in full or in part. Doing so will subject You to further legal and equitable causes of action.

We've been seeing this sort of technique more frequently these days (unfortunately), and it is pretty pointless for lawyers to include. They do so for fearmongering purposes, but publishing and discussing such a threat letter would almost universally be declared fair use, so Levy has posted the full letter (pdf).

On top of this, it appears that Newman is trying to get around Section 230 claims by (1) pretending that Melnet has more direct involvement than it does and (2) claiming false advertising and trade libel under the Lanham Act. Basically this is an attempt to rebrand "defamation" (which is covered by Section 230) as a "trademark violation" (which is not). But, just because you try to make that claim, it doesn't mean any court in the land will believe you.

Finally, Levy notes that, despite being in California, it was interesting that Newman indicated plans to avoid filing the lawsuit in California, and suggests a reason why he believes Newman did this:

It struck me that the most likely explanation is that Newman understood that, if he sued in either California state court or a federal court in California, the suit would be subject to dismissal under California’s anti-SLAPP statute.

The reason we were particularly interested in defending this otherwise plain-vanilla section 230 immunity case is that it presents the opportunity to argue that a California libel plaintiff is still subject to California’s anti-SLAPP laws even if it sues elsewhere, because under common choice of law principles, the law of the plaintiff’s domicile applies to libel and other intentional tort claims. And because the anti-SLAPP law is substantive rather than procedural, we could file a special motion to strike and seek an award of attorney fees.

This does seem like an interesting legal question, and Levy indicates in his letter to Newman (embedded below), that he fully intends to test this theory if ProspectMatch does decide to file a lawsuit. Anyway, you can read Levy's full letter below. As with most of Levy's letters, it's well worth reading.

Filed Under: forums, reviews, section 230
Companies: javelin marketing, prospectmatch

Greek Apple Support Company Sues Customer For Complaining About Service

from the not-a-way-to-win-business dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in this story about how Greek firm Systemgraph, which is an official support partner of Apple in Greece, is apparently suing a customer who complained online about the bad experience he had with Systemgraph. Apparently, the customer, Dimitris Papadimitriadis, brought his iMac into Systemgraph to be repaired because he had noticed "dark patches" on the screen. The company said it would clean out the machine and replace the LCD. However, after Papadimitriadis got the machine back, he felt the problem had become worse, not better. The company offered to try to do the fix all over again, but the guy no longer trusted the company -- and noted that under Greek law, he's entitled to ask for a refund or a replacement for the machine. Systemgraph responded by noting that since the machine wasn't bought through them, they weren't responsible for offering a replacement machine.

I actually agree that it seems like a stretch to demand a new machine from the repair company, but I'm not familiar with the specifics of Greek consumer protection law on the subject. Even so, what happened next is pretty silly on the part of Systemgraph. After Papadimitriadis wrote about his bad experience with the company, Systemgraph sued him for defamation, demanding €200,000 for damaging its reputation. Of course, it wasn't Papadimitriadis who damaged the company's reputation -- but the company's failure to properly fix his machine. And, in the long run, it seems like suing a customer -- even a disgruntled one -- is much more likely to damage one's reputation, than any random online review.

Filed Under: defamation, greece, reviews
Companies: apple

Company Claims Submitting Negative Yelp Review Violates Contract

from the well,-don't-sign-such-contracts dept

Patty points us to a Reddit post where someone claims that after posting a negative Yelp review, the company being reviewed threatened the reviewer with legal action, claiming that the review violated a contract that the customer had signed. The business apparently is one that repairs damaged hard drives or recovers data off of them. The customer was clearly not satisfied. Where it gets strange though is that the company claims that the negative review violates the signed contract. As per standard Reddit practices, the details of the company are redacted, so it's a bit difficult to dig into the facts here. However, it seems likely that this threat is more about getting the person to back down than any realistic shot at legal action. One would hope the company would realize that if it actually took legal action, that information would spread far and wide across the internet, and would probably do significantly more harm than any single bad review on Yelp...

Filed Under: contracts, reviews
Companies: yelp

Doctor Sues Patients Over Bad Yelp Reviews

from the that's-not-going-to-help dept

We've seen all sorts of business owners get upset about Yelp, but it seems to be ratcheting up a notch. For example, take Denver chef, Scott Parker, who lashed out at Yelp reviewers in a recent interview (sent in by visual77). After being asked what he'd like to see less of, he stated:

Amateur instant online restaurant critics -- specifically those who write reviews for a website that rhymes with "kelp." Think about it: They review a McDonald's and then turn around and review Mizuna. I just imagine bored, jobless layabouts with not many friends who are convinced that they're going to have a bad time before they even step through the door of a joint. The kicker is, you can't respond to these inbreds and try to educate, or at least explain, why some things happen the way they happen. Have a little fun, for chrissakes. Loosen up when you go out, and let me be the stress ball in the kitchen busting my ass for twelve-plus hours trying to make you the best food I can. Fuck you!

This, of course, resulted in a fair amount of Yelp backlash.

Now, I was going to use this as a story to highlight how bitching about your critics could seriously backfire, but before I could finish that post folks started sending over the even more extreme story of a doctor in Chicago suing three patients after they wrote negative reviews. Dr. Jay Pensler apparently felt that these comments were defamatory, though the article seems to suggest that the people who complained appear to have somewhat legitimate gripes. Pensler is a plastic surgeon, and one woman apparently posted a picture showing uneven breasts with nipples that point in different directions -- something I could see leading to a negative review.

Of course, this isn't really a first either. A few months back we posted about another plastic surgeon who sued her patients for bad reviews on Yelp. Either way, it's difficult to see how that's going to be good for business. Would you go to a doctor who sued online commenters? It seems like these people just aren't going to be willing to take much criticism if they do a bad job... Of course, the lawsuits have resulted in a number of people deleting their criticisms of Dr. Pensler, which is probably the point of his lawsuits. Hopefully a bit more attention on the lawsuits themselves will counteract this.

What's equally troubling, however, is that the court reviewing this case seems to be ignoring the basic First Amendment questions and denied requests to quash the subpoenas in question. It seems like the complaining patients have a pretty strong First Amendment claim to support their anonymity -- a claim that many other US courts have supported. It's a bit worrisome that this court seems to be ignoring that First Amendment right.

Filed Under: jay pensler, reviews, scott parker
Companies: yelp