Dentist Has To Pay Legal Fees For Suing Yelp & Reviewer Over Bad Review

Source: TechDirt.com
Date: May 25, 2011
By: Mike Masnick
Link: Online Story

Dentist Has To Pay Legal Fees For Suing Yelp & Reviewer Over Bad Review

from the anti-slapp-and-section-230 dept

We’ve had a number of posts lately about lawsuits over bad Yelp reviews, and it appears they’re not going so well. We pointed out a doctor losing a lawsuit over bad reviews, but Eric Goldman has the latest, in which a dentist who sued has to pay $80,000 in legal fees, not just to the reviewer, but also to Yelp itself. You see, the dentist and/or his lawyer apparently didn’t bother to understand that Section 230 of the CDA protects the service provider from such a suit (which doesn’t say much good about the lawyer). Once the lawyer learned of Section 230 (a bit late), they dismissed Yelp from the case… but the court still awarded legal fees to Yelp’s lawyers. Hopefully this helps lawyers learn that filing bogus lawsuits against service providers over the actions of their users is not a smart move.