Court Orders Yelp To Identify Anonymous Reviewers

The Court of Appeals of Virginia ruled on Tuesday that Yelp has to reveal the names of reviewers who left anonymous, negative reviews of a business. Some are calling the ruling a blow to free speech. The business in question maintains that the names are critical in pursuing a defamation case against the reviewers over what it claims were false reviews from non-customers.

The business were talking about is Hadeed Carpet Cleaning in Alexandria, Virginia. It alleges that reviewers are in violation of Yelps terms of service by not being real customers.

The Circuit Court for the City of Alexandria held Yelp in contempt for not complying with a subpoena, but Yelp argued that this was a violation of the First Amendment. Some would agree considering that the business has apparently been unable to prove that it had legally and factually sufficient claims against each defendant.

Either way, the Appeals court was apparently convinced enough by Hadeeds argument.

It explains, As of October 19, 2012, Yelps website displayed seventy-five reviews about Hadeed and eight reviews about a related company, Hadeed Oriental Rug Cleaning. These reviews were posted by various Yelp users, and a number of the reviews were critical of Hadeed. Hadeed filed suit against the authors of seven specific critical reviews. In these reviews, the authors implicitly or explicitly held themselves out to be Hadeed customers. In its complaint, Hadeed alleged that it tried to match the negative reviews with its customer database but could find no record that the negative reviewers were actually Hadeed customers. Consequently, Hadeed alleged that the negative reviewers were not actual customers; instead, the Doe defendants falsely represented themselves to be customers of Hadeed. Hadeeds complaint further alleged that the negative comments were defamatory because they falsely stated that Hadeed had provided shoddy service to each reviewer.

You can find the full legal document here.

Yelp (incorporated in Delaware) also argued that the trial court erred by asserting subpoena jurisdiction over Yelp, which is a non-party, foreign corporation. The court found that the service of the subpoena on Yelps registered agent in Virginia provided jurisdiction.

The Washington Times shares a statement from a Yelp spokesperson:

We are disappointed that the Virginia Court of Appeals has issued a ruling that fails to adequately protect free speech rights on the internet, and which allows businesses to seek personal details about website users without any evidence of wrongdoing in efforts to silence online critics, Yelp spokesman Vince Sollitto said in a statement. Other states require that plaintiffs lay out actual facts before such information is allowed to be obtained, and have adopted strong protections in order to prevent online speech from being stifled by those upset with what has been said. We continue to urge Virginia to do the same.

In September, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced that nineteen companies agreed to stop writing fake Yelp reviews and pay over $350,000 in fines.Yelp said at the time that it would like to work with law enforcement officials in other states to crack down on the practice.

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Court Orders Yelp To Identify Anonymous Reviewers