Websites such as www.yelp.com and www.angieslist.com have been a breeding ground for novel legal issues. The sites are created for the very purpose of voicing concerns or praising services and encourage first amendment rights to free speech. However, one false post can cause a business an infinite amount of reputational harm and potentially ruin them. Legal scholars have been following case law on the topic closely to see how the courts deal with the legal implications of posting complaints online.
A recent case in Fairfax County Circuit Court, which was closely followed by media sources including the Washington Post, presented an interesting situation.[1] The dispute arose when a Fairfax homeowner, disappointed in the work of her contractor, logged onto www.yelp.com and listed her disappointments with her contractor, ending with “Bottom line do not put yourself through this nightmare of a contractor.”[2] The online comments from homeowner continued on multiple sites and the contractor, in response, posted his own comments online about the homeowner.[3]
In a recent decision, the Virginia Court of Appeals (the “Court”) has ruled that Yelp, the popular business review website, must disclose information about seven users who posted critical reviews of a carpet cleaning business.
In Yelp, Inc. v. Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, Inc., No. 0116-13-4 (Jan. 7, 2014), Yelp appealed an order from the Circuit Court for the City of Alexandria, which had held Yelp in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena duces tecum served upon it by Hadeed. Yelp’s main argument on appeal revolved around the First Amendment’s protection to speak anonymously. The Court upheld the contempt order, and dealt a blow to the anonymity of online speech in the Commonwealth.
Earlier this month, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated portions of the FCC's net neutrality mandate, holding that the Commission did not have statutory authority to regulate broadband providers by prohibiting them from blocking or prioritizing Internet traffic. Verizon v. Federal Communications Commission, No. 11-1355 (D.C. Cir. Jan. 14, 2014). The decision is the latest in the net neutrality debate which has been waging for several years and is a blow to major net neutrality advocates such as eBay and Amazon.
In keeping with the National Labor Relations Board’s continuing efforts to target social media policies that violate the National Labor Relations Act, the NLRB reached a settlement last month with the Koch-owned company, Georgia-Pacific. The settlement required Georgia-Pacific to repeal its social media policy and to revise its acceptable use, code of conduct, intellectual property, and outside requests for information policies, to ensure that their rules do not prohibit employees from sharing terms and conditions of employment, such as wages and hours of work. The initial Charge was filed on July 31, 2012, by the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers. Georgia-Pacific’s social media policy allegedly warned employees that “[e]ven if your social media conduct is outside of the workplace and/or non-work related, it must not reflect negatively on GP’s reputation, its products or its brands.”
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the highest state court in New York which affirmed a New York law requiring online retailers, such as Amazon and Overstock.com, to collect sales tax from New York customers even though these "etailers" do not have a physical presence in the state. The decision handed down earlier this year by the New York Court of Appeals contradicts rulings in several other states which have struck down these so-called "Amazon Laws" (See Illinois Supreme Court Ruling Invalidates "Amazon" Sales Tax Law).
