The California case isn’t the only one that’s been fought on this. Similar litigation has been filed in Washington, where a locksmith filed a libel lawsuit against Yelp after getting a one-star review. He claimed the rating was actually meant for another area business, but that Yelp had linked it with his page as part of a scheme to generate more ad revenue. Libel is defined as the published or broadcasted “untruth about another which will do harm to that person or his/her reputation, by tending to bring the target into ridicule, hatred, scorn, or contempt of others.”
The court cited lack of evidence in the locksmith’s claim, saying Yelp was not the culprit, only a third-party aggregator of data, and therefore was not liable.
While Yelp was not the direct target of a lawsuit filed by a New York dentist, his legal action against a former patient who posted a negative review on the site pushed the company one step further in protecting their consumers. The service now adds warnings to pages of businesses engaged in similar legal proceedings. In July, Yelp wrote a blog post announcing the feature, saying:
