Legal threat resulting from online review

bucketybuck

I have recently been threatened with legal action due to an online review I posted. Obviously I don't want to discuss any of the details of that case, but I would be interested in general terms to hear if it is even possible to bring legal action in a case like that?

In summary, say a person used a company for an event, found the company to have very poor customer service and so later submitted an online review stating exactly that. The company sends the person a letter stating that the public comments online are defamatory and that the intent was to cause damage to the company, and as such demand that the review is taken down within 48 hours or legal proceedings will be initiated.

Does the company have any case here? If I can clarify any point I will try to do so, again with the caveat that I want to keep it as general as possible!

desbrook

I'd presume the onus would be on them to prove what you said was firstly untrue and secondly damaging?

deandean

As I understand it, you are entitled to your opinion.
I trust you can provide info and evidence to support your opinion if called for.

Manach

From a case I read a few months back(google likely able to find which one) there was also action for a review on a site. The upshot was it was upheld as being valid due to (AFAIR) it being an honest comment and the underlying negative conseqences of the chilling effect on reviews. So even if there was a clause in any T&C about posting negative reviews, this would not be upheld.

bucketybuck

deandean wrote: »

As I understand it, you are entitled to your opinion.
I trust you can provide info and evidence to support your opinion if called for.

What info and evidence would be required for an opinion of "I didn't like their customer service at all"?

As a simple opinion, does that statement even need evidence?

Monkeysgomad

bucketybuck wrote: »

I have recently been threatened with legal action due to a Tripadvisor review I posted. Obviously I don't want to discuss any of the details of that case, but I would be interested in general terms to hear if it is even possible to bring legal action in a case like that?

In summary, say a person used a company for an event, found the company to have very poor customer service and so later submitted an online review stating exactly that. The company sends the person a letter stating that the public comments online are defamatory and that the intent was to cause damage to the company, and as such demand that the review is taken down within 48 hours or legal proceedings will be initiated.

Does the company have any case here? If I can clarify any point I will try to do so, again with the caveat that I want to keep it as general as possible!

If your review is YOURS and 100% truthful don't take it down. They cannot take legal action because of a truthful review. They are just thinking of ways to get that down so it won't damage their business. Don't take your review down as long as it's true.

desbrook

bucketybuck wrote: »

What info and evidence would be required for an opinion of "I didn't like their customer service at all"?

As a simple opinion, does that statement even need evidence?

Surely the burden of proof is on them not the OP ?

DK man

I'm not a legal expert but if such a case were successful then all reviews that are in someway negative would not be possible and the site would become obsolete.

The nature of such reviews is to give your honest opinion about your experiences and you can hardly be sued if you are telling people about your own experiences and your rating of them.

If however you were a competitor and your reviews were to do damage to another company then I'd say they may have some grounds to take a legal case....

Will be interesting to see what the legal folk have to say

fed up sick and tired

bucketybuck wrote: »

What info and evidence would be required for an opinion of "I didn't like their customer service at all"?

As a simple opinion, does that statement even need evidence?

It would be a stupid and irresponsible thing to say without evidence.

You should at least have addressed your concerns to the company in question and given them a right of reply before you tarnished their name.

If at that stage you didn't like what you got back, you would have evidence.

There are a lot of stupid people behind computer screens who think they can say whatever you like about people or organisations, with impunity.

Blank out the names, dates, and places, and put up here what you wrote. Noting to worry about then, surely ?

fed up sick and tired

Monkeysgomad wrote: »

If your review is YOURS and 100% truthful don't take it down. They cannot take legal action because of a truthful review. They are just thinking of ways to get that down so it won't damage their business. Don't take your review down as long as it's true.

Who decides that ?

bucketybuck

fed up sick and tired wrote: »

It would be a stupid and irresponsible thing to say without evidence.

You should at least have addressed your concerns to the company in question and given them a right of reply before you tarnished their name.

If at that stage you didn't like what you got back, you would have evidence.

There are a lot of stupid people behind computer screens who think they can say whatever you like about people or organisations, with impunity.

Blank out the names, dates, and places, and put up here what you wrote. Noting to worry about then, surely ?

Why do you assume I didn't have any contact with the company? Where else would I have encountered their level of customer service?

The tone of your reply sounds familiar to be honest.

Boskowski

You don't ned to gather evidence if based on your actual experience. If this was true then TripAdvisor would be shut down in the morning. You could turn this around saying there are a lot of shoddy companies and organisations out there thinking they can shut down negative reviews simply by threatening legal action.

It would simply go into code language like job references. "Company attempted to meet expectations."

bucketybuck

fed up sick and tired wrote: »

Blank out the names, dates, and places, and put up here what you wrote. Noting to worry about then, surely ?

I have no problem with people seeing the review. I just wish to be overcautious about having it discussed in a searchable medium.

Reati

Highly unlikely they have a case they could win. You should show how they deal with feedback from customers by posting the letter threatening legal action against you. In the IT age, that kind of behavior shouldn't go hidden.

28064212

desbrook wrote: »

Surely the burden of proof is on them not the OP ?

Burden of proof is on the OP, he is making the claim. Which is a good thing, otherwise I could make a statement about something you do in private, and you would somehow have to prove a negative that no-one was witness to

bucketybuck wrote: »

What info and evidence would be required for an opinion of "I didn't like their customer service at all"?

As a simple opinion, does that statement even need evidence?

No.

Was that the entire extent of your statements? Doubtful. If you're not willing to take it down, consult a solicitor

bucketybuck

28064212 wrote: »

No.

Was that the entire extent of your statements? Doubtful. If you're not willing to take it down, consult a solicitor

The tone of the review is not much different in my opinion. If I knew some way to show the text without it being searchable I would do so.

And I do have full access to a solicitor thankfully, should the company wish to press forward with these threats the matter will of course be handed to them.

dalta5billion

Relevant:
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2009/act/31/section/20/enacted/en/html#sec20

Senna

A hotel in Northern Ireland treatened to sue a wedding couple over a negative review about their wedding.
Rightly so, it never made it pass a solicitors letter, the hotel had ruined the couples day and the review was justified. The only thing was 90% of the review was the couples opinion of the hotel, but they included things like "we heard this" and "our uncle told us that". The hotel argued that this was hearsay and not justified to be in the review.
As long as your review is your opinion and not hearsay from other people, you are fine.

desbrook

28064212 wrote: »

Burden of proof is on the OP, he is making the claim. Which is a good thing, otherwise I could make a statement about something you do in private, and you would somehow have to prove a negative that no-one was witness to


No.

Was that the entire extent of your statements? Doubtful. If you're not willing to take it down, consult a solicitor

Apologies -burden of proof would be with the OP . Just read up .

Dubkent

From a guy working in I.T there is not a thing they can do to you. If the company or whatever is on tripadvisor and agreed to be on TripAdvisor they are open to the rating system and would have agreeing to it in the terms and conditions. They would have to log a case with TripAdvisor and TripAdvisor would then decide whether to take it down or not and would have to make a case the person was lying

It's kinda like boards if they allowed you to post streams of matches, links to illegal downloads it would be boards who would be in trouble, not you.

Just eat, booking.com all have rating systems, theirs mobile phone review sites, games review sites.

bucketybuck

28064212 wrote: »

Burden of proof is on the OP, he is making the claim.

Just to come back to this, what claim am I actually making?

For example, if my review contains comments such as:

"every response I got was curt."

"any questions were greeted as hassle"

"A company that has no concept of customer service, I could not recommend them in any shape or fashion"

These are all my opinions, or my assessment of the service I got. Am I making actual factual claims here, or am I stating opinions that require evidence? How do I prove that I found an email to be curt?

fed up sick and tired

bucketybuck wrote: »

Why do you assume I didn't have any contact with the company?

Nowhere did you say that you contacted them after the event. You said...

a person used a company for an event, found the company to have very poor customer service and so later submitted an online review

Where else would I have encountered their level of customer service?

At the event in the first place. I judge customer service primarily by the provision of the service, not primarily by their complaints procedures.

The tone of your reply sounds familiar to be honest

Tell it to TripAdvisor

frostyjacks

It sounds like the business owner is bluffing. He knows there's nothing he can do about the review; otherwise he wouldn't be asking you to remove it, he'd be ordering you.

I know of one business owner who will to extreme lengths to counter bad reviews on TA. I guess solicitor's letters are the latest trick in the book. If they put as much effort into improving their business they probably wouldn't get the bad reviews.

fed up sick and tired

bucketybuck wrote: »

Just to come back to this, what claim am I actually making?

For example, if my review contains comments such as:


These are all my opinions, or my assessment of the service I got. Am I making actual factual claims here, or am I stating opinions that require evidence? How do I prove that I found an email to be curt?

You have to make the case that it is so. The other side make the case that it isn't. And someone else, who is hopefully impartial and rational, decides.

bucketybuck

frostyjacks wrote: »

It sounds like the business owner is bluffing.

This is my opinion as well, by the way, I'm not overly worried about this and do have the solicitor to back me up if needed. I do find it an interesting question though.

bucketybuck

fed up sick and tired wrote: »

You have to make the case that it is so. The other side make the case that it isn't. And someone else, who is hopefully impartial and rational, decides.

Is stating that I believed responding emails to be "curt" defamation?

stevenmu

Dubkent wrote: »

From a guy working in I.T there is not a thing they can do to you.

Wait, I'm a guy working in I.T too, we're legal experts now?

That's great news, I've a long list of people I want to sue ...

hullaballoo

I love amateur hour, we should do this more often.

OP, defamation is one of those aspects of the law that comes in for the most amount of criticism from almost all parties, including professional lawyers who litigate on the behalf of plaintiffs etc. and make money from it. It is, frankly, a circus.

That was supposed to be addressed by the government in the form of the Defamation Act 2009 but then when it was published, it ended up being just the same as the old law in most respects and it's difficult to criticise others publicly without risking the threat of a defamation action no matter how unmeritorious it is.

Your options are to ignore the threat, remove the post or to engage your own legal representation to deal with it. Taking advice from people on the Internet is inadvisable when dealing with legal (and medical/other sensitive) issues.

Peregrinus

Obviously without knowing (a) the facts of what happened on the day, and (b) exactly what you said about it in your review we can't tell if the company might succeed in an action against you. It would be difficult for them to succeed, as long as the factual claims made in your review were true (and you could prove their truth) and the opinions you expressed were fair comment based on a fair presentation of the facts.

The latter point is important. If you present true facts, but omit other true facts which would give a rounded picture that showed your opinion to be unreasonably held, the business owner could in theory succeed in an action against you. To qualify as "fair comment", expressions of opinion do in fact have to be fair.

Tubberadora

As somebody that has used trip advisor from both the side of the customer and the side of the business I think there maybe more to this than the op is letting on.
For a start, how did they sent you the legal threat? Where did they get your name address etc?

Peregrinus

Tubberadora wrote: »

As somebody that has used trip advisor from both the side of the customer and the side of the business I think there maybe more to this than the op is letting on.
For a start, how did they sent you the legal threat? Where did they get your name address etc?

Well, if he was a customer of the business they presumably already had a name and contact details from him. And he may have said enough in the review about the event, the time, etc for them to identify which of their customers had posted it. (Especially if he had already complained directly to them about the same issues.)

Tzardine

I personally would do nothing. Ignore any contact from the business.

If you get a solicitors letter then deal with it at that point. I suspect you will not hear a thing.

davo10

Wasn't there a case a couple of years ago where someone left a defamatory review of a solicitor's service on a rating website?, I seem to remember that he successfully sued the person who wrote the review and the website owners.

Greenmachine

If the OP has left a review up on Trivago, the company's right to reply is right on the Trivago site. I have seen some customer reviews where customer complaint were valid, and case where they slights. As far companies are concerned, I have seen companies, who never reply to reviews, who occasionally reply to review, those who only reply to good reviews, those who only reply to bad reviews, those who reply to everything. Among all of those the quality of replies varies a lot, and this is generally what say the most about the company in question.
Do the address the reviewers concerns? Do they recognize their failing. How are they going to improve? Are they quick to reply.

For the most part, for me personally I like a company that consistently replies quickly to all reviews, failing that, one that, replies quickly to weaker reviews, say anything less than 3 stars in any category.

Paulw

fed up sick and tired wrote: »

It would be a stupid and irresponsible thing to say without evidence.

You should at least have addressed your concerns to the company in question and given them a right of reply before you tarnished their name.

If at that stage you didn't like what you got back, you would have evidence.

What if you phoned their customer service, and you didn't record the conversation? Then you would have no proof.

Also, the comment that their customer service is poor, would simply be an opinion.

Tripadvisor do give the right to reply.

bucketybuck

Peregrinus wrote: »

Obviously without knowing (a) the facts of what happened on the day, and (b) exactly what you said about it in your review we can't tell if the company might succeed in an action against you. It would be difficult for them to succeed, as long as the factual claims made in your review were true (and you could prove their truth) and the opinions you expressed were fair comment based on a fair presentation of the facts.

The latter point is important. If you present true facts, but omit other true facts which would give a rounded picture that showed your opinion to be unreasonably held, the business owner could in theory succeed in an action against you. To qualify as "fair comment", expressions of opinion do in fact have to be fair.

The review itself is very much opinion based rather than fact based, as in the majority of comments are to do with my opinion of their service rather than a listing of things that did or didn't happen. I don't claim that they did this or did that, I simply say that I found them to have poor customer handling skills or that I found them dismissive.

Factually there is only one thing in the review that isn't accurate, a comment were I say "two weeks later" when in fact it may actually have been ten days. But in terms of description, of actually describing how the day went, I would have no trouble standing by anything I said. That side is so harmless that to be honest I doubt it would even be queried.

bucketybuck

Tubberadora wrote: »

For a start, how did they sent you the legal threat? Where did they get your name address etc?

I originally sent an email asking for something I had been promised from the company. Their responses to that went beyond rude, long rambling paragraphs addressing things I had never even mentioned or queried. I replied once saying that this fit with my opinion of their customer service and that I was glad to be done with them. I received another long email, and my last response was less than ten words politely commenting on that email.

I received another rambling email, and then another email again with a formal threat of legal proceedings. I never responded to either.

In terms of emails I would be delighted to have them seen in court, I very much erred on the side of saying very little in them so I know they reflect far more favourably on me than the company.

How did they know I wrote the Tripadvisor review? It wouldn't take a genius to link my original query with the review but on the factual side there isn't anything proving that I actually wrote it, not without Tripadvisor releasing my account info. I certainly haven't responded to them since and haven't confirmed I wrote it.

dalta5billion

The relevant legislation is the Defamation Act as linked to before, particularly sections under "Honest Opinion" and "Distinguishing between allegations of fact and opinion".

Seeing as no-one else is quoting the act:

16.— (1) It shall be a defence (to be known and in this Act referred to as the “ defence of truth ”) to a defamation action for the defendant to prove that the statement in respect of which the action was brought is true in all material respects.

(2) In a defamation action in respect of a statement containing 2 or more distinct allegations against the plaintiff, the defence of truth shall not fail by reason only of the truth of every allegation not being proved, if the words not proved to be true do not materially injure the plaintiff’s reputation having regard to the truth of the remaining allegations.

20.— (1) It shall be a defence (to be known, and in this section referred to, as the “defence of honest opinion”) to a defamation action for the defendant to prove that, in the case of a statement consisting of an opinion, the opinion was honestly held.

(2) Subject to subsection (3), an opinion is honestly held, for the purposes of this section, if—

(a) at the time of the publication of the statement, the defendant believed in the truth of the opinion or, where the defendant is not the author of the opinion, believed that the author believed it to be true,

(b) (i) the opinion was based on allegations of fact—

(I) specified in the statement containing the opinion, or

(II) referred to in that statement, that were known, or might reasonably be expected to have been known, by the persons to whom the statement was published,

or

(ii) the opinion was based on allegations of fact to which—

(I) the defence of absolute privilege, or

(II) the defence of qualified privilege,

would apply if a defamation action were brought in respect of such allegations,

and

(c) the opinion related to a matter of public interest.

(3) (a) The defence of honest opinion shall fail, if the opinion concerned is based on allegations of fact to which subsection (2) (b) (i) applies, unless—

(i) the defendant proves the truth of those allegations, or

(ii) where the defendant does not prove the truth of all of those allegations, the opinion is honestly held having regard to the allegations of fact the truth of which are proved.

(b) The defence of honest opinion shall fail, if the opinion concerned is based on allegations of fact to which subsection (2) (b) (ii) applies, unless—

(i) the defendant proves the truth of those allegations, or

(ii) where the defendant does not prove the truth of those allegations—

(I) the opinion could not reasonably be understood as implying that those allegations were true, and

(II) at the time of the publication of the opinion, the defendant did not know or could not reasonably have been expected to know that those allegations were untrue.

(4) Where a defamatory statement consisting of an opinion is published jointly by a person (“ first-mentioned person ”) and another person (“ joint publisher ”), the first-mentioned person shall not fail in pleading the defence of honest opinion in a subsequent defamation action brought in respect of that statement by reason only of that opinion not being honestly held by the joint publisher, unless the first-mentioned person was at the time of publication vicariously liable for the acts or omissions, from which the cause of action in respect of that statement accrued, of the joint publisher.

21.— The matters to which the court in a defamation action shall have regard, for the purposes of distinguishing between a statement consisting of allegations of fact and a statement consisting of opinion, shall include the following:

(a) the extent to which the statement is capable of being proved;

(b) the extent to which the statement was made in circumstances in which it was likely to have been reasonably understood as a statement of opinion rather than a statement consisting of an allegation of fact; and

(c) the words used in the statement and the extent to which the statement was subject to a qualification or a disclaimer or was accompanied by cautionary words.

IITYWYBMAD

This is my opinion with regards to defamation and your hypothetical scenario..

1) The service provider is presumed to be wronged in this scenario (in court).
2) It is not up to them to prove that your comments are wrong, it's up to you to prove that you have justification for making them.
3) When the allegations where initially posted on this website, my opinion is that the law considers the service provider was prima facie defamed.
4) My understanding is that the court assumes that all defamatory statements are false from the outset.

bucketybuck

IITYWYBMAD wrote: »

This is my opinion with regards to defamation and your hypothetical scenario..

1) The service provider is presumed to be wronged in this scenario (in court).
2) It is not up to them to prove that your comments are wrong, it's up to you to prove that you have justification for making them.
3) When the allegations where initially posted on this website, my opinion is that the law considers the service provider was prima facie defamed.
4) My understanding is that the court assumes that all defamatory statements are false from the outset.

An interesting opinion.

Are you stating then that any negative review online is defamatory by default?

I am also interested to know, is simply stating that I did not like the service actually making an allegation?

dalta5billion

bucketybuck wrote: »

An interesting opinion.

Are you stating then that any negative review online is defamatory by default?

I am also interested to know, is simply stating that I did not like the service actually making an allegation?

It is impossible to prove that you did or did not like the service, therefore yours is an honest opinion. Your "feelings" that their email reply was "curt" is an honest opinion based on an allegation of fact (that they emailed back) - but you can presumably prove they emailed you. If they hadn't emailed you at all that would be a different matter but your "feelings" - as long as they are in response to true events would seem not to be defamatory under the 2009 act - again though, if you get more letters you should seek legal advice.

IITYWYBMAD

bucketybuck wrote: »

An interesting opinion.

Are you stating then that any negative review online is defamatory by default?

I am also interested to know, is simply stating that I did not like the service actually making an allegation?

No, that's not what I'm saying. I don't actually know what you said in your online comment(s), so my post comes with a caveat.

However, you should know that defamation is a civil and not a criminal matter so the same rules around burden of proof etc.. do not apply.

The Law Reform Commission have a number of papers on this which are available to peruse online. Look up Burden of Proof and Defamatory Effect.

As dalta5billion has pointed out, your enjoyment of the services is not something that can be proven, but given that this company has taken the steps to threaten legal action, I would be reviewing exactly what you said and also have some justification for those comments.

Uno my Uno.

In circumstances such as these someone who posted a negative review and is threatened with a defamation action would have to show in court that the review is "fair comment."

That is to say that the review is a fair one, the events referred to actually happened and that the reviewer's conclusions were fair. If a negative review is fair then an action for defamation cannot be successful.

If however it is not fair, eg it leaves out relevant facts that might change the readers opinion of the review or if the reviewers conclusions are not fair eg a company went to all reasonable lengths to make the reviewer happy but the reviewer refused to be satisfied then the review may possibly be defamatory.

Just because a statement is an opinion does not mean it cannot be defamatory, for that reason people should be careful about the opinions they express in public/on the internet/radio/TV.