Hoteliers and restaurateurs anxious to sue TripAdvisor in the U.S. over travelers’ disparaging reviews may have to rethink their strategy following a legal decision involving Yelp.
A U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco earlier this week tossed out two suits against Yelp which, like TripAdvisor, features consumer-written reviews, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Part of the decision relates to TripAdvisor and part doesn’t.
In the most relevant part of the decision, the judge ruled that the litigation could not proceed because Yelp enjoys protections under the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
Courts in the U.S. have repeatedly upheld protections afforded to the likes of Yelp and TripAdvisor by the Act, which provides immunity to Internet services which publish the opinions of others.
Various businesses have tried to sue TripAdvisor and other providers of user-generated content and gotten nowhere, although these legal actions keep on coming.
Within the last couple of weeks, The Grand Resort Hotel in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, reportedly sued TripAdvisor for $10 million over the property’s designation as the dirtiest hotel in TripAdvisor’s 2011 Dirtiest Hotels ranking.
TripAdvisor says it compiles the list based on review-writers cleanliness ratings for U.S. hotels.
Just peruse some of the photos that travelers have taken of the hotel to get an idea of why it may have merited such attention.
Meanwhile, the judge in the Yelp case also tossed the suits because the plaintiffs have not proven their allegations that Yelp was extorting advertisements from restaurants in exchange for higher rankings, according to The Wall Street Journal story.
The Yelp decision, however, can be appealed.
None of this hurts TripAdvisor’s prospects as it gets ready to get spun off from Expedia into a public company.
TripAdvisor declined to comment on the Yelp case.
To quote the original article “U.S. District Judge Edward Chen on Wednesday dismissed two suits filed last year by businesses that alleged Yelp threatened to degrade their ratings if they didn’t advertise on the site. He wrote that the businesses did “not raise more than a mere possibility that Yelp has authored or manipulated content related to Plaintiffs in furtherance of an attempt to ‘extort’ advertising revenues.”
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204505304577002170423750412.html#ixzz1c9bWBOVJ
It doesn’t sound like any case I’ve heard of against TripAdvsior so it’s not relevant to other cases, apart from the side issue of America’s crazy Communications Decency Act which is common knowledge.
BTW I reckon the US hotel “the dirtiest” does look like a dump and will probably get nowhere.
More interesting from a legal point of view is the UK case brought against TripAdvisor by a hotelier requiring TA to produce the evidence it used to “red flag” it. In that case TA is not being sued for third party reviews but for its own comments about the hotel.
See more here: http://tripadvisorwatch.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/tripadvisor-told-to-justify-red-flags/
Phil
Phil: As I wrote in my article, “Part of the decision relates to TripAdvisor and part doesn’t. In the most relevant part of the decision, the judge ruled that the litigation could not proceed because Yelp enjoys protections under the Communications Decency Act of 1996.”
You’d be surprised how many of TripAdvisor’s critics are unaware of the law, The Communications Decency Act. “Sue the bastards,” might as well be their refrain.
But U.S. law seems to protect TripAdvisor’s user reviews — as it does this comments section.