(credit: Yelp Inc.)
California’s top court is agreeing to hear a case in which a lower court has ordered Yelp to remove a bad review. The California Supreme Court did not say when it would hear the case that tests the Communications Decency Act, which San Francisco-based Yelp maintains protects it from having to remove content on its site posted by third parties.
The case concerns a June decision by a state appeals court that requires Yelp to remove a defamatory review about a law firm written by an unhappy client. A lower court issued a default judgement for over $500,000 against the reviewer, Ava Bird, for a review that the law firm claimed was defamatory. Bird was sued for defamation, but was a no-show in court.
Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University legal scholar, summed up the lower court’s decision. “Of course any removal order injures Yelp by usurping Yelp’s editorial policies about its content database. But because of the default judgment on defamation, the court can neatly sidestep that First Amendment injury by claiming that we know this content is beyond First Amendment protection,” Goldman wrote.
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Source: Ars Technica – Yelp fighting court order requiring it to remove negative review