Negative Online Review Lands Business Owner in Court

A dispute over a negative review has landed Holly business owner in court. (Photo via Shutterstock)

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A former client’s bad Google+ review is the basis of a lawsuit filed in Oakland County Circuit Court this week by a marketing company seeking more than $70,000 in damages and a published retraction.

Five Sparrows says in its lawsuit against Spot Shooter Archery of Holly and its owner, Jim Beasley, that Beasley’s negative review has cost the Hartland-based online marketing, website development and search engine optimization firm based thousands of dollars in lost business.

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• How much credibility do you give to reviews on Google+, Yelp! or a plethora of Internet and social media sites inviting customer feedback?

The review was still on Five Sparrows’ Google+ page Friday evening, and Beasley told The Oakland Press he has no plans to remove it. Beasley contracted with the company a year ago to revamp his company’s website and perform other marketing services, but told the newspaper he got “a website that was inoperable.”

He posted the review 10 months ago:

“Please do not deal with this company. After almost 5 months and several thousand dollars, our e-commerce store is still not done and we have zero return on our investment. They talk a great game but you will lose your money. Five Sparrows has hurt our store’s finances. We have tried to work with them but I’m giving up! Please stay away!”

Beasley told The Oakland Press he thinks the lawsuit is frivolous, but not unexpected. “They wrote a letter to me in February saying retract or they would sue me,” he said. “I said ‘This is crap. It’s freedom of speech. I can do what I want.’ Do a good job and you won’t get bad reviews.”

In the lawsuit, Five Sparrows said it has fulfilled the terms of the contract. The company also alleged it has been unfairly targeted by Beasley, who is accused of making “false, inflammatory and defamatory statements” about Five Sparrows in a letter to the business networking group where the two parties in the lawsuit met.

Beasley claims he wrote the letter out of a sense of obligation to the networking group.

“It is very tiring to sit through a (business networking) meeting and not let our other members of the group know that, when we give a bad referral, it affects their credibility also,” he wrote.

Beasley said he has no intention of “rolling over,” which he thinks is the marketing company’s objective in filing the lawsuit. He says truth is on his side and he’s “going to tell it straight up.”

“i can prove it,” he said. “I’m in here trying to make a living and making a business, and you get ripped off by thousands of dollars. You figure, if they do that to five or six people every month … that’s a lot of money.”

He compared his review to others posted online. “People have restaurant reviews all the time, good bad and ugly,” he said.

Tricky Balance Between Online Persona and Freedom of Speech

But as First Amendment case law emerges in what business stalwart Forbes said is a tricky balance between a company’s online persona and freedom of speech, online reviewers’ protection from liability isn’t clear.

In February, a Fairfax, VA, jury in a $75,000 lawsuit found that homeowner Jane Perez defamed her contractor, Christopher Dietz, with a negative and since-removed review, but also that Dietz defamed Perez in his response, according to Yahoo! Finance. As a result, neither party collected damages.

It wasn’t the first lawsuit over a bad review. Three years ago, two Arizona surgeons won a $12 million judgment after a local jazz singer posted critical online reviews about their practice and filed complaints against them with the state’s medical board. And in November, a woman from Texas said she was not only fired, but reported to credit bureaus after she posted a negative review of her workplace.

In the Virginia case, the jury’s verdict that Perez’s review was defamatory could have a chilling effect on 117 million monthly Yelp users, a First Amendment attorney said.

“The fact that she had to go find a lawyer to defend herself and go all the way to trial is obviously a concern,” said Paul Alan Levy, an attorney for the First Amendment advocacy group Public Citizen. “If you don’t have a pro bono lawyer like she did, it can be quite taxing financially.”

Because defamation is based on a false statements, online reviewers are cautioned by lawyers to stick to opinions and truths.

“If you don’t lie, misrepresent yourself or exaggerate your experience, you should not be held liable. Being able to separate emotions from your situation will help to ensure that you, as a reviewer, will be protected from such lawsuits,” Forbes said.

Five Sparrows vs. Spot Shooter