Health Law

YELPING DENTIST BIT BY FEDERAL COMPUTER DECENCY LAW.

By Greg Piche'

Glen Reit, D.D.S. a dentist practicing in Manhattan received a number of favorable reviews from the online consumer reviewing service, ?Yelp.?  All was well until an anonymous post by a ?Michael S.? described his office as ?small,? ?old,? and ?smelly.?   Judging from the name of the web site, there was an expected short, sharp, painful cry by either the reviewer or perhaps the reviewed. The post described Dr. Reit?s office equipment as ?old? and ?dirty.?  Dr. Reit leaped to the courts to obtain an injunction requiring the removal by Yelp of the offending review.  He claimed a substantial reduction in patient appointments. Yelp appFarently removed the good reviews and kept the unfavorable review posted for a while. 

Yelp according to Dr. Reit leverages advertising on its cite by offering to remove offending material for its advertisers and removing favorable material for those who are not as part of its business model. Yelp filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, claiming immunity granted under the Federal Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. Section 230 that shields an interactive computer services from being treated as a ?content provider, who may be subject to defamation claims.

In Reit, D.D.S v. Yelp, Inc., 907 NYS 411 ( NY Sup. Ct. 2010), the court ordered the dismissal of most of the claims because of the Federal Immunity.  Dr. Reit attempted to get around the statute by arguing that because Yelp selected which comments to maintain on its website, it became an ?editor? and therefore more of a content provider. The Court essentially reasoned that even if the service selected material, it still was not a content provider because it did not write the underlying material on the web site.

Dr. Reit?s last claim, that alleges nefarious  business conduct by Yelp in leveraging advertising from businesses by its ?carrot and stick? approach to manipulating material on the site to extort advertising was a violation of consumer deceptive acts or practices failed because the acts as alleged were directed toward businesses and not consumers.  There is an aggressive move afoot in many states to increase the transparency of physician backgrounds, performance reviews and potential conflicts of interest.  Dr. Reit?s claims whether justified or not, auger for many more painful yelps in the future as professionals try to cope with the sting of anonymous reviews in the internet information environment.

Full post as published by Healthcare Law Blog on December 09, 2010 (boomark / email).