by Paul Alan Levy On the eve of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the Senate version of the Issa-Swalwell bill, (the latter is endorsed by Public Citizen) that would ban non-disparagement clauses in consumer contracts, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida has become the first federal court to recognize […]
Author Archives: Paul Levy
by Paul Alan Levy The Washington Post reports this morning that Yelp has begun, on an experimental basis, to show a warning sign when a restaurant has been visited by local inspectors and received an especially low food safety score.
by Paul Alan Levy New Jersey resident Nadiya Oliver was deeply frustrated by her experience with an Illinois company called Fertility Bridges, which sells services connecting couples that are unable to conceive a child on their own with women who are ready to donate their eggs in return for financial assistance with the resulting burdens. […]
by Paul Alan Levy Earlier this year, I discussed a troubling decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that reinstated a complaint by Multi-Time Machine, a maker of fancy watches, based on the way in which Amazon’s internal search engine returned results when users entered the search string “mtm special […]
by Paul Alan Levy Yesterday I discussed a lawsuit filed by Amazon seeking relief against over a thousand anonymous individuals who offered to sell their services posting phony positive reviews about products available for sale on Amazon. The theory of Amazon's complaint is that the users are all registered Amazon users and hence forbidden from […]
by Paul Alan Levy The problem of false reviews bedevils web sites that invite customer reviews as a basis for other consumers to judge goods and services available to them on the market. Disgruntled merchants can be counted on bring defamation claims against false negative reviewers, but few merchants feel they have any incentive to […]
You would probably assume that Ben Carson and his presidential campaign would be thrilled that so many people across America are creating T-shirts, mugs and other items touting his candidacy for the presidency, saying “Ben Carson for President 2016" or using more creative slogans, plastering his face on such items. And you would think that […]
by Paul Alan Levy Med Express, a Medina Ohio company that faced serious and widespread online obloquy during the spring of 2013 for filing a libel suit against two eBay users who posted mildly negative (but entirely truthful) feedback, has been ordered to pay nearly $20,000 in attorney fees and expenses for the work of […]
by Paul Alan Levy Louisiana lawyer David Groner has made a few mistakes. Which was the most serious? David Groner's Misconduct Toward Clients At some point time before January 18, 2007, one of Groner’s associates filed a lawsuit on behalf of some clients in the wrong venue; the defendants moved to dismiss. Groner’s firm nevertheless […]
by Paul Alan Levy This spring I reported on a decision of the Virginia Supreme Court that overturned a contempt citation against Yelp for honoring its users First Amendment right to post pseudonymous criticisms of a Virginia merchant called Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, because Hadeed refused to present any evidence that the reviewers had made any […]