Defamation, Small Law Firms, Solo Practitioners

Lawyer Takes His Butthurt Over A Negative Review To Court

Is this even defamation?

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judge with gavelPeople say sh**ty things on the internet. That is just a fact of life. But rather than make peace with this axiom, a New York City lawyer, Donald J. Tobias, has decided to take the fight to court.

The dispute is over a review left by a Google user named “Mia Arce” who posted a one-star review of his firm along with the phrase, “It was horrible.” Tobias has characterized the review as defamatory and is asking a New York judge to order Google to reveal the identity of the user. Google has, until now, refused to comply with Tobias’s requests, as reported by the WSJ Law Blog:

In June, before taking legal action, Mr. Tobias wrote letters to Google’s legal department explaining his predicament. He said he suspected whoever had written the review might have been responding to a tragic story from November 2013 about a Cornell University professor named Donald J. Tobias who reportedly threw himself in front of a subway train.

“I am an innocent victim of a purported but highly damaging ‘review’ that was posted, in all probability by mistake, by someone that I do not know and with whom I have had no relationship of any kind,” Mr. Tobias told Google.

But even if Tobias is successful in discovering the identity of the user, that doesn’t mean the claim of libel will also be a winner:

UCLA law professor and First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh said that even if Mr. Tobias succeeds in getting Google to turn over the identity of the reviewer, he doesn’t think the lawyer has a plausible libel claim.

Mr. Volokh said he sympathizes with Mr. Tobias but said the phrase “it was horrible” falls in the camp of statements that are entirely opinion and “so devoid of fact” that they can’t be viewed as libelous.

Perhaps Tobias just wants to know who on the internet hates him. But pulling on that thread isn’t always the boon you expect it to be.

‘It Was Horrible’: Lawyer Sues to Unmask Google Reviewer [WSJ Law Blog]

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headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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