In a recent case (Levitt v. Yelp) the plaintiff claimed Yelp was manipulating reviews on their site to attempt to gain additional revenue from business owners. The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s dismissal of this case, which was a class action case, because of a lack of evidence.
The lower court had found that the plaintiffs did not provide any factual evidence to support their claims, or have more than circumstantial evidence suggesting that Yelp was violating any laws. The plaintiffs claimed that Yelp specifically removed positive reviews and moved negative reviews to the top of the page, unless the business owners agreed to sign up for premium services.
While this case was dismissed, it is not really the victory that many people think it is for Yelp. The courts found that while Yelp is not guilty of extortion, that doesn’t mean they are definitely not manipulating their reviews and results.
In fact, the courts specifically stated, “We emphasize that we are not holding that no cause of action exists that would cover conduct such as that alleged, if adequately pled. But for all the reasons noted, extortion is an exceedingly narrow concept as applied to fundamentally economic behavior. The business owners have not alleged a legal theory or plausible facts to support the theories they do argue.”
To put it simply, this is saying that it is certainly possible that that Yelp is performing some of the things that they were accused of, however, it is not extortion. The legal teams for the plaintiffs may be more successful coming up with an alternative accusation, if they want to go forward with this type of case.
