Veterinary Hospital Sues Yelp for Extortion

US review site Yelp was cited in a class action lawsuit by two law firms representing a veterinary hospital from Long Beach, California. The lawsuit was filed at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and is still pending approval. The main claim is for unfair business tactics, citing extortion strategies from the Internet startup.

The veterinary hospital's management is accusing Yelp website operators of repeatedly attempting to either convince or force their hand in acquiring ad space in amount of $300 per month. For this transaction, Yelp admins would have then deleted or hidden negative comments and reviews regarding their business profile on the site.

Represented by two major law firms from Miami and San Diego, the veterinary hospital owners are not the only ones to pursue legal actions against Yelp; similarly, a San Francisco chiropractor settling a lawsuit with the website more than a year ago after some negative reviews were posted regarding his business.

Why settle when those reviews were made by the site's users? Maybe because at the same time last year, the East Bay Express newspaper ran a pretty detailed story on how a restaurant owner was repeatedly harassed by a Yelp representative to purchase ad space in favor of “solving” a bad review for his business.

Yelp's answer to all this was "Yelp provides a valuable service to millions of consumers and businesses based on our trusted content. The allegations are demonstrably false, since many businesses that advertise on Yelp have both negative and positive reviews. These businesses realize that both kinds of feedback provide authenticity and value. Running a good business is hard; filing a lawsuit is easy. While we haven't seen the suit in question, we will dispute it aggressively."

Meanwhile, the two law firms have set up a website on WordPress dedicated to other Yelp extortion cases, hoping that one of their visitors might be willing to join their legal action and provide other testimonies of Yelp's business tactics.