Daily Dicta: Feds Bust Mortgage Broker for Spilling Customer Secrets on Yelp
The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced that a California-based mortgage broker agreed to pay $120,000 to settle allegations that he revealed highly personal information about his customers in responding to their bad Yelp reviews.
January 08, 2020 at 01:08 PM
4 minute read
I'm fascinated by lawsuits over bad Yelp reviews—litigation at the intersection of free speech, consumer protection and pure spite.
I've written before about a pet-sitting company that unsuccessfully sued a customer for $1 million for posting a one-star review claiming that the sitter overfed her betta fish. (Alleged wrongdoing that the customer detected—as one does—via her fish cam. What, you don't have a fish cam?).
And my colleague Cheryl Miller wrote about a California lawyer, Dawn Hassel, who sued a former client for giving her a bad review ("She will probably not do anything for you except make your situation worse…STEER CLEAR OF THIS LAW FIRM."), unsuccessfully attempting to force Yelp to remove the unflattering post.
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