SAN FRANCISCO — Two California lawyers have been accused of participating in a scheme that used sham lawsuits to suppress negative online reviews of businesses.
Consumer Opinion LLC, the company that runs pissedconsumer.com, claims in a suit filed Friday that attorneys Mark W. Lapham of Danville and Owen T. Mascott of Palm Desert manipulated California’s legal system to fraudulently obtain court orders that were used to persuade search engines such as Google to de-index review pages—effectively putting them out of sight of consumers.
