Whoever Buys Yelp Will Inherit The Lawsuits
In light of today's reports that Google and maybe other companies are negotiating to buy Yelp, we wonder what an acquisition would mean for the various lawsuits that are filed against Yelp's users. Foster City dentist Yvonne Wong, for instance, sued a Los Altos couple -- Tai Jing and Jia Ma -- for defamation last year in Santa Clara County Superior Court, after they posted a highly negative review about her work on their son. She also wanted to sue Yelp, but held off when she found out that the site might be immune under the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which allows websites a lot of leeway in publishing material posted by third parties. In September, meanwhile, another dentist, Gelareh Rahbar, filed a similar suit in San Francisco Superior Court against one of her patients, Jennifer Batoon, after Batoon posted a negative review of Rahbar's work.
