The Supreme Court of California ruled that Yelp could not be ordered to remove defamatory reviews from its website because federal law immunized it from that form of relief.
Plaintiffs Dawn Hassell and the Hassell Law Group sued defendant Ava Bird for defamation, false light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress based on negative Yelp reviews that plaintiffs alleged Bird had posted about the law firm. After Bird did not appear, plaintiffs obtained a default judgment awarding damages and an injunction requiring defendant to remove the reviews, and the order also directed Yelp, which was not a defendant, to remove the reviews from its website.
Yelp’s request
Yelp asked the court to set aside or modify the default judgment so it would no longer require Yelp to remove the reviews. It argued that the order violated due process and was barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act because Yelp had not been sued as a defendant and could not be treated as the publisher of third-party content.
Court’s ruling
The court ruled that Yelp was entitled to immunity under Section 230 and that the order had to be revised to delete any requirement that Yelp remove the challenged reviews or later comments by the reviewers. It therefore reversed the Court of Appeal insofar as that court had upheld the denial of Yelp’s motion.
Why the court ruled as it did
The court ruled this way because ordering Yelp to remove the reviews improperly treated it as the publisher of information provided by another content provider, which Section 230 forbids. The court reasoned that plaintiffs could not avoid that immunity by suing only defendant and then obtaining an injunction that indirectly compelled Yelp to take down third-party content, and because the statutory issue resolved the case, the court did not reach Yelp’s due process argument.
Hassell v. Bird, 5 Cal. 5th 522 (Cal., July 2, 2018)