On May 12, 2022, Andrew Lustigman, Chair of the firm’s Advertising, Marketing & Promotion’s Group and Co-Chair of Brand Management & Protection Group and associate Morgan Spina will present at the Federal Bar Association webinar “Suppressing Negative Reviews Can Lead to Legal Trouble.”
In this age of online advertising, independent reviews by customers have become a crucial marketing tool for many businesses. Having “5-star” customer reviews is worn like a badge of honor, and companies can boast of their high customer ratings in an effort to attract other customers who look to such reviews for confirmation of the reputation of a company or the high quality of its goods or services. Given the value of such reviews, customer reviews have become subject to falsification and manipulation by companies seeking to boost their ratings and attract other customers. Such actions, however, can result in liability for false advertising, and two recent cases highlight the serious liability a company that falsifies and manipulates reviews can suffer.
Online review websites typically offer reviewers the ability to post their views anonymously. Given the lack of transparency, many times the subject business is unable to meaningfully address the allegations levied against it because it may not know the details of the reviewer’s experience. A recent Ninth Circuit decision, may portend a change in the ability to hide a reviewer’s identity.
The New York Law Journal (subscription required) published an article authored by Andrew Lustigman titled "Everyone's a Critic: Fake E-Commerce Reviews Undercut the Marketplace"
Inside Counsel article on using online reviews as advertising