Doctor v. Patient Lawsuits Over Online Reviews
1 06 2012By Eric Goldman
I’m trying to comprehensively catalog doctor vs. patient lawsuits over online reviews of the doctor. I’m equally interested in suits by other health care professionals; I’ve noticed dentists are surprisingly litigious. I’ve included lawsuits against intermediate publishers where the underlying litigation involves a patient review. I’ve also included suits where the review author was a family member of the patient, but I’m excluding other posts by non-patients.
Here’s the list I’ve developed so far:
* Nevyas v. Morgan, 309 F. Supp. 2d 673 (E.D. Pa. 2004)
* Bosley Medical Institute, Inc. v. Kremer, 403 F.3d 672 (9th Cir. 2005)
* Barrett v. Rosenthal, 146 P.3d 510 (Cal. Sup. Ct. 2006)
* Gilbert v. Sykes, 53 Cal. Rptr. 3d 752 (Cal. App. Ct. 2007)
* Alvi Armani Medical, Inc. v. Hennessey, 629 F. Supp. 2d 1302 (S.D. Fla. 2008)
* Biegel v. Norberg, San Francisco Superior Ct. case # CGC-08-472522 (filed Feb. 25, 2008)
* Kim v. IAC/InterActive Corp., 2008 WL 3906427 (Cal. App. Ct. 2008)
* Reit v. Yelp, Inc., 29 Misc.3d 713 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2010)
* Wong v. Jing, 189 Cal. App. 4th 1354 (Cal. App. Ct. 2010)
* Rahbar v. Batoon, San Francisco Superior Ct., case # CGC-09-492145 (filed Sept. 2, 2009) and case # CGC-10-502884 (filed August 20, 2010)
* McKee v. Laurion Case # 69-DU-CV-10-1706 (Minn. Dist. Ct. Apr. 28, 2011)
* Lynch v. Christie, Slip Copy, 2011 WL 3920154 (D. Me. Sept. 7, 2011)
* Pensler v. Hostetler, 10 CH 35876 (filed 8/19/10); Pensler v. Cuevas, 10 CH 35238 (filed 8/16/10); and Pensler v. Bender, 09 CH 18628 (filed 6/10/09) (all in Cook County Court)
* Henry v. Does 1-100, CIV095020; plus the apparently related Henry v. Carson, CIV1002670, and Henry v. Tamara M., CIV1003042 (all in Marin Superior Court)
Three other cases that are close but factually distinguishable:
* Townson v. Liming, 2010 WL 2767984 (Tex. App. Ct. 2010)
* Lifestyle Lift Holding Co. Inc. v. Prendiville, 768 F. Supp. 2d 929 (E.D. Mich. 2011)
* Darm v. Craig, Case 1107-08823, Oregon Circuit Court
Please email me if you have any suggestions of other cases I should check out.
The content in this post was found at http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2011/09/request_for_hel.htm and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.
