Dentist’s Defamation Lawsuit Against Yelp Preempted by Section 230–Braverman v. Yelp
24 11 2013By Eric Goldman
Braverman v. Yelp, Inc., 2013 NY Slip Op 31407 (NY Sup. Ct June 28, 2013)
Mal Braverman is a Manhattan dentist. He sued Yelp for defamation based on two allegedly defamatory user posts. I’m not sure which posts are in question, but when I searched for “Mal Braverman” at Google today, his Yelp page was the first search result and the 3 unfiltered reviews were not flattering (though there are 27 filtered reviews–90% of the total number of reviews!–including some positive ones).
His lawsuit against Yelp is a ridiculously easy Section 230 case. If the case were brought in a state with strong anti-SLAPP protections, Braverman would be writing a check to Yelp. To get around Section 230, Braverman argued that Yelp “authored” the user reviews by
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