Hadeed Carpet Cleaning in Court Today Over Yelp Reviews

A company that does a lot of business all over Northern Virginia is in court today pushing its case to reveal the names of anonymous reviewers who posted negative reviews about the company.

Hadeed Carpet Cleaner of Alexandria contends seven anonymous negative reviews on Yelp hurt their business and that the reviewers weren’t even customers. Yelp is a California-based online business that posts customer reviews of businesses.

First Amendment advocates as well as social media companies are keeping an eye on the outcome of the case.

Hadeed said it compared the seven reviews with its customer database and could find no record of them being customers, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

Hadeed filed suit in Alexandria Circuit Court in 2012, alleging that the reviewers were not customers and that the comments were defamatory because the reviewers lied by saying they were provided shoddy services by the company.

An Alexandria judge held Yelp in contempt for not complying with a subpoena for information unmasking the anonymous reviewers, according to a report by the Associated Press. The Virginia Court of Appeals upheld that ruling last January.

In January, the Virginia Court of Appeals ruling noted that Yelp users must register to post reviews, but aren’t required to use their real names. Yelp requires users to be customers of the business they’re reviewing, according to a report by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.