Could you be sued for leaving a bad online review?

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – You might want to think about hiring a lawyer before you vent your frustration with a company online. It’s not as crazy as it sounds.

Companies may hit with you with a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation or SLAPP, ensuring a lengthy and expensive court battle that most of us can’t afford to fight.

“You go on Yelp and you give a bad review to a dentist, and you get something in the mail saying ‘hey we’re going to sue you because of what you said on YELP,’ and it’s not even a question of being right or wrong, we just don’t want you to say that,” says Daniel Castro with the Information, Innovation, Technology Foundation based in Washington DC.

The group is appealing for more uniform laws around SLAPP suits.

He says the current state-to-state patchwork doesn’t adequately protect consumers from these suits and wants to change that. “Where it can be clear to a judge that the case has no merit, what you want is a fast track so somebody can say ‘wait, this case has no merit, let’s stop it now. So you stop it at the outset and that reduces the time and cost for consumers,” says Castro.

He says it’s almost gotten to the point of ridiculousness. “What you don’t want is somebody going on vacation and having to consult a lawyer before they can review a restaurant or review the hotel that they’re staying at,” he says.

Castro thinks changes wouldn’t be difficult. It just takes willpower. “You want to make it very simple, because if you make it simple for consumers to push back on these lawsuits, then the lawsuits go away.”

He adds Canada is in a similar position, as are a number of Western countries, and would benefit from trying to head in the same direction.

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