Contractors and other service providers often receive negative or unfavorable reviews on internet sites. While some negative reviews are justified, others are not. What can a contractor do to get relief from a negative review? One critical consideration is whether the review states "opinions" or "facts."
Historically, statements that harm a person’s reputation in the community are defamatory. One type of defamatory statement implies that a person is unable to perform or lacks integrity in performing their business. However, an expression of opinion that is not a "provably false" assertion of fact is generally not actionable.
This analysis was used in a recent central Illinois case. A home improvement contractor sued a business reviewer for defamation. The reviewer assigned a "D-" grade in a published reliability report, and told existing and potential customers that the contractor "was not a good company" and that customers should not do business with the contractor.
The majority held that the assignment of a grade was an opinion, not a statement of objectively verifiable fact. Further, the majority held the claimed statements that the contractor “was not a good company” and customers "should not do business with" the contractor were vague, unsupported statements of opinion. Therefore, the appellate court affirmed the dismissal of the contractor’s defamation and related business-interference claims.
The dissenting justice pointed out that this result lets the reviewing website "have its cake and eat it, too." The reviewer "secures its clientele with assurances" that it translates factual information into a reliable rating. But "when an aggrieved company challenges a negative rating as injurious to its reputation and its continued ability to carry on its business, the [reviewer] asks the courts to ignore all of its vaunted factual underpinning and hold that the rating is nothing more than an ungrounded opinion pulled out of thin air."
The takeaway: for a contractor to successfully sue a reviewer for defamation, the review must have statements that are "sufficiently factual to be susceptible to being proven true or false." Simple opinions will not allow a claim for defamation.
For more details and a good discussion of what constitutes a "fact" for purposes of defamation actions, see Perfect Choice Exteriors, LLC v. Better Business Bureau of Central Illinois, Inc., 2018 IL App (3d) 150864 (opinion filed March 12, 2018; as of April 30, 2018 has not yet been released for publication in the official law reports).
