Dr. Kimberly Henry, a plastic surgeon in Marin County, California, has sued reviewers on the online review sites Yelp and DoctorScorecard over several scathing reviews of his service. In total, he has sued 12 reviewers, many of whom are anonymous. He is seeking $2 million in damages for libel and defamation.
Wow. This may possibly be the most frivolous lawsuit I have ever seen. For starters, most of the reviewers are anonymous. How do you sue an anonymous person? It’s kind of like suing the boogeyman or the Loch Ness monster.
The purpose of these online review sites is to provide patients with a forum to express their honest opinions on the services they have received, and to provide prospective patients with additional insight as they decide on a surgeon. By nature, negative reviews are essential to the integrity of these sites. Forcing negative reviewers to pay damages for libel would make these sites worthless.
But since in this particular situation most of the reviewers were anonymous, I must once again raise the following question – who is Dr. Henry actually going to sue? Hopefully the courts see this case for the garbage that it is and throw it out.
I have one word of advice for Dr. Henry. If you don’t want negative reviews of your work, stop botching plastic surgery procedures. If you do good work, you will get good reviews. It’s time you take responsibility for your shortcomings as a plastic surgeon.
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