A Florida appeals court has upheld a $350,000 (£240,000) damages award to a divorce attorney whose client posted defamatory reviews about the lawyer on online legal site Avvo, lawyers.com and other sites.
The divorcing couple, Copia Blake and Peter Birzon, strangely teamed up to write the reviews about the wife's attorney, Ann-Marie Giustibelli, according to the appellate opinion. In a lesson that all online reviewers should heed, the appeals panel said that the Internet is not a forum with carte blanche freedom to say whatever irks you. In this instance, the divorcing couple accused the wife's attorney of dramatically inflating fees.
Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal, in a ruling noted Friday by Law.com, upheld a trial court's award of $350,000 in punitive damages for the couple's online falsehoods. The court wrote:
Both Blake and Birzon admitted to posting the reviews on various internet sites. The evidence showed that Blake had agreed to pay her attorney the amount reflected on the written retainer agreement—$300 an hour. Blake and Birzon both admitted at trial that Giustibelli had not charged Blake four times more than what was quoted in the agreement. The court entered judgment in favor of Giustibelli and awarded punitive damages of $350,000.
On appeal, Blake and Birzon argue that their internet reviews constituted statements of opinion and thus were protected by the First Amendment and not actionable as defamation. We disagree.
The court noted in a footnote that "statements of pure opinion are not actionable." But again, the appeals court said the divorcing couple went too far. One online review about the attorney said, "She misrepresented her fees with regards to the contract I initially signed. The contract she submitted to the courts for her fees were 4 times her original quote and pages of the original had been exchanged to support her claims, only the signature page was the same. Shame on me that I did not have an original copy, but like an idiot... I trusted my lawyer."
The court wasn't buying the divorcing couple's First Amendment defense.
"Here, all the reviews contained allegations that Giustibelli lied to Blake regarding the attorney’s fee. Two of the reviews contained the allegation that Giustibelli falsified a contract. These are factual allegations, and the evidence showed they were false," the three-judge court ruled.
The appellate panel noted that before it rendered its decision, Blake and Birzon had requested the court to drop the appeal. But the court felt it was important to issue a ruling anyway because "this issue merits discussion as it presents a scenario that will likely recur, and the public will benefit from an opinion on the matter."
Michael Frisch, a legal ethics expert, said that the decision "will hearten lawyers who are trashed online by former clients.” Others, however, suggested that Florida has a lower burden to prove damages in defamation cases.
Florida attorney Giustibelli did not immediately respond for comment. Neither Blake, of Missouri, nor Birzon, of Florida, immediately responded to a request for comment. The divorcing couple represented themselves without an attorney.
Listing image by Yelp
reader comments
101