Roca Labs Sues Customer For Posting A Negative Review

from the that'll-win-new-customers,-i'm-sure dept

You agree that any such negative claim will constitute defamation per se

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We've been covering the saga of Roca Labs for a few days now. This is the company that claims to make an "alternative" to gastric bypass surgery in the form of some "industrial food thickening agents" that (the company claims) will fill up your stomach and make you not want to eat. These claims are not FDA reviewed and an examination of the claims by a doctor found them to be questionable (to say the least). We became aware of the company because it had sued Consumer Opinion Corp. , the company that owns the site PissedConsumer.com. The issue? Roca Labs has a terms of service that offers everyone a "discount" on its product if you agree to never, ever, say anything bad about the product ever (you alsoagree to share success stories with Roca and allow them to publicize those stories). In short, the terms of service are designed toshow positive results, and gag any negative results. Rocathat it has to do this because results may vary, and negative results could be caused by other factors. Of course, doesn't that also mean that positive results could be caused by other factors as well?Either way, Roca Labs sued PissedConsumer on the hilarious legal theory that by offering a forum for unhappy customers to post their story, it was "tortious interference" because it encouraged people to break the terms under which people bought the product. As we noted, this legal theory is fairly laughable, and PissedConsumer's legal response makes that fairly clear as well.However, Roca Labs and its lawyers are apparently busy. They're not just suing PissedConsumer, but they're actually suing a customer who complained to the Better Business Bureau for "breach of contract" and "defamation per se." While her filing with the BBB included some statements that might reach the level of defamation, amusingly, Roca Labsattempt to show that her comments were false in any way. Rather, it relies on yet another ridiculously questionable term in its terms of service, saying thatbe considered "defamation per se." Here's the term:I don't think that's how defamation law works. At all. Even if this woman's comments to the BBBdefamatory (and I'm not saying they are), you can't just have someone sign a contract saying that if they do something, they'll be guilty of defamation.Either way, all of this should make you wonder just what sort of company Roca Labs is in that it seems to not justfor negative reviews, but to workto stop negative reviews and to threaten and intimidate those who make complaints about their experience with the company.

Filed Under: contract, free speech, gastric bypass surgery, negative reviews, reviews, tortious interference

Companies: pissedconsumer, roca labs