Plaintiffs Firm Can't Revive Defamation Suit Over Negative Online Reviews

The Yelp application is displayed on an Apple iPhone in an arranged photograph taken in New York on Feb. 5, 2016. Photographer: Chris Goodney/Bloomberg

Plaintiffs firm Abir Cohen Treyzon Salo and name partner Alexander Cohen have struck out in a bid to revive a lawsuit stemming from negative online reviews of the firm posted on Yelp, Avvo, Facebook, Ripoff Report, and Google.

The Second District Court of Appeal on Thursday upheld a trial court victory on an anti-SLAPP motion for Arta Lahiji, the daughter of former firm client Nahid Lahiji. The court found that Abir Cohen had "not advanced anything beyond speculation" that Arta Lahiji was the author of the posts at issue, which Nahid Lahiji informed the firm that she wrote.

The law firm had argued that Arta Lahiji's win under the state's anti-SLAPP statute, which protects a person's free speech activity from legal claims, should be overturned since she denied making the posts and they, therefore, weren't her speech. But in a 13-page opinion upholding the lower court's ruling, Justice Brian Hoffstadt wrote that the Second District had ruled just last year in Bel Air Internet v. Morales that defendants could rely on the allegations within a complaint for anti-SLAPP purposes. The plaintiffs, Hoffstadt pointed out, didn't mention the Bel Air decision in their appellate papers.

"We are troubled by Cohen and the firm's failure to cite this directly applicable contrary authority anywhere in their briefs," wrote Hoffstadt, who was joined in the opinion by Justices Elwood Lui and Victoria Chavez.

Neither Cohen nor Abir Cohen partner Boris Treyzon, who represented the firm on appeal, immediately responded to messages Friday morning.

According to Thursday's opinion, the defendant's mother, Nahid, had hired Cohen and the firm to handle a dispute with her home insurance company. The firm won some preliminary recovery and Nahid Lahiji authorized Abir Cohen to retain $120,000 from that recovery, but she eventually fired the firm and Cohen. The firm then placed a lien on any further recovery from the insurance company.

Soon thereafter, a Yelp user named "AI L." and with Arta's photograph posted a review claiming to have hired Cohen to handle a "home insurance claim." AI L. wrote that Cohen used a law student to negotiate with the insurer, mismanaged case expenses, and repeatedly yelled when asked when the checks would be clear. The review said the firm had been "underhanded and shady" and had an "awful moral compass," among other things. An identical review appeared anonymously on the legal review site Avvo two days later. A few weeks later, identical reviews were posted on Ripoff Report by a user identified as "Nancy" in "Redondo Beach" and on Google by "Nahid Lahiji."

Abir Cohen, claiming all the posts were made by Arta Lahiji, sued her for defamation on Dec. 19, 2017. According to Thursday's decision, Nahid Lahiji sent an email to Cohen the month after the suit was filed explaining that she, and not her daughter, had posted the reviews. The firm, however, did not add Nahid Lahiji as a defendant and pursued discovery against Arta Lahiji even in the face of an automatic discovery stay after Arta Lahiji's lawyers filed her anti-SLAPP motion.

Arta Lahiji's lawyer, Jamie Keeton of Schlichter & Shonack, said that it seemed that Abir Cohen was targeting her client to try to get her mother to go back and change the negative reviews.

"I was really surprised that a law firm would file something like this, particularly not naming her mother in it," Keeton said.

Keeton said she thinks that her client found her via the internet, so she understands the value of online reviews. But she said the court's decision shows that "you can't basically try to bully people to change a post."

Thursday's decision also upholds the decision by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Cunningham III that awarded $36,855 in attorney fees.