REVIEW OF PLAINTIFF’S WORK POSTED ON YELP WAS OPINION, NOT ACTIONABLE LIBEL.

The Second Department determined that a review of plaintiff’s work at defendant’s home posted on Yelp was not actionable as libel per se. The review was an expression of opinion by a dissatisfied customer:

After the plaintiff installed a custom home theater system in the defendant’s home, the defendant posted a review of the services she received from the plaintiff on the Internet website Yelp.com. The plaintiff commenced this action, alleging, among other things, that the review constituted libel per se. The defendant moved, inter alia, pursuant to CPLR 3211(a)(7) to dismiss that cause of action. The Supreme Court granted that branch of the defendant’s motion.

A “libel action cannot be maintained unless it is premised on published assertions of fact” … . Whether an allegedly defamatory statement constitutes actionable fact or nonactionable opinion is a question of law to be resolved by the courts … . In resolving that question, “[r]ather than sifting through a communication for the purpose of isolating and identifying assertions of fact,” the courts should “consider the content of the communication as a whole,” and “look to the over-all context in which the assertions were made” to determine ” whether the reasonable reader would have believed that the challenged statements were conveying facts about the libel plaintiff'”… .

Here, given the context in which the challenged statements were made and viewing the content of the review as a whole, a reasonable reader would have believed that the writer of the review was a dissatisfied customer who utilized the Yelp website to express an opinion … . Crescendo Designs, Ltd. v Reses, 2017 NY Slip Op 05198, 2nd Dept 6-28-17