eBay Seller Who Sued Customers For Bad Feedback Orderd To Pay $19,250 In Legal Fees

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(Kazuhisa OTSUBO)

You may remember that back in 2013, an eBay seller filed a lawsuit against a customer who left him accurate negative feedback, claiming that he hadn’t actually read his own suit when the company’s actions led to Internet backlash. Now the case has finally been resolved, with a judge ordering the seller to pay $19,000 in attorneys’ fees to the local lawyers who took the customer’s case pro bono.

The eBay customer left bad feedback when her package arrived with insufficient postage, and the company filed a libel suit in its home state as a tactic to make her delete the feedback, since she was unlikely to travel there or hire a local attorney. This wasn’t the first time the store had filed this type of lawsuit, observers figured out, and ultimately the case led to multiple sanctions trials and the order to pay legal fees.

Sales at the eBay store fell, but it is still in business. Public Citizen’s Paul Levy reports that the company has changed its name twice since this story blew up in the spring of 2013.

The case and the Internet’s negative reaction to it remains a top search result for the company’s original name, MedExpress, and for its attorneys; maybe, Levy speculates, the case will serve as a warning to people who want to file lawsuits for damages to have bad feedback taken down, and for attorneys who would consider taking these cases.

Med Express v. Nicholls [Public Citizen]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist