The reviews service has begun adding warnings to the pages of businesses that may be "issuing questionable legal threats against reviewers." 
 
 After suffering through tooth pain for some time, Mary Rohs decided to see a dentist. Rohs, a New York resident, scheduled an appointment at Advanced NYC Endodontics with Dr. Nima Dayani on July 16, 2015, to treat the pain. More than a year later, the fallout from that routine appointment — a negative Yelp review by Rohs, and a lawsuit by Dayani claiming the review was defamatory — continues. And today, Yelp itself got involved, placing a new "consumer alert" on Dr. Dayani's Yelp page, warning that his business may be "issuing questionable legal threats against reviewers." 
 
 "Consumers have the right to share their opinions about their experiences with businesses," Yelp said in a blog post announcing the new alerts. "But there will always be a small handful of businesses who mistakenly think it’s a good idea to threaten consumers who exercise their free speech rights." Court records say Rohs showed up to Dayani's office around 11 a.m., filled out intake forms, and was shown into an exam room about 20 minutes later, where she had additional X-rays taken of her mouth. According to Dayani's timeline of her visit, Rohs spent about two hours at the office. He argues that he was treating other patients while Rohs sat in the exam room, but he made sure to discuss her dental history in length and take additional X-rays to check out her complaints about cold sensitivity. "By the end of her visit, she had two concurrent definitive diagnoses," said Dayani in an affidavit. "They were discussed with her and a plan of treatment was formulated." But in a Yelp review dated July 27, 2015, Rohs described a frustrating experience. She complained about the "absurdly long wait" at the end of which she said Dayani couldn't come to some clear diagnosis. 
 
 
 
 "Of the total TWO HOURS FIFTEEN MINUTES I was there, I think I was speaking to Dr. Dayani for about 30 minutes of that whole time," she wrote. "The rest was spent in his chair, without being offered a water or a magazine." 
 
 To make matters worse, she adds, "he couldn't help determine what was bothering me. I left with a mouth full of pain and a recommendation to see my dentist for a possible cavity." Dayani, who says he gets plenty of positive and negative feedback on Yelp and is comfortable with both, says the claims by Rohs weren't simply a negative review. He alleges her comments amount to defamation, and he sued Rohs two days after the review was posted. It's an accusation the dentist has levied against at least four previous patients who have written negative reviews about his practice, according to a BuzzFeed News review of court records. Dayani said false negative reviews like Rohs' have harmed his practice over time. He said he laid off one part-time staff member because of a drop in business. 
 
 "[Rohs] accsued me of malpractice by saying I didn’t diagnose her," he said. "When you are publicly accusing someone of malpractice, you are damaging their reputation." Rohs declined to comment to BuzzFeed News because the lawsuit is ongoing. 
 
 It's likely that Rohs, like millions of Yelp users, had no idea that a negative review could land her in court. But as online reviews become more critical to companies looking for new business, people have become increasingly vulnerable to such lawsuits, which can chill free speech, consumer advocates told BuzzFeed News. 
 
 "When you as a consumer share your honest opinion in some type of public way on Yelp or otherwise, it can mean negative reviews," Yelp's vice president of public policy, Luther Lowe, told BuzzFeed News. "Businesses, rather than responding diplomatically or using feedback to improve operations, go out and hire a lawyer waging that the consumer who wrote this review is more likely to pull the review off than hire a defense attorney and defend themselves. By merely threatening, it doesn’t take going to court to bully the person in order for that business to censor the user." The consumer alert Yelp put on Dayani's page Monday is the third time the company has placed such a warning, Yelp spokesperson Hannah Cheesman told BuzzFeed News. The company placed its first legal alert on a Texas pet sitting business called Prestigious Pets in May. The pet sitting company sued a customer for violating the company's nondisparagement, or "gag," clause when she posted a negative review about the company's care for her fish. Superior Moving & Storage in Florida was hit with a a legal alert on its page in June after it sued one of its previous customers for defamation. Both cases are ongoing. Lowe said that businesses sometimes include so-called gag clauses into their terms of service contracts. When the contract is signed, the consumer gives up their ability to publicly criticize the company. Other companies include contract clauses that prohibit consumers from saying anything publicly at all about the company, while others, like Dr. Dayani, may allege defamation and libel in court based on the negative review. 
 
 
 
 Yelp's rollout of the consumer alerts comes as Congress considers two bills designed to protect consumers from being sued for posting negative reviews online. California and Maryland are currently the only two states that prohibit the inclusion of gag clauses in contracts. The "Right to Yelp Bill,” also called the Consumer Review Fairness Act, would ban gag clauses from business contracts, while the SPEAK FREE Act would allow consumers slapped with a lawsuit over an online review to dismiss the claims early on in court. But as the two bills, which have received bipartisan support, make their way through Congress, individual consumers are left to fend for themselves, with few legal precedents for such cases. "We don’t have a lot of cases to point to so we don't know how judges view them," said Paul Levy, an attorney with Public Citizen and defense counsel in the Prestigious Pets case, told BuzzFeed News. "The question becomes did the person who signed the contract understand what they were giving away and did they understand they were giving away free speech? The second point is that it’s so unfair that it’s not able to be enforced." In two such cases, the suing companies never appeared in court to back up their claims. A Utah couple sued KlearGear in 2012, claiming they did not owe a debt for violating its terms of service by writing a negative review, but the company never appeared in court and couple received a default judgement including over $300,000 in damages. In 2014, a Wisconsin woman filed a lawsuit against Accessory Outlet after they demanded she pay $250 for violating its terms of sale. The company never appeared in court to defend its claims. In one case, a dentist, who faced a class-action lawsuit by former patients who signed a gag clause to receive care, moved abroad before she could defend her breach of contract claims in court in 2012. "The harms generally aren’t harms that are enforced in court," Scott Michelman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has previously defended consumers in four gag-clause cases, told BuzzFeed News. "Instead they are the harms of the consumers that are bullied by corporations in taking down critical reviews and also the harms of consumers who are chilled by these clauses from expressing their opinions." Yelp has found itself at the center of a similar lawsuit in California where a personal injury law firm sued a former client after she posted three reviews criticizing the company. Hassell Law Group accused Ava Bird of defamation after she refused to remove "factual inaccuracies and defamatory remarks" from Yelp reviews she posted in January, February and April 2013. A lower court sided with the law firm in 2014 and required Bird to take down the comments. When she refused, the court held Yelp responsible for removing the comments. In June, an appeals court agreed that Yelp must remove the comments, but the company has yet to comply, arguing it is a third party in the case. 
 
 Dayani has sued at least four previous patients over online reviews, according to a BuzzFeed review of New York County Civil court records through 2012. He sued a patient in 2012 for defamation and $75,000 in damages for writing a negative review on Yelp. The man removed the review after he was slapped with the lawsuit. Neither the patient nor Dayani appeared in court and the case was dismissed. In June 2013, Dayani sued another patient claiming $50,000 in damages after he posted a review on Yelp complaining that the dentist had overcharged him for a root canal. The patient and Dayani settled the claim in August 2013. Dayani sued a Yelp reviewer in November 2012 who he said used a fake name to post a negative review about her experience where she called him "rude, callous, abhorrent." Dayani claimed the review amounted to $25,000 in damages. The defendant, "Jane Doe," never responded to his complaint. In June 2015, Dayani sued a woman who wrote a Google review claiming that he suggested she should undergo two root canals during a visit. She said she sought out a second opinion from another dentist who gave her a cavity filling and replaced a crown, which treated her tooth pain. "I am so happy that I didn't get treated in this place," she wrote. "If I did, I would have paid more than three thousand dollars for the treatment that I didn't need at all." Dayani is seeking a total of $100,000 from the woman for damages, according to court records. 
 
 The Manhattan endodontist, who has been licensed to practice dentistry in New York since 1999, does have a number of good reviews online from people who have described him as "thorough and knowledgeable." 
 
 "After doing a lot of research I chose Dr. Dayani," said one Yelp reviewer called Eva H. "I couldn't be happier. He is gentle, thorough, and highly professional. His staff is excellent. He is the best and I felt as relaxed as I will ever be at a dental appointment." Dayani insists that he only goes after online reviewers who post false information. He offered BuzzFeed News the opportunity to visit his office and review records related to the cases where he has sued patients to prove their allegations are false. BuzzFeed News declined. He said he has adjusted his practice and opened a larger office after reading a number of negative reviews, including an emergency patient who complained in a one-star Google review about a long wait time at his office. However, the review does not appear to be online anymore. When asked if he believes the lawsuits escalate a situation that could be resolved through other means than litigation, he insisted that he believes in free speech but draws the line at falsehoods. "When somebody writes lies about you with intent to deliver a damage to you and livelihood, that is defamatory," he said. "I’m not Halliburton. A lie can do tremendous damage and can come at the expense of doctors and staff." 
 
 
 
 "If there are people out there doing it out of spite and not willing to correct a known lie, let an impartial judge decide," he added. "I'm encouraging anyone to write a comment they think is correct and justifiable." Dayani and Rohs are scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 30. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Leticia Miranda is a consumer affairs reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. Contact Leticia Miranda at leticia.miranda@buzzfeed.com. Got a confidential tip? Submit it here. 
 
 News moves fast. Keep up with the BuzzFeed News daily email! Sign up Great! You're almost there! Check your inbox and confirm your subscription now! ||||| A Texas pet-sitting business is seeking up to $1 million in damages from a couple who gave a one-star review on Yelp and criticized the company's treatment of their tiny blue tropical Betta fish "Gordy" while the family was away on vacation. The company, Prestigious Pets of Dallas, claims the review is a breach of a non-disparagement clause and defamation. 
 
 Paul Alan Levy, a Public Citizen lawyer who is defending the couple, summarized the company's revised suit (PDF) targeting the couple. 
 
 The new lawsuit, however, specifies one statement from the review in particular: that the company’s assigned pet-sitter had potentially caused serious harm to the couple’s fish by putting too much food in a fish-bowl while the couple were away on vacation for a few days. The complaint alleges that a charge of overfeeding a fish is libel per se because it amounts to the criminal offense of animal cruelty under Texas law (if giving too much food to a pet fish were really a crime, I expect there would be thousands of Texas second-graders facing jail time every year!) 
 
 Levy's defense, filed Thursday in a local Dallas court, is that the family's review was truthful and protected by the First Amendment. 
 
 "As our filing in the case indicates, though, there are photos showing that the fish water became cloudy and that food accumulated at the bottom of the tank, which must have been caused by overfeeding, and apparently overfeeding is a serious issue for this kind of tropical fish," Levy said. 
 
 Michelle and Robert Duchouquette, of Plano, said they discovered Prestigious Pets in Dallas on Yelp and that the company's page was full of five-star ratings. The couple hired the service last year before heading on a five-day trip to Napa Valley in California. The firm walked and fed the couple's two dogs, too. On Yelp, Michelle also complained about the company's billing practices. The review, however, also said that the "care of our dogs was fine." 
 
 That was distinctly not the case with Gordy, according to the Duchouquettes' review. 
 
 The one star is for potentially harming my fish, otherwise it would have been two stars. We have a camera on the bowl and we watched the water go from clear to cloudy. There was a layer of food on the bottom from way too much being put in it. Even if you don't have fish, you should be able to see the change in the bowl and stop putting in food. Better yet, ask us how much to feed if you are unsure. 
 
 The suit claims that the couple asked in the 11th hour for the firm to feed Gordy, and the company agreed to do so without charge. The company also said that because of intense media coverage stemming from earlier incarnations of the suit, its owner and her husband "have had to deal with numerous rape and death threats that have come on the heels of the Duchouquettes' media campaign, in addition to other forms of harassment such as identify theft, impersonations, can calls, etc." The lawsuit says the company has "seen a dramatic decrease in new business as fallout from the legal battle." 
 
 Prestigious Pets noted that the couple agreed, under the service contract, "not to make negative comments about Prestigious Pets and to not disparage Prestigious Pets." 
 
 In pertinent part, the non-disparagement clause states: “[Y]our acceptance of this agreement prohibits you from taking any action that negatively impacts Prestigious Pets, LLC, its reputation, products, services, management, employees or independent contractors....Any violation of this clause is to be determined by Prestigious Pets LLC in its sole discretion....” The non-disparagement provision was in the same legible typeface, size, and font as the remainder of the Agreement, began with the heading “NON-DISPARAGEMENT / INJUNCTION,” and it was immediately above the signature line on the second page of the two-page contract. Mr. Duchouquette voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently signed the Agreement and agreed to the non-disparagement provision after it was provided to him by Prestigious Pets’ independent contractor pet sitter. 
 
 The disparagement went beyond the Yelp review, too, according to the lawsuit. It reportedly included a "variety of written and broadcast mediums, including but not limited to via Facebook, Inc., ABC.com, CBS.com, and other media outlets." 
 
 The real kicker is the defamation allegation regarding Michelle's statement on Yelp and media interviews about Gordy being overfed. 
 
 The statements are defamation per se because each (a) was reasonably calculated to injure Plaintiffs’ reputation and thus exposed them to public hatred, contempt, ridicule, or financial injury,1 (b) injured Plaintiffs in their business/occupation regarding the alleged lack of a peculiar or unique skill (pet care) necessary for the proper conduct of the business/occupation, and (c) falsely charged Plaintiffs with the commission of an act that is a crime (violation of TEX. PENAL CODE § 42.092, “Cruelty to Nonlivestock Animals”). The statements have been continuously published and re-published both by the Duchouquettes and by third parties. 
 
 In a blog post, Levy said this litigation is worth "watching because until Congress passes the Consumer Review Freedom Act, it could be our best chance to get one of these clauses declared unenforceable." He said the Duchouquettes’ hold a "First Amendment right to make fair comments about the plaintiff company." 
 
 The irony here is that if Prestigious Pets didn't initially go to small claims court about the review, virtually nobody would have known of—or cared—about Gordy's diet. ||||| Jennifer Ujimori’s dog Yuki, a Bolognese. Ujimori is being sued by Dog Tranquility in Burke, Va., after she wrote negative reviews on Angie's List and Yelp about her experience with an obedience class. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) 
 
 Jennifer Ujimori wasn’t happy with the dog obedience class she booked for her pint-sized puppy, so the Springfield woman dashed out negative reviews on Yelp and Angie’s List to inform consumers about her experience. 
 
 “In a nutshell, the services delivered were not as advertised and the owner refused a refund,” Ujimori wrote on Yelp. 
 
 Burke’s Dog Tranquility never did offer a refund, but Ujimori got something else: a $65,000 defamation lawsuit. Dog Tranquility’s owner, Colleen Dermott, claims Ujimori’s statements were false and damaged her small business, which had great reviews until that point. 
 
 Ujimori stands by her reviews and said she is fighting the lawsuit because too many businesses are turning to the courts to try to intimidate customers into erasing critical comments on review sites. 
 
 [In Yelp suit, free speech vs. reputations] 
 
 “For me, it’s a matter of principle and public interest,” Ujimori said. “People should be free to express their feelings about their service providers. Companies using the legal system to silence their critics has a chilling effect on First Amendment rights.” 
 
 Lawsuits over negative reviews have risen in recent years with the popularity of sites such as Yelp, Angie’s List and TripAdvisor that allow users to rate and provide feedback on businesses. The reviews have become an increasingly important factor for companies, generating new customers — or sending them fleeing. 
 
 In 2012, a D.C.-based contractor sued a Fairfax woman for $750,000 over her one-star takedown of his work on her home. And the Virginia Supreme Court is expected to decide soon whether Yelp will be required to turn over the names of anonymous users who disparaged Alexandria’s Hadeed Carpet Cleaners. First Amendment advocates are watching that case closely. 
 
 The dispute began in January when Ujimori and her dog Yuki began attending a $175 basic obedience class. Ujimori, an employee of the federal government, said she wanted to socialize her dog because she hopes the white Bolognese will become a therapy dog for the elderly and sick children. 
 
 Ujimori said in her review that Yuki, then 14 weeks and four pounds, was put into a class with much older and larger dogs and isolated in a gated-off area away from other canines — not ideal for socialization. She said she requested a pro-rated refund but never got it. Yelp has since removed the review. 
 
 [What might happen if Yelp paid reviewers? ] 
 
 Dermott said in the lawsuit that she sent e-mails to Ujimori before the class started explaining that it would be a mixed group and that there was an optional gated-off area for small dogs. Dermott also claimed that the contract Ujimori signed had a no-refund clause. 
 
 The business owner said in an interview that she tried several different ways to satisfy Ujimori — including giving her a credit for a future class — but that nothing worked. 
 
 “It had a significant impact in that I’m a small-business owner,” Dermott said of the negative reviews. “I have to rely on these review sites as a major source of advertising.” 
 
 Dermott, 31, said her family depends on the business. She is the wife of a soldier and the mother of two young children. She helps train dogs to assist veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. 
 
 Ujimori said she wanted to go public with the case to try to spur Virginia legislators to pass what is known as an anti-SLAPP law. Ujimori said she believes lawsuits such as Dog Tranquility’s are aimed at stifling free speech by forcing defendants to run up large legal bills. Anti-SLAPP laws allow for the quick dismissal of cases a judge deems to be targeting First Amendment rights. The District and more than half of the states, including Maryland, have one. (SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuits against public participation.”) 
 
 “I do not believe a customer imagines that typing out a review of their experience followed by a few clicks can result in getting slapped with a $65,000 lawsuit,” said Jonathan Phillips, Ujimori’s attorney.
– Yelp has just issued its third ever consumer alert, this one about a dentist in Manhattan who has sued five patients since 2012 for posting negative reviews, reports BuzFeed. Nima Dayani has asked for anywhere between $50,000 and $100,000 in damages, so Yelp is warning consumers that Dayani's business is "issuing questionable legal threats against reviewers" and that reviewers "have a First Amendment right to express their opinions on Yelp." Dayani appears to have backed off the lawsuits where patients agreed to remove their negative reviews. In one pending court case, a woman accused him in her review of being unable to diagnose her problem after a two-hour-plus visit. Dayani says that's untrue and that such claims aren't just negative but defamatory. "I got hurt. You will get hurt," he claims the woman told him by phone, because she had been scolded for being gone so long by her boss, reports the New York Daily News. Yelp issued its first alert in May after a Texas pet sitting company sued a customer who violated its "gag" clause, which prevented her from speaking ill of the business; a Florida moving and storage company was issued the second alert in June after it sued a customer for defamation. Buzzfeed reports that both cases are ongoing, and notes that the alerts are being rolled out while Congress considers two bills that could protect consumers from being sued for online reviews. (That pet sitter says its business is now a "shell of its former success" and is seeking $1 million in damages.)