Can an online company be sued for allowing libelous statements to be made in their feedback system?

Dear Questioner, GREAT question! Website/host liability for harmful comments that have been posted is a legal hot topic! The answer is somewhat complex, but usually "No." You can sue a website only very rarely. In the USA, we have a federal law that provides a broad shield to websites against liability for comments other people make on the website. Generally, the website needs to do MORE than just refuse to take down the comments. Do the comments create a direct commercial benefit for the website (not just in increasing hits or advertising is the website a business that is your direct competitor)? Did the website promise to take the comments down, and then fail to do so? Has the poster of the comments asked the website to take them down and let him or her print a retraction? You can certainly sue the person who made the comments, even if you do not currently know who this person is (you can get a court order that will help you discover his or her identity).

"On-line" law is still being settled in the court system. The on-line company will change its policy when the cost of allowing a false statement is higher than the cost of removing it. You can sue the buyer personally for defamation as he or she is the one who made the statement. You can add the on-line company to the suit but, if you agreed to abide by its policies when you started using it, this may be an uphill battle. In any case, you will have to prove that both the buyer and the company knew the statement was intentionally false, had an obligation to you to remove it, and didn't.

This is a good question with complex answers. First, keep in mind you or the company can be sued for anything. If a lawsuit has no merit or is frivolous, it can still take months and numerous trips to court to have the case finally dismissed. Section 230 of Federal Communications Decency Act states that "*No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." The law goes on to state that no "cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section."Is the company forum an "interactive computer service"? The law defines this as "interactive computer service" means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server. Generally, courts have held that things such as forums are an interactive computer service if the third party has direct access to post there. The person who posted the defamation can be sued and the company will be responsible to help identify and locate that person in the discovery process.Looked at practically if your company forum allows defamation, especially if it is about a named person, this is not a very good company forum. Please be aware that sometimes people who are not even customers post such things to harass a person. And if a company allows such things to happen to its employees, the company may be helping to create a hostile workplace. I am trying to think of any benefits of having this defamation on a public forum, and I cannot think of any. Often, policies need to be tweaked even if they will not result in a lawsuit.