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Nasir and Matt start things off by discussing one company's huge victory over Yelp, and then get into Staples' motives for cutting the hours of part-time employeesand the FTC cracking down on Sensa for weight loss claims. The two give a call to former gym owner,Noah Mangus, to discuss cancellation policies for gyms and the lawsuit against Equinox for its automatic renewal policy. Nasir and Matt also answer questions about ownership in quickly formed startups, the perils of holding fake promotions, and drafting contracts on a budget. As mentioned during the show, please check out this charitable cause for type 1 diabetes: Jennifer's Tour de Cure fundraiserand here and make a donation for one of the members of the Top Floor Legal team. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to our business legal podcast. This is where we cover some of the business legal news as well as some of your business legal questions. MATT: Let’s jump right into it this week. There’s a story that came out. This could be very interesting what happens with this and it’s going to be good news for some business owners. NASIR: Yeah, I think it’s huge. MATT: Yeah, and I can’t remember anything like this happening before. It was a lawsuit involving Yelp. It was in Virginia. There was a company that had all these negative reviews and I believe they were also anonymous reviews. So, the people didn’t say who they were and, essentially, there was a lawsuit that happened, and Yelp was required to turn over the information of those so-called anonymous reviews. Like I said, this is going to be a big press stand. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. This was in Virginia, but it’ll be really interesting what happens in other states and just if anything follows up with an appeal. NASIR: So, we’ve covered Yelp a bunch of times now. It’s almost our nemesis. Our firm gets calls and emails every week from businesses that have had reviews on this Yelp website that are either defamatory or fake or what-have-you. There’s a lot of limited things that we can do. Also, frankly, from our business culture, I don’t think it’s the best idea to start suing your customers anyway. But this is something different. This is where you have anonymous reviewers that are posting information about your business that not only is false but is suspected to be completely your competitors or something. This is a carpet cleaning business and they think that this is a competitor that is going on this website and posting these bad reviews about them. MATT: Yeah, and I’m not sure if they found out who those people ultimately were or whether they were competitors. But, yeah, that would be what you suspect, right? It’s either competitors or I guess possibly disgruntled ex-employees. But, if you’re in a business and you have competitors and one way you want to get ahead I guess is to give those competitors negative reviews which is, you know, I wouldn’t advice that, but I guess that’s one way you can do it because people rely on Yelp a lot. More than I do, I guess. But I’ve been with a lot of people – personal and business – and they just, “Let’s look to Yelp.” Or I’ll talk to someone and I say, “Why didn’t you go with this person?” It’s like, “Oh, they had bad Yelp reviews.” And so, it holds a lot of weight. NASIR: I’ve used Yelp mostly just for restaurants, but not for other businesses. Now, keep in mind, people that are listening, this is a Virginia lawsuit. This was a public court decision. MATT: Yeah, this was done by the court of appeals. NASIR: So, understand what that means. Unless you’re in the state of Virginia, that is not going to apply to you, but it is going to be persuasive authority in the sense that it could be used to help your argument in your respective state. Also, keep in mind, I notice that the basis of their lawsuit was a statute that was passed in Virginia which t...