Horse abuse

[NoVAMOM]

Hello,

Is it legal for a barn owner to threaten legal counsel because you put a bad review shining light on the shady business they run? We have a barn in our area that we did an evaluation at, and we saw them be abusive towards the horse and also read here how a sex offender maybe discreetly involved in running the barn. I went ahead and put a review and now the owner keeps sending threatening emails to me to remove my honest review off google.

[LookinForSpace]

@NoVAMOM

Hello,

Is it legal for a barn owner to threaten legal counsel because you put a bad review shining light on the shady business they run? We have a barn in our area that we did an evaluation at, and we saw them be abusive towards the horse and also read here how a sex offender maybe discreetly involved in running the barn. I went ahead and put a review and now the owner keeps sending threatening emails to me to remove my honest review off google.

“ Is it legal to threaten?” Yes. Is it likely they will follow through on having their legal counsel contact you? Maybe.

Is it likely they will actually sue you over a bad review? Doubtful. It’s expensive to file a lawsuit and they would have to prove that you were costing them business (affecting them financially) in order to get anywhere in a court of law.

Review are opinions. As long as you are not on a campaign of maliciously posting falsehoods about their business and just posting your own experiences with them, It’s not going to be worth their while to try and go after you for it.

Not a lawyer, just my two cents.

[BostonHJ]

It’s almost always legal to threaten legal counsel. It’s only slander/libel/defamation if what you’re saying isn’t true. I would be tempted to cut and paste their email and add it to my review.

[Mardi1]

@NoVAMOM

Hello,

Is it legal for a barn owner to threaten legal counsel because you put a bad review shining light on the shady business they run? We have a barn in our area that we did an evaluation at, and we saw them be abusive towards the horse and also read here how a sex offender maybe discreetly involved in running the barn. I went ahead and put a review and now the owner keeps sending threatening emails to me to remove my honest review off google.

Is this the same person/barn you posted about on another thread today ?

[NoVAMOM]

Yes, it is the same barn.

[Scribbler]

@NoVAMOM

Hello,

Is it legal for a barn owner to threaten legal counsel because you put a bad review shining light on the shady business they run? We have a barn in our area that we did an evaluation at, and we saw them be abusive towards the horse and also read here how a sex offender maybe discreetly involved in running the barn. I went ahead and put a review and now the owner keeps sending threatening emails to me to remove my honest review off google.

This is absolutely typical of the wild wild world of online reviews.

There is no law against threatening legal action over anything. Typically such things progress in this way:

Irate individual threatens to sue

Target person ignores

Irate person hires lawyer to write a threatening letter (lawyers will often agree to do this even if the case is a long shot and they don’t recommend actually following through

Target person ignores or sends brief response saying bring it on. Generally at this point target person consults a lawyer.

Irate persons lawyer escalates to more threatening letters. Eventually if they have a real case they may file a lawsuit for damages.

But bear in mind to even get to this step is $20 to $30k in legal fees. And if the claims are true, they don’t have a case.

In the case of online reviews, the irate person can also contact the online host site, or flood the site with fake 4 star reviews. Online reviews are very very sketchy for this reason.