Building Contractor Sues Google for Indexing Consumer Complaint

A New Jersey building contractor is suing consumer-complaint site The Rip-Off Report for hosting a customer's negative feedback about him, and he's going after Google for indexing the criticism and returning it in search results.

The top Google hit on construction firm RSA Homes is the company's website, where the face of owner Raffi Arslanian beams beneath a glowing photo of a pink, cottage-styled McMansion. The second hit is less rosy: it's a 2003 post on The Rip-Off Report penned by a former-customer named "Hiedi," and involving gruesome allegations of artificial stucco, a swinging light fixture, floors that pop and squeak, bulging walls, and a fireplace mantel that's moving on its own, among other money-pit horrors.

Arslanian says the post is about a residential development project that, he admits in a court filing, left some dissatisfied customers and led to a lawsuit. But he claims the post contains inflammatory and libelous information, and that its prominent page rank is causing him financial problems. From Monday's lawsuit:

On or about February 1, 2007 Plaintiff was at a meeting with his banker in an attempt to secure funding for a new project and the bank representative showed Plaintiff the article in question and this thoroughly embarrassed Plaintiff and interfered with his ability to secure funding for a new project. This event has been repeated… two or more times with other lending institutions.

When a take-down letter to the Rip-Off Report was returned unopened, Arslanian's lawyers sent certified mail to Google demanding the company remove the page from its search engine within ten days. Google didn't bite, and now Arslanian wants unspecified compensatory and punitive damages from both companies, as well as attorney's fees, and a court order taking the customer complaint off The Rip-Off Report and out of Google.

Controversial and oft-sued, The Rip-Off Report accepts and hosts thousands of unverified consumer complaints. A detailed March story in the Phoenix New Times
portrays site founder Ed Magedson as reveling in the lawsuits that have dogged the site since it became popular. "When people stop suing me, and stop talking about me, and stop threatening me, that's when I'll have to worry." From that article:

The Rip-Off Report has become a boon to the disgruntled, who've posted complaints taking on everything from poor business practices to deadbeat dads, often without a shred of proof. For Ed
Magedson, it's been an even bigger gift. It's made him powerful, and it's made him money -- although certainly not a dot-com millionaire.

Magedson won't remove posts. He's not interested in evidence that would offer vindication.

THREAT LEVEL doesn't know whether Hiedi's post is accurate or not. But the Communications Decency Act will likely shield the Rip-Off Report, and Google, either way. The act protects internet companies from most types of lawsuits arising from user-submitted content. That's why sites like Slashdot, Digg, MySpace, Craigslist, eBay -- really, most of the web -- are still around.

RSA Homes isn't the only company blaming Google for its problems this week. Check out the latest update to the Astroglide story, in which the sex lube maker explains its leak of a quarter-million customer records as "clearly a Google issue."