Yelp executives belong in prison for fraud.
Is this not bribery?
Ob Lebowski: “Leads, yeah sure. I'll uh, just check with the boys down at the Crime Lab. They uh, got uh, four more detectives working on the case. They've got us working in shifts.”
https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-...
specifically, I don't see how this can be bribery. Who is the person or official that Yelp is bribing?
It's not Grubhub, since Grubhub doesn't really have any authority to guide purchases through their systems.
In fact, if anything, it's yelp which surreptitiously can guide purchases through more expensive (for the restaurant) services. But I don't think this is extortion either: Yelp is not forcing the customers to use them, nor the restaurant to use them. If one really pushes, I think that Yelp might yield and delist your business (which would be bad, but in a different way), and they anyhow aren't asking you for money for an extortion. They're (together with grubhub) "simply" asking the business money for an (unwelcome) service they provide.
(also, you'd probably have to sue Jeremy Stoppelman, and not Yelp if you really want to make a RICO claim)
Yelp is surely scummy, but I think that if people want to press charges, they should be for more run-of-the-mill fraud claims.
Bribery, I am not using the correct term.
Whatever the term that means “If you don’t pay us, bad things will happen.”
That would be extortion.
To shorten Popehat's explanation of RICO more fundamentally, RICO requires several elements to all apply to kick in. It is not mere extortion (plus other racketeering crimes). It is also not extortion repeated over several times. Instead, it is the repeated extortion by the defendant in the service of the distinct enterprise.
Stepping back out again, if you're arguing that a company's actions mean it violates RICO, you're almost certainly screwed because the defendant you're suing is the company, and the relevant enterprise is, uh, the company again, which causes the suit to fail.
So, no, it's not RICO because the defendant is Yelp and the enterprise is Yelp, and the defendant cannot be the enterprise.
Class-action lawsuits were created to solve this exact problem?
'If you come at the king, you best not miss.' - Omar
Plaintiffs can remain anonymous in class-actions for this reason.
Yelp executives being sent to prison would, I hope, sent a strong message to the others.
Restaurants, begrudgingly: fine
———
Yelp, to users: click here to order through Grubhub
Yelp, to customers: or just use the restaurant’s phone number to order yourself. [shows you a number that isn’t the restaurant’s]
——
Yelp is effectively telling users that a number belongs to the restaurant when it doesn’t. I’m sure yelp’s lawyers would say they aren’t actually telling any users that the restaurant’s number belongs to the restaurant, but come on. It’s clear that the intent is to mislead.
Is this true? Or is the agreement to pay commission or a fee for any calls coming from Yelp’s website or app?
I’m just saying people are throwing out terms like prison and fraud, and in the legal world, those words have specifics meanings.
No, you're over-generalizing my claim. My claim is that it's rare for large companies (with established legal counsel) to approve of illegal policy changes when those changes are very public and likely to be noticed.
Something like this though was almost certainly not one of those gambles.