What bullshit legal reasoning. If you don't wait on hold on some company's help line for them to probably tell you to pound sand, that can be used against you in court?
Maybe an analogy to sales would make this more understandable: If I was selling computers and the laptop I sold you had some serious issues, you cannot immediately turn around and call me a scammer. Because it might not be true, actually there is a more likely explanation that I didn't know about the issues with the laptop.
Now if you would talk to me instead and I would insist that there couldn't possibly be an issue with the laptop and charge you for the faulty product, you _might_ call me a scammer. (Maybe one single instance of this wouldn't even be enough. Maybe you would even need to prove that I did in fact know about the problem with the laptop)
On the other hand you can definitely leave a review saying that you received a bad product. You would not be required to talk to the company to be able to do that.
Edit: To further elaborate a bit because I think people in this thread are having some weird reactions to this ruling: It's pretty normal that you cannot go around and tell lies that hurt somebody's business. If you think about it this is very normal. I cannot stand in front of a bakery with a sign that says "The bread in this bakery contains dangerous amounts of lead" if that is not in fact true. And if nobody buys bread anymore because of my sign, I will be liable for the damages incurred.
This is less clear if my sign says: "In my opinion the bread in this bakery tastes funny." Because this is an opinion rather than a fact.
But in the case at hand we are talking about somebody calling a company a "scam solicitor". That's mostly a factual statement, you could prove that the company is either doing regular business or that they are scamming people. If the defendant is not able to prove that they are in fact a scam business, it's very reasonable to assume that he is liable. The concrete damages incurred are however debatable in my opinion.
The individual leaves a review for the software developer saying “I paid upfront for help with my software. But what I got was just the Stack Overflow information I sent them, reworded and sent back to me. Another scam developer.”
If the developer uses the site the review was left on to obtain business and they can demonstrate a specific monetary loss after the review was posted, they have claims for damages. A non-trivial portion of a software developer’s job is looking stuff up on Stack Overflow, so applying that knowledge using their experience isn’t scammy at all.
Details of the legal advice provided are missing, but the same could be true. Client sends contract and seeks advice on what their obligations are upon contract termination, and the law firm responds by rewording the portion of the contract which spells out their obligations. If they find the obligations to be obvious, then maybe they didn’t need legal advice in the first place. If they don’t understand the quoted obligations, they should follow up asking for clarification. But saying “another scam solicitor” is libelous.
And isn’t his offer to remove the review in exchange for a refund considered extortion?
But most of the time a bad interaction can be resolved via the help line or a dispute process.
But even if that fails doesn't make the shop a scam. It makes them a bad shop. You can say so in your review since "bad shop" is a subjective opinion and not a statement of fact. "scam" is not only an objective fact but also something illegal so it's going to require some evidence to back that up.
And yes, that can be used against you in court. If the defendant had gone through the dispute process, it is more likely the court would have atleast partially sided with them, if they showed up in court (which they also didn't) and claimed to have been emotionally distraught or similar when writing that review over the cost or process of whatever happened.
This is the difference between freedom of speech as it is in the US and freedom of opinion more commonly deployed in Europe. Statements of fact require you to have some kind of proof. The level of proof will differ depending on what it's about, but insinuating that someone is a scammer will require you to show that to be fact.
Over the top example but I think it drives the point. People don't want to experience bad service.