13-686557
Defendants Michelle Amescua and Angela Reling’s anti-SLAPP motion is GRANTED.

First, “[i]t is settled that ‘Web sites accessible to the public … are public forums for purposes of the anti-SLAPP statute.’” (Wong v. Tai Jing (2010) 189 Cal.App.4th 1354, 1366.) Thus, the posting on Yelp.com is a statement made in a public form.

The next issue is whether the posting is a matter of public interest. Defendant cites to Chaker v. Mateo (2012) 209 Cal.App.4th 1138, which is instructive in this case. The Court of Appeal in Chaker found that the plaintiff in that case “elected to join the topix Web site” and “must have recognized that other participants in the Web site would have a legitimate interest in knowing about his character before engaging him on the Web site.” The court stated that the topix web site is a social networking site which permits users to create their own profile and post information on their forum. Thus, the court found that the plaintiff “made his character a matter of public interest.”

Here, Defendants point to the initial Complaint which was filed by Plaintiff. The initial Complaint states that “Defendants wrote a … totally inaccurate review about Plaintiff’s business, Carpet Depot, on the popular Internet Business Referral Site ‘Yelp.com’ which is the paid source of 90% of my business….” (Emphasis added.) In addition, Defendants’ attorney reviewed the yelp.com profile and attached the same as Exhibit D to his declaration. (Decl. of Bryan Johnson, at paragraph 5, Exhibit D.) The profile has a “meet the business owner” section, and contains a bio of Plaintiff and his business. Thus, the evidence and the pleadings filed reflect that Plaintiff paid and elected to join yelp.com, engaged with consumers through yelp.com, that Plaintiff therefore “made his character a matter of public interest,” and that that the matter posted pertained to consumer reporting and was not merely a matter of private dispute.

The court therefore finds that Defendants have therefore met their initial burden of establishing that the matter was made in a public form in connection with an issue of public interest.

The burden therefore shifts to Plaintiff to present admissible evidence showing a probability of prevailing. Here, the opposition fails to submit any admissible evidence. In addition, although the opposition papers states that Plaintiff did not create his business profile on yelp.com and that he did not pay to be listed on yelp.com (Opposition, at pg. 9:10-12), Plaintiff has failed to submit and evidence showing the same.

Therefore, the anti-SLAPP motion is GRANTED.

Motions # 1 (Demurrer to the Complaint) and # 2 (Motion to Strike Portions of the Complaint) are MOOT.

Moving parties are to give notice.