Consumer Complaint Website Shut Down By Company They Targeted

from the take-that dept

There's a furniture store in Florida named Kane's Furniture that has been having some problems lately. Apparently, an upset customer registered the domain Kanes-furniture.com and used it to post consumer complaints about the retailer (and to point people to the Florida attorney general and the Better Business Bureau). The state of Florida credits the site with giving them enough ammunition to file a lawsuit against Kane's for "false advertising, delivery of broken and defective furniture, failure to respond to complaints, sale of worthless warranties, refusal to refund deposits and false charges to credit accounts." That's quite a list. Kane's is not too pleased with the consumer complaints website, and instead of doing something smart like improving their business practices, they instead did the lawyerly move of suing the consumer complaints site for trademark infringement. A judge then ruled that the site needed to be shut down, which has upset officials in the Florida attorney general's office, who say that this is clearly a retailiation move. They're going to file a "friend of the court" brief, saying that the move is a violation of free speech. There have been other cases like this in the past, and it seems like another misguided attempt by lawyers to solve business problems. People have complaints about your business? Instead of listening to those complaints and improving the business, why not silence the critics?

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