Both the Huntsville Times and Decatur Daily newspapers have run stories about my site this past winter, one of which ruffled some feathers at Carmike in Decatur.

I've heard recently that reviewers are afraid to print negative reviews of restaurants in newspapers any more since they can get sued. I'm wondering if my presentation quality reviews could get me in any kind of legal trouble. A coworker told me yesterday that if a reviewer gets sued, the burden of proof is on them rather than the entity suing and it would be difficult to prove that any particular presentation from a time ago had specific problems (unless the specified auditorium still had the problem).

If a theatre company or other entity had a problem with anything I'd written or included on my site, do you think it would be likely that I'd hear something from them before any legal action would be taken? I remember getting a bit alarmed by such hits back in 2000 when I noticed them for the first time, but nothing ever happened. Still, occasionally, it worries me and I figure asking on the forum here wouldn't be a bad idea.

I certainly don't want any legal hassles over the site that I run strictly as a hobby. Check out the "Presentation Quality Reviews" section if you're not familiar with it, and check out the lists of presentations for each theatre as well. Could there be a legal problem with publically displaying that data? I don't think any other part of the site could be a problem legally.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

First I would think any respecting company and attorney would *at minimum* send you an email addressing their concerns. Second, you might want to put some sort of disclaimer that represents your reviews as opinion.

I have the following disclaimer on the presentation quality review section above the table:

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Please note: There is no such thing as a perfect theatre that has no projection problems. People make mistakes and equipment breaks down, even in the best of theatres. It is very unreasonable to expect every showing to be perfect. This rating system gives an idea of what to expect at each theatre, on the average, based on my personal experiences. Your experiences may vary. Mathematically, the more visits for a particular theatre, the higher the confidence that my samples reflect the actual presentation quality, on the average, at that location.

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This makes it clear that my data are simply samples over time, and if a different set of samples had been taken, the results may have been different. (Of course, mathematically, the more samples taken the more often, the more likely that the samples reflect the actual set being sampled.) I don't say that the data is opinion (because I attempt to be extremely objective and consistent in the way I rate the presentations). Do you think including the word "opinion" may be important?

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

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No respectable lawyer would send official or semi-official communications via email, since there is no way to authenticate the sender or confirm receipt. Registered mail via USPS would be the only legitimate means for official legal communication.

I'd be interested to hear a lawyer's opinion on this, but I would be very surprised and distrubed if someone could get in legal trouble for reporting true information which is considered to be "public knowledge" (i.e. not classified, proprietary, etc.).

Having covered first amendments rights in the classroom for over 30 years I would offer the following: As long as you are making a personal observation or opinion based on fact(s) known to you from first hand experience, no problem. FREE SPEECH.

Sort of. Having recently spent some money on an Alabama lawyer who had to serve notice for me, I can say with some assurance that notice can be sent registered mail and refused (unopened) by the recipient, and yet that person is legally served. A common misconception is that you can just refuse registered mail and incur no penalty. It doesn't work that way. Process serving can be a slightly different issue.

Evans scribe:
"I don't say that the data is opinion (because I attempt to be extremely objective and consistent in the way I rate the presentations). Do you think including the word "opinion" may be important?"

Surely you realize that no person can be completely objective and/or consistent? Brad is right about the phrase "personal experience" being safer. That said, you cover most of the bases in your disclaimers. That fact that you REQUEST corrections, don't engage in slander on the website or off, and obviously have enough standing in the community to do the work you do, would likely make any corporate attorney a fool in front of the court if they were to attempt to pressure you. That said, you should have an attorney immediately available. People can and do sue for nonsense reasons.

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Have you said any good things about the theatre in question?

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Not much lately. That may change, though, since my last 3 visits have been much better than during the past year at Carmike 8 in Decatur.

Sorry, Brad, if I started this thread in the wrong place. I started it in ground level because I thought the conversation might swing toward members' previous legal experiences involving theatre management and/or legal issues dealing with the press.

One thing that sparked this is something I've not yet mentioned. Yesterday, during lunch, I was talking with a coworker and the subject of reviews came up. My coworker, in addition to the restaurant reviewers being afraid to write bad reviews because of the threat of lawsuits, also mentioned that some software user agreements do not allow reviews to be published (the exact details of this I have not checked into -- so I don't know if it's true or not -- but I wouldn't doubt it). If that can be legally enforced, then I see that the right to express opinions concerning products/services one has bought may be in serious jeopardy. It seems to be an extension of the idea of including with a licensing agreement like Microsoft's where you can't use Microsoft's WWW authoring product to create WWW pages that say anything negative about Microsoft.

Someday, all restaurants and theatres may have an agreement you must agree to before entering saying that you will not write a negative review in a public forum or magazine or newspaper.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

Some big, bad theatre chain thinks Evans is "picking on" them. They see his picture on Film-Tech and refuse to sell tickets to him when he goes to his local multiplex... and then they sue him for having an honest web site. Evans bites back with a class action lawsuit claiming that the theatre is selling a "defective" product to thousands of customers by not adhering to readily-understood industry (SMPTE) standards. Film advocates like Steven Spielberg file "friend of the court" papers. The ACLU realizes they can get some publicity, so they come along to defend Evans' free speech rights.

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You can't use Microsoft's WWW authoring product to create WWW pages that say anything negative about Microsoft.

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Well yes you can, just not directly. The fact that you have a web page created with Microsoft Frontpage will speak volumes. Your web site will be non-compliant, have a lot of bloated code, won't work properly, and will generally look bad. All you have to do is put a "This page created with Microsoft Frontpage" logo on the page and people will understand that they are better off typing the code with their nose.

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