Photographer Awarded $1 Million Over Online Shaming

You know that emoji where the eyeballs pop out of the head? That’s what went through my mind when I saw the news that a Dallas jury awarded more than $1 million to a wedding photographer who claimed that a couple ruined her business based on bad reviews and negative comments in the media and on social media. Negative reviews are no fun. They’re no fun for business owners to deal with. They’re no fun for a company that handles reputation management to deal with. But they are a fact of life. The difference between a normal, negative review and this case is the jury found this couple went way above and beyond just an instance of leaving a negative review. This doesn’t mean every business owner will be able to go and sue anyone who leaves a bad review. It’s going to have to go way above and beyond that. But it is interesting that, as far as I know, this is one of the first times a jury has awarded money to a business over a negative review. So we’ll have to see where this goes from here.