I am Group Owner/Hospital, and:

• there’s false or biased reviews about my Group on this site
  
• I believe that a competitor posted a fake user review to harm my business
• I am considering filing a lawsuit against DOJobPulse to have the user reviews removed or sources disclosed

If you believe that false or inaccurate information has been posted by physician users on this site please read the following.

DOJobPulse NEVER removes user submitted reviews.

DOJobPulse NEVER discloses user submitted sources or identification.

Here’s why we don’t remove . . .

It is our policy that we never remove user submitted reviews and opinions, nor disclose the identity, or source of said reviews.  This is the most fundamental tenet of our business model and brand “Anonymous, Confidential, and Unbiased job reviews, by physicians, for physicians.”  We will never deviate from this – Never.

The key part of our site is the volume and validity of the anonymous, confidential, and unbiased user submitted job reviews.  Thus it is essential that all reviews are maintained and preserved statistically and on-line so that over time patterns and trends will become evident, and the statistical power of the reviews will be increased.

If DOJobPulse removed, altered, any user submitted reviews due to coercion, or due to monetary influence, the precedence would be set, and the value / credibility of the data and reviews altered forever.  This behavior would give groups, hospitals, companies, etc., an incentive to pressure DOJobPulse to remove undesirable reviews.  Whether it is monetary influence, or the threat of a lawsuit, DOJobPulse WILL NEVER AGREE TO REMOVE ANY USER SUBMITTED REVIEWS.

You can file suit if you want to . . .

If you are considering suing DOJobPulse because of a user submitted review and your belief that it is defamatory, you should read on.  There is a federal law called the Communications Decency Act or CDA, 47 U.S.C. § 230 (An excellent Wikipedia article discussing the history of the law can be found here.) that provides that when a user writes and posts material on a website such as DOJobPulse.com, the site itself cannot in most cases, be held legally responsible for the posted material. 

Specifically, 47 U.S.C. § 230(c) (1) states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Because the user submitted reviews on DOJobPulse are authored by physician users of the site, we cannot be legally regarded as the “publisher or speaker” of the reviews contained here, and hence we are not liable for the reviews even if they contain false or inaccurate information.

This rule was developed because websites cannot possibly monitor the accuracy of the huge volume of information which their users may choose to post. If disgruntled plaintiffs were permitted to hold websites liable for information that the sites did not create, free speech would be stifled and fewer and fewer sites would be willing to permit users to post anything whatsoever.  It has been ruled that "Making interactive computer services and their users liable for the speech of third parties would severely restrict the information available on the Internet. Section 230 [of the CDA] therefore sought to prevent lawsuits from shutting down websites and other services on the Internet." In general, the lower federal district court and federal appellate court that have construed the CDA has held that websites like DOJobPulse  are immune from virtually every type of civil liability when the site has been sued based on information posted by a third party. Please see the following:

• Batzel v. Smith, 333 F.3d 1018, 1027–28 (9th Cir. 2003
  
• Doe v. America Online, Inc., 783 So.2d 1010 (Fl. 2001)
  
• Green v. America Online, 318 F.3d 465, 470 (3rd Cir. 2003)
  
• Carafano v. Metrosplash.com, Inc., 339 F.3d 1119  (9th Cir. 2003)
  
• Schneider v. Amazon.com, Inc., 31 P.3d 37 (Wash.App. 2001)
  
• Doe v. GTE Corp., 347 F.3d 655 (7th Cir. 2003)
  
• Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997)
  
• Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44 (D. D.C. 1998)

The significance of this is that if you believe a physician user submitted false information about your group or hospital on DOJobPulse, the CDA prohibits you from holding us liable.

So, I am a group Owner/Hospital, is there nothing that I can do?

On the contrary, there’s much you can do to explain or rebut a user review. 
Turn a negative into a positive - If the review calls attention to a previously unknown opportunity, you can now focus on affecting change, and once resolved, future reviews will reflect the improvements you made.

• Free Rebuttal Posting – As a group owner, practice, hospital, medical center, etc., you can rebut the user postings on DOJobPulse, by submitting a posting of your own, which will be placed only on your group’s location.  This way users who read those user submitted reviews, will be able to read your rebuttal.
• Advertise – you can also highlight more positive features of your group / practice / hospital / medical center by running an advertisement immediately adjacent to your group page and review summary.

To be clear, all of the reviews on DOJobPulse have been authored by our users, not by us. No employee or agent of DOJobPulse, or MedJobPulse has posted any content on DOJobPulse about a Group, Hospital, or other practice without the entity’s written permission. Also, DOJobPulse does not create the titles or headings of the reviews. The titles are written by the author of the review. You can easily confirm this by following the steps on this site for submitting a review. You will see that as part of the process, the submitter constructs the title, not us.

I am still going to sue DOJobPulse . . .

That’s okay; if after reading all of this you are still going to sue DOJobPulse, you should be aware of the following:

• Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure – if you file a lawsuit which you know contains false claims, or if you sue without first conducting a reasonable investigation as to the law as it may pertain to the facts of your case (such as determining the identity of the author of the report(s) you are concerned about), you and/or your attorney can be subject to serious sanctions at the judge's discretion.   Many suits have been filled against like companies and have resulted in those plaintiffs paying some or all of the DOJobPulse-like companies’ attorney’s fees. Furthermore, similar companies have never paid out anything in settlement or damages to those plaintiffs suing DOJobPulse-like companies.
• § 674 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts – this law which imposes civil liability on anyone who files a frivolous lawsuit. This claim is known as "wrongful use of civil proceedings." These liabilities are in addition to penalties that a judge may impose on anyone who sues DOJobPulse.  Specifically: One who takes an active part in the initiation, continuation or procurement of civil proceedings against another is subject to liability to the other for wrongful civil proceedings if: he acts without probable cause, and primarily for a purpose other than that of securing the proper adjudication of the claim in which the proceedings are based, and except when they are ex parte, the proceedings have terminated in favor of the person against whom they are brought. Because DOJobPulse is immune from liability under the CDA for defamation-based and related claims, any suit that seeks to impose liability for the speech of our physician users is, by definition, an action brought "without probable cause".  Again, DOJobPulse accepts no liability for the speech of its users, and it will vigorously defend any litigation brought against us which seeks to circumvent the CDA.
• You will pay OUR attorney fees – if we are forced to appear in a case, DOJobPulse will not stipulate to a dismissal unless the party who filed the action agrees to pay DOJobPulse’s attorney fees.  It is your right to file suit, but once you file a suit, be prepared to either take it all the way to a decision on the merits or pay DOJobPulse’s attorney fees.

The Bottom Line:
If you have a preponderance of negative reviews, there is a reason.  Address the concerns, and group concensus will statistically reflect this over time.
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