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Blogging about a restaurant and giving a negative review

We are food bloggers and were invited by a restaurant to review their food. Once we arrived, the owner said she did not know of this.

When we showed her the written confirmation from her husband she refused to accept it.

They wasted our time and money, making us come all the way to her restaurant just to be told to get out.

She was becoming hostile so my sister took out her phone to take a video of her screaming at us.

But when the lady noticed the phone she attacked my sister. She pulled and scratched her very badly. She left a big mark on my sister’s arm.

When the police came we were told to delete the video which we did in front of them itself.

Once the police left, she threatened us that if we ever mention this to someone, post about it on Instagram, or leave a bad review on Zomato, that they will take us to court.

Can she do this? I only want to write an honest review on Zomato where I explain our situation and post the pictures of my sisters arm.

Or can she make a case on us?

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Elnaggar & Partners
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25 Oct 2018, 14:36

Dear questioner,

I would like to speak about a few points:

1. Reporting the incident to the police

You should have reported the incident to the police and requested them to open a police complaint about the restaurant owner for assault.

I do not understand what happened when the police attended to the restaurant. Did you or did you not file such complaint?

2. Recording an incident by phone

Please note that taking the video of such incident in itself was not a crime. However, posting it online and writing about it may be interpreted by the police as unauthorized use of media content that is used for defamation.

In this case, it would have been much better for you to refuse to delete the video and to insist to attach it to your police complaint about the assault.

3. Posting a review and telling your story of the incident:

It depends on how accurate and honest you are to post such review and what photos are you going to use. I can only help you after reading the review you wish to post. So, you can draft it and send it to us to review it before posting.

On the other hand, any mention of facts that happened during the incident that has nothing to do with the restaurant review will most probably be interpreted as an attempt to talk negative and harm the restaurant’s business, especially that now you have no proof or evidence that the incident actually occurred and no video.

I advise you to proceed with your police complaint and only after seeing its ending results you can decide whether you still want to post such review or not.

Regards,

Ahmed Elnaggar

26 Oct 2018, 00:05

We did not file a case with the police because at that time the police officers only spoke Arabic and with what little we could understand it seemed like they were telling us that if we decided to file a case against her then she could also file a case against us for recording her.

They seemed to think this was just a petty issue and wanted to leave. They did not help in the situation at all.

We can try to see if the video got saved on iCloud before she had to delete it but the actual video did not even have the woman’s face in it.

It was just a crazy video of yelling screaming and the phone being jerked around because this was taken mid-attack.

We want to be as honest as possible with our review. We would not call her any names or use foul language.

But my issue is that would she technically be able to argue and say it’s all false and defamatory anyway since we don’t have proof that she did any of this except for the picture of the scars on my sister's arm?

26 Oct 2018, 10:32

I hear you. It is better to take professional help before you post the review online because once it is posted, you can never take it back.

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