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September 02, 2022 - 7:30 AM
A B.C judge has ordered a disgruntled customer to pay $90,000 to the business owners after he left bad reviews and false information about the company online.
According to an Aug. 25 B.C. Supreme Court decision, Tyler Ginther's reviews of Moila and Brian Jenkins business said they were "fraudulent, cheating and deceitful" and accused their business of overcharging him $7,000 and being a "scam." They sued for defamation.
According to the decision, the Jenkins owns Longhouse Specialty Forest Products and sold Ginther a variety of wood products in 2015 when he was building a house.
Ginther wasn't happy with the products and took to Google and Yelp to leave them very bad reviews.
"The reviews say that the (Jenkins) are fraudulent and deceitful and that they scammed Mr. Ginther by charging him for a product he did not order and made up fake invoices to support their fraud," the decision reads.
In court, Ginther stuck to his story, saying the reviews were all true.
However, the Justice didn't agree.
The court decision goes through a thorough history of correspondence between the two parties over the sale.
After dissecting multiple emails and text messages sent over several months between Ginther and the Jenkins discussing orders, costs, and what wood products he wanted, the Justice concluded the reviews weren't true.
"These facts do not prove that Mr. and Ms. Jenkins intended to and did charge Mr. Ginther $6,902 for cedar siding they knew he had not ordered. At most, they prove that the plaintiffs mistakenly believed that Mr. Ginther wanted to order the cedar and charged him for it," Justice Nitya Iyer said in the decision.
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The Justice also picked holes in Ginther's testimony to the court.
"Mr. Ginther also testified that he never received any cedar siding samples from the (Jenkins). However, he had no explanation for the bill of lading produced by the (Jenkins) that shows a package weighing about four pounds was delivered to him by courier on the day Ms. Jenkins had told him the samples would be delivered," the Justice said.
The Justice ruled that Ginther was not a credible witness.
"The only evidence supporting Mr. Ginther’s allegations of fraud is his own," the Justice said.
Ginther admitted in court that his intention was to harm the Jenkins business by posting the reviews.
Ginther first posted a review to Google and then a few months later posted a much longer review to Yelp.
"The only reasonable explanation for his decision to post the more detailed and damaging Yelp review two months later is that he wanted to do more to damage to the (Jenkins) business," the Justice said.
The Justice found that Ginther acted with "malice" when he posted the Yelp review.
The Jenkins argued for $325,000 in damages due to the effect the reviews had on their business.
However, Justice Iyer ruled that $90,000 was a fair amount and ordered Ginther to pay up.
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