Dive Brief:
- Tweeting at a fired employee seems to be a recurring strategy for Yelp. For the second time in two weeks the online review company decided to respond to a former employee via Twitter.
- This time, a former sales worker at Yelp published a post on Medium claiming the company cut her loose unfairly after she asked for unpaid time off to care for her boyfriend, who was recovering from a brain injury, according to Inc.
- Because it detailed reasons for the employee's firing via Twitter (the company claims she missed too many days of work) ,Yelp's response could land the company in court, according to legal experts included in the Inc. article.
Dive Insight:
Anthony Zaller, an employment attorney with Los Angeles law firm Van Vleck Turner and Zaller LLP, told Inc. that by using Twitter, Yelp could have violated this employee's right to privacy or provided her a chance to accuse the company of defamation.
Zaller also told Inc., that Yelp could be setting itself up for a lawsuit, especially since the employee has publicly disputed Yelp's claim about how many days of work she missed and that she received "repeated warnings" about her tardiness. Should any of the personnel information in the tweet turn out to be inaccurate, "she could have a defamation claim," Zaller told Inc.
Another attorney, Robert Dolinko of San Francisco labor and employment law firm Nixon Peabody, took a different view, telling Inc. that by posting publicly, the employee might not be entitled to her privacy, noting that Yelp has the right to give its side of the story.
