New York City commercial litigator Donald Tobias it petitioning a judge to help reveal the true identity of a reviewer known only as ‘Mia Arce’ who left a short but damning review of Mr Tobias boutique firm on the Google ‘reviews’ platform. Mr Tobias fears that the review, which offers the firm one star out of five and adds ‘it was horrible’, is tarnishing his firm’s reputation. However, the name Mia Arce is not familiar to the firm, and is thus most likely a pseudonym for someone else.

In court papers filed last week, Mr Tobias wrote that the Google user ‘has, with these three explosively damaging and inflammatory words, imputed some unspecified act of professional unfitness, behaviour or worse to the Petitioner.’ Prior to pursuing legal action, Mr Tobias wrote to Google’s legal department explaining the situation and arguing that the bad review was likely a case of mistaken identity. However, Google decided not to pursue the matter.

Source: Wall Street Journal