The owner of the Grand Resort Hotel and Convention Center in Pigeon Force, Tennessee, lost a US$10 million lawsuit filed in 2011 against TripAdvisor.
Kenneth Seaton, the owner of Grand Resort, had alleged that TripAdvisor “maliciously and wrongfully” hurt his hotel’s business by placing Grand Resort atop its “2011 Dirtiest Hotels” list for U.S. hotels on the TripAdvisor.com website.
However, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the hotel’s inclusion on the list did not mean travelers would infer that the hotel was in fact the dirtiest in the U.S. and cited the legal protection websites have from liability over user-generated content in its decision.