NY Appeals Court Tosses Google Review Defamation Suit, Awards Fees

New York Appeals Court Dismisses Lawyer's Google Review Defamation Suit and Awards the Reviewer Attorneys' Fees

New York's Appellate Division, Second Department, reversed a Nassau County order on October 7, 2026, dismissed an attorney's defamation suit over a critical Google review of his own law firm as nonactionable pure opinion, and held the reviewer is entitled to attorneys' fees under the state's anti-SLAPP statute.

Information last verified on October 14, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses New York State defamation law and New York's anti-SLAPP statute as applied by one intermediate appellate court, the Appellate Division, Second Department. It does not address federal law, Section 230 platform immunity, the law of any other state, or contract-based review-gag claims. For how the underlying state rules work, see how New York handles libel and slander claims.

What Happened

Akiva Shapiro, an attorney, sued Sheryl Kushnick-Carr in Supreme Court, Nassau County, over a review she posted on a public Google profile for his law firm. The opinion reproduces the review as follows: "Don's Not Use Him!! He is what gives bad names to attorneys. . . . A Tinker of many types of law . . . A MASTER OF NONE!" The spelling and punctuation are as printed in the decision, and the court later treats the errors as part of its analysis rather than as an incidental detail.

Shapiro filed an amended complaint seeking, among other things, damages of not less than $500,000 and an order directing removal of the review. The decision describes the action as one brought "inter alia, to recover damages for defamation," so the pleading contained additional causes of action the opinion does not identify. The panel analyzed substantial basis only for the defamation cause of action and closed by saying that the parties' remaining contentions "either are without merit or need not be reached in light of our determination." That line addresses the arguments both sides raised on appeal, not the unidentified causes of action, which went out with the order dismissing the amended complaint in full.

Kushnick-Carr moved to dismiss under CPLR 3211(a) and for an award of attorneys' fees and costs under Civil Rights Law § 70-a(1)(a), arguing that the case was a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Shapiro opposed. In an order dated January 17, 2025, Supreme Court, Nassau County (Felice J. Muraca, J.), denied those branches of the motion.

On appeal, the Second Department reversed the order insofar as appealed from, on the law, with costs. It granted both branches of the motion, dismissing the amended complaint and awarding fees and costs, and remitted the matter to Supreme Court, Nassau County, for a determination of the amount. The panel was Colleen D. Duffy, J.P., Linda Christopher, Carl J. Landicino, and Susan Quirk, JJ., all of whom concurred. The case carries Appellate Division Docket No. 2025-02617 and Nassau County Index No. 614920/22.

One unusual detail sits in the appearance line. Shapiro was represented on appeal by Akiva Shapiro Law, PLLC, of Old Bethpage, New York, with the decision noting "Akiva Shapiro pro se of counsel." The plaintiff was, in substance, his own appellate counsel through his own firm. Kushnick-Carr was represented by The Law Office of Matt Bryant, P.C., of Mineola.

The decision carries the New York State Law Reporting Bureau's standard publication line under Judiciary Law § 431 and the express caveat that it "is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports." Readers relying on the specific wording should check the Official Reports version when it issues.

What the Law Actually Says

Two statutory provisions did the work here, and they are easy to collapse into one. One governed whether the case was dismissed. The other governed whether the reviewer got paid. They are not written in the same words, and as this decision shows, a single holding can answer both.

Step one: is this an action involving public petition and participation?

New York's anti-SLAPP statute, as amended effective in 2020, defines a covered action as one based on "(1) any communication in a place open to the public or a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest; or (2) any other lawful conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of free speech in connection with an issue of public interest, or in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of petition" (Civil Rights Law § 76-a[1][a][1], [2]). The statute instructs that "public interest" "shall be construed broadly, and shall mean any subject other than a purely private matter" (§ 76-a[1][d]).

That initial burden is the defendant's. The Second Department held Kushnick-Carr met it on three findings. Google is "an online platform that constitutes a public forum within the meaning of the statute," citing Biagini Realty v Brightman, 244 AD3d 1173, 1176, and VIP Pet Grooming Studio, Inc. v Sproule, 224 AD3d 78, 85. The subject matter, "the professional competence of a licensed attorney operating a law firm open to the public," is not a purely private matter under § 76-a(1)(d). And the review "was not directed to a limited, private audience," having been posted on a publicly accessible Google business profile "visible to any member of the public searching for the plaintiff's law firm."

Step two: does the plaintiff show a substantial basis in law?

Once the defendant clears that threshold, CPLR 3211(g) shifts the burden. The plaintiff must then demonstrate that the causes of action have a "substantial basis in law." That matters for a thinly pleaded claim. Instead of the liberal construction a plaintiff ordinarily receives on a motion to dismiss, the plaintiff carries an affirmative burden to show the claim's substantial basis in law.

Shapiro could not make it, because the court found the statements were pure opinion. The reasoning tracks settled New York doctrine on the elements a defamation plaintiff must prove. Falsity is an element, and as the Court of Appeals put it in Gross v New York Times Co., 82 NY2d 146, 152-153, "Since falsity is a necessary element of a defamation cause of action and only facts are capable of being proven false, it follows that only statements alleging facts can properly be the subject of a defamation action."

The practical line runs between pure opinion and mixed opinion, which is one of the load-bearing distinctions among the defenses a review defendant can raise. Quoting Davis v Boeheim, 24 NY3d 262, 269, the court explained that a pure opinion "may be a statement of opinion which is accompanied by a recitation of the facts upon which it is based, or it may be an opinion not accompanied by such a factual recitation so long as it does not imply that it is based upon undisclosed facts." A mixed opinion is actionable, the court noted citing Kasavana v Vela, 172 AD3d 1042, 1045, because a reasonable reader would infer the writer knows undisclosed facts that support the opinion and are detrimental to its target.

Sorting one from the other turns on three factors the court said it "must consider," citing Stiloski v Wingate, 241 AD3d 958, 962: whether the specific language has a precise meaning that is readily understood; whether the statements are capable of being proven true or false; and whether the context in which the statement appears signals to readers that the statement is likely to be opinion rather than fact.

Applying them, the panel held the statements "unmistakably constitute nonactionable pure opinion." It read "tinker of many types of law, a master of none" as "a variation of the familiar idiom, 'jack of all trades, master of none,' a figure of speech that is subjective and imprecise on its face," and "what gives bad names to attorneys" as "a vague expression of disapproval that does not communicate any specific factual assertion about the plaintiff to a reasonable reader." On context, it pointed to the platform and the register: the review "was posted on Google, a consumer-facing review platform, and was written in a style associated with online hyperbole, including all capital letters, multiple exclamation points, ellipses, and typographical errors," citing LeBlanc v Skinner, 103 AD3d 202, 213. Because the review accused the plaintiff of no "specific crime, wrongful act, or professional misconduct" and implied no undisclosed facts, it was not actionable mixed opinion either.

Step three: the fee standard, and the clause that ties it to dismissal

The dismissal standard and the fee standard are not written in the same words, and the statute links them. Under CPLR 3211(g) the burden is the plaintiff's. Under Civil Rights Law § 70-a(1)(a) the burden is the defendant's, and the statute says that burden can be carried through "an adjudication pursuant to subdivision (g) of rule thirty-two hundred eleven." That is the route by which the fee award arrived in this case.

Dismissal under CPLR 3211(g) turns on whether the plaintiff showed a substantial basis in law, or a substantial argument for an extension, modification or reversal of existing law. The fee provision asks the defendant for a showing of its own. Fees and costs "shall be awarded" to a defendant in a SLAPP suit, the panel wrote, paraphrasing a statute that says they "shall be recovered," "upon a demonstration . . . that the action . . . was commenced or continued without a substantial basis in fact and law and could not be supported by a substantial argument for the extension, modification or reversal of existing law" (Civil Rights Law § 70-a[1][a]).

Two textual differences are worth keeping straight. The fee test reaches fact as well as law. And it reaches an action that was "continued" without that basis, not only one that was wrongly commenced, which puts a plaintiff who presses on after the weakness becomes obvious at risk. What the fee test does not do is add a safe harbor the dismissal test lacks. Both provisions excuse a claim supported by a substantial argument for changing existing law. CPLR 3211(g)(1) defeats the motion where the plaintiff shows the cause of action "has a substantial basis in law or is supported by a substantial argument for an extension, modification or reversal of existing law," and the fee provision quoted above requires the defendant to negate that same alternative.

That overlap is why the two questions did not need separate answers here. The panel recited both standards in one paragraph of law, held that the defamation cause of action lacked a substantial basis in law because the review was nonactionable pure opinion, and granted both branches of the motion on that single holding, with no separate fee analysis.

The word "shall" is itself the product of the 2020 overhaul. Chapter 250 of the Laws of 2020, signed November 10, 2020, rewrote § 70-a(1)(a) to change recovery of costs and fees from permissive to mandatory, and added the clause that lets the required demonstration be made through an adjudication under CPLR 3211(g). The same chapter replaced the old definition in § 76-a(1)(a), which had reached only a claim brought by a public applicant or permittee, and then only where the claim was materially related to the defendant's efforts to "report on, comment on, rule on, challenge or oppose such application or permission." A public applicant or permittee was anyone who had applied for or obtained "a permit, zoning change, lease, license, certificate or other entitlement for use or permission to act from any government body," so the protection ran to a defendant sued by that applicant rather than to the applicant. That is why a Google review about a lawyer now falls inside a statute that once reached only disputes of that kind.

The fee award also reframes the exposure in a case like this. A plaintiff weighing what defamation damages actually look like in New York now has to weigh the opposite column too, because a covered suit that fails the subdivision (g) test can convert a demand into a liability.

What Happens Next

The Second Department did not set a number. It remitted the matter to Supreme Court, Nassau County, "for a determination of the amount of attorneys' fees and costs to be awarded to the defendant." Any figure reported as the reviewer's recovery at this stage is speculation. The trial court has to fix it, and fee determinations routinely involve disputes over rates, hours, and what portion of the work was attributable to the covered claims.

The decision is also, by its own terms, uncorrected. Slip opinions are subject to revision before they appear in the Official Reports, and language can change. Further appellate review is a theoretical possibility that the record before us does not address, and we are not predicting it.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The holding is narrow and the significance is structural. The court did not say reviews are protected. It said that these statements, read in this context, were pure opinion, and that this plaintiff did not meet his statutory burden. Change the review and the analysis changes with it. A review that says a lawyer missed a filing deadline, pocketed a retainer, or was disciplined by a grievance committee asserts verifiable facts, and the three-factor test would run very differently.

What is genuinely notable is the third factor working alongside the first. The court treated the review's sloppiness as legally relevant. All caps, stacked exclamation points, ellipses, and typographical errors were cited, through LeBlanc v Skinner, as context signaling opinion. That is a coherent application of existing doctrine rather than a new rule, but it is a candid acknowledgment that readers calibrate consumer-review prose differently from a news report, and that the law follows the reader.

The second point is about who the plaintiff was. An attorney, appearing through his own firm, sought at least $500,000 and removal of a review of his own practice, and came away from the appeal with a fee ruling against him. The opinion does not editorialize about that, and neither will we. But it is a clean illustration of the asymmetry the 2020 amendments were designed to create. Before November 2020, a fee award in this posture was discretionary and the statute would likely not have covered the suit at all. After it, the statute reaches communications in a public forum on any subject that is not purely private, and the fee award is mandatory once the showing is made.

The third point is a caution about reading too much into the forum finding. Holding that Google is a public forum within the meaning of § 76-a is not the same as holding that everything posted there is a matter of public interest. The court did the second half of the work separately, locating the public interest in the professional competence of a licensed attorney serving the public. A review of a purely private transaction between two individuals would require its own analysis of whether the subject is "a purely private matter."

Finally, this is a decision of one department of the Appellate Division, New York's intermediate appellate court, deciding an appeal out of Nassau County. The doctrine it applied rests on settled New York precedent, including the Court of Appeals decisions in Gross v New York Times Co. and Davis v Boeheim that the panel cited. The application of those standards to a given set of words, though, is record-specific by design. A different panel weighing a different review could come out differently, and nothing in this decision forecloses that.

How This Affects You

In general terms, and not as advice about any particular dispute, two things follow from the reasoning.

Courts applying New York law look at what a statement asserts, not how harsh it is. The decision restates the long-standing rule that an expression of pure opinion is not actionable "no matter how vituperative or unreasonable it may be," citing Kasavana v Vela. Tone is not the variable; verifiability is. That is why the panel's observation that the review accused the plaintiff of no "specific crime, wrongful act, or professional misconduct" is doing real work. An evaluative insult and a concrete factual accusation are in different categories, and the pure-opinion analysis is not available for a statement a reasonable reader would take as an assertion of fact.

A plaintiff in New York who sues over a public-forum communication on a matter of public interest now carries two risks at once: dismissal under a standard that requires an affirmative showing, and a mandatory fee award under a fee provision that the same dismissal ruling can satisfy. Anyone facing either side of that situation should get advice from a New York lawyer on the specific facts.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. This article covers New York State defamation law and New York's anti-SLAPP statute, Civil Rights Law §§ 70-a and 76-a, together with CPLR 3211, as applied in one Appellate Division, Second Department decision. Details were verified against the slip opinion on October 14, 2026, and that opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision. Nothing here is an assessment of any review, any lawsuit, or any dispute you may have. Consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• New York's rules for libel and slander claims
• Truth, opinion, and the other defenses that defeat a defamation claim
• A state-by-state look at libel and slander standards

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Last updated: 2026-10-14. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-14.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you be sued for leaving a bad Google review?

Yes, anyone can file a suit, and in this case the attorney did. The question is whether it survives. In Shapiro v Kushnick-Carr, decided October 7, 2026, the Appellate Division, Second Department held the review was nonactionable pure opinion, dismissed the amended complaint, and granted the reviewer attorneys' fees under Civil Rights Law 70-a(1)(a). Being sued and losing the suit are different things, and the defendant here still had to litigate a motion and an appeal.

Does this decision mean online reviews can never be defamatory in New York?

No, and the opinion does not say that. The court applied a three-factor test to the specific words in this specific review and found them imprecise, unverifiable, and framed as opinion by their context. It expressly noted the review did not accuse the plaintiff of any specific crime, wrongful act, or professional misconduct. A review making a concrete factual accusation would be analyzed under the same test with a different result possible.

What is the difference between pure opinion and mixed opinion under New York law?

Quoting Davis v Boeheim, 24 NY3d 262, 269, the court described pure opinion as either an opinion accompanied by a recitation of the facts it rests on, or an opinion with no factual recitation that does not imply it is based on undisclosed facts. Mixed opinion is actionable because a reasonable reader would infer the writer knows undisclosed facts supporting the opinion that are detrimental to its target. Pure opinion is not actionable however harsh it is.

What three factors do New York courts use to separate fact from opinion?

Citing Stiloski v Wingate, 241 AD3d 958, 962, the court listed them: whether the specific language has a precise meaning that is readily understood; whether the statements are capable of being proven true or false; and whether the context in which the statement appears signals to readers that the statement is likely to be opinion rather than fact.

Is Google a public forum under New York's anti-SLAPP statute?

The Second Department held that Google is an online platform that constitutes a public forum within the meaning of Civil Rights Law 76-a, citing Biagini Realty v Brightman and VIP Pet Grooming Studio, Inc. v Sproule. That finding alone is not enough, though. The court separately analyzed whether the subject was an issue of public interest, locating it in the professional competence of a licensed attorney operating a firm open to the public.

Are attorneys' fees automatic for a defendant who wins a New York anti-SLAPP motion?

Not automatic, but mandatory once a distinct showing is made. Civil Rights Law 70-a(1)(a) provides that fees and costs shall be recovered upon a demonstration that the action was commenced or continued without a substantial basis in fact and law and could not be supported by a substantial argument for the extension, modification or reversal of existing law. Section 70-a(1)(a) also says that demonstration can be made 'including an adjudication pursuant to subdivision (g) of rule thirty-two hundred eleven,' which is what happened here: the Second Department granted the fee branch on the same holding that dismissed the claim. Both provisions excuse a claim supported by a substantial argument for an extension, modification or reversal of existing law.

How much money was the reviewer awarded in Shapiro v Kushnick-Carr?

No amount has been set. The Appellate Division granted the branch of the motion seeking fees and costs and remitted the matter to Supreme Court, Nassau County, for a determination of the amount to be awarded. Any specific dollar figure attributed to this award at this point is not in the record we reviewed.

Who has to prove what under CPLR 3211(g) and Civil Rights Law 76-a?

The defendant goes first and must establish that the action is one involving public petition and participation under Civil Rights Law 76-a(1)(a). If she does, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to demonstrate that the causes of action have a substantial basis in law under CPLR 3211(g). The court held the defendant satisfied her initial burden here and that the plaintiff then failed to carry his.

Is this decision final and citable?

It is published by the New York State Law Reporting Bureau under Judiciary Law 431 as 2026 NY Slip Op 05822, and it carries the standard caveat that it is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports. The wording can change before the official version issues, so quoted language should be checked against the Official Reports when available.