Threat/Warning? It’s in the Eye of the Plaintiff

I found this post on Techdirt kind of interesting.  Here’s the situation.  A client of a lawyer/psychotherapist named Jose Arcaya posted a negative review of Arcaya on Yelp.  Here’s a sample of what it said:  

I hired Arcaya to help with a case. I asked him at the outset if he had handled these matters before and he said yes. The ensuing performance suggests otherwise. When I mentioned his truly pitiful performance he implied that it was my fault. When i reminded him that he was the lawyer and hired to do a professional job he made fun of my medical issues. Absolute scum.

Arcaya sued the reviewer – Zolton Boka – for libel.  And while the decision to sue over a negative review could be the subject of a post itself, that’s not what caught my eye.  There is another defendant in the suit named Scott Greenfield. Greenfield is an attorney who apparently got introduced to Boka.  Greenfield called Arcaya to talk about the situation, and mentioned to Arcaya the “Streisand Effect.”   That is the phenomenon, named after Barbara Streisand, describing the situation where someone demands the removal of online information only to find that the removal demand exponentially increases the attention on the offending information.   

Arcaya considered Greenfield’s advice to be a threat.  I suppose along the lines of “advising” someone that their signature or their brains can be on a contract.   

But I think there is a difference between how the Corleone family does business and what Greenfield did here. And Arcaya’s overreaction here seems like evidence that the negative review concerning his lawyer skills was spot on.