MAGNOLIA, Ark. (Legal Newsline) - A California university is going all the way to Arkansas to sue someone who left bad reviews online.
Northwestern Polytechnic University filed a lawsuit Jan. 27 in Columbia County Circuit Court against Murahari Kolluru, who lives in that county. Also named as defendants are seven unknown John Does who NPU believes are "internet sock puppet accounts and alter-egos of Defendant Kolluru."
The suit alleges a defamation campaign that includes numerous fake accounts on Google and Yelp that said and said NPU has no full-time staff or accreditation.
One of the reviews said "Bathrooms are stinky all the time."
"The Defendants knew their online reviews were false at the time they were published, or at the very least, they were reckless with respect to the truth of what they posted and should have known that NPU was accredited, has a full-time staff, and is not a fake university, at the time they published their statements, such a fact being both accessible and generally verifiable," the lawsuit says.
The suit seeks compensatory damages, an injunction keeping Kolluru from posting more reviews and an order to remove his previous ones.