Not So Funny Now, Is It?

You may have heard a story that’s been going around the Internet for a few weeks about a restaurant in Montana that was listed under the “Animal Carcass Removal” heading in the local telephone directory. It has been the occasion for a lot of local humor, and eventually made it onto the Leno show as part of the “Headlines” segment. Of course, the owner of the restaurant didn’t find it all that funny, since it was interfering with his business – and totally destroying the brand imagine he had spent the last few years building up. In retrospect it seems likely that the company that published the offending phone book wasn’t taking the case all that seriously, in that they made no effort to remove the listing or compensate the owner; they even repeated the listing in the next year’s book. But I would imagine that the whole thing suddenly became a lot less amusing when the restaurant owner decided to sue…

You can pick up one version of the original story on MSNBC if you want to, but the facts of the case appear to be that the owner of the Bar-3 Barbeque restaurant declined to purchase yellow pages advertising from a company called Dex Media, and may have been forceful (if not actually abusive) to the Dex salesperson. In retaliation, the Dex employee changed the restaurant’s business category from “Restaurant” to “Animal Carcass Removal” in the next edition. The publishing company is not disputing that this happened, but they contend that the listing is not their fault because the restaurant owner was mean to their salesperson and should have known that there might be retaliation for this behavior. They’re also claiming that their employee was acting outside of his or her job responsibilities when he or she changed the listing, and should therefore be the one held responsible for the prank, not the company itself. And in any case, the publisher claims, the restaurant assumed responsibility for any errors or problems when it allowed its information to be published in the first place…

I don’t know how Montana law works in these cases (and I don’t have a law degree anyway), but the business law class we had in MBA school suggests that all of these defense arguments are nonsense. The incorrect listing isn’t an error; it’s a deliberate act, and is actionable as such. There is no legal right to retaliate against anyone for being mean to you outside of the playground, and any adult who claims that in any court is likely to be laughed right out of the building. And in any state with a strict liability provision in its tort law, the argument that a company is not responsible for the actions of its employees is simply wrong. In California, for example, this case wouldn’t even get to court; the plaintiff’s attorney would ask for summary judgment, and immediately get it…

I call this case to your attention because it’s easy to see what probably happened here: a salesperson at Dex was abused over the telephone when his or her sales pitch went sour – or believed that he or she had been ill-treated by the restaurant owner. The salesperson retaliated, and the manager of the publishing company either wasn’t paying attention or let the matter slide, possibly in support of the “abused” employee, and possibly because the manager thought it was funny, too. But, unfortunately, the point of running a business isn’t to have fun or create humor, and the court is unlikely to see it in that light either. The publisher’s actions in this case are completely understandable and totally human; unfortunately, they’re also a very bad business decision…