Nandigam Neurology in Murfreesboro, Tenn., filed a $25,000 lawsuit against a patient's family member after she posted a negative review of neurologist Kaveer Nandigam, MD, local news station WTVF reported.
The defendants are Kelly Beavers, who wrote the Yelp review, and one of her son's friends, who wrote a negative review of the practice on Google. They are being sued for defamation, libel and conspiring to post misleading statements, according to the report.
The review, which is still posted on Yelp, reads: "This 'Dr's' [sic] behavior today was totally unprofessional and unethical, to put it mildly. I will be reporting him to the State of TN [sic] Medical Review Board and be filing a formal complaint. How this guy is in business is beyond me. Since when did they start allowing Doctors, to throw a complete temper tantrum in front of Patients and slam things when they get upset? He does not belong in the medical field at all."
Ms. Beavers told WTVF she wrote the review after bringing her father in for an appointment. She claimed Dr. Nandigam was angry and lashed out when he saw her recording the appointment on her cellphone. Ms. Beavers said she records appointments to remember details and directions later, but deleted the recording at Dr. Nandigam's request, WTVF reports.
Since the news of the lawsuit broke, Dr. Nandigam's Yelp page has attracted a handful of one-star reviews by people put off by the lawsuit. It has one five-star review from June, as well as seven other five-star reviews that were flagged as "not recommended" by Yelp's recommendation software. The software flags reviews written by users without friends or a history of reviews on the site. Six of the seven reviews flagged by this software were posted after Ms. Beavers wrote her negative review and were written by users with little history on the site. Dr. Nandigam's star rating is 1.5 out of 5 stars at the time of this publication.
Nandigam Neurology declined to comment for this story.
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