My sense is that such claims are often made but nearly never win—yet here they did. From Hartman v. Does 1-2, decided earlier this month, Eleventh Circuit Judges Adalberto Jordan, Robin Rosenbaum, and Barbara Lagoa upheld a $12.5M verdict (including $9M under RICO) in such a case:
In this action, Plaintiffs-Appellees real-estate professional Jason Hartman and his companies accused Defendants—a rival real estate investor and his associates—of committing a wide variety of misconduct as part of a smear campaign to harm Plaintiffs' reputation and steal their clients. The allegations asserted federal and state RICO violations, false advertising, invasion of privacy, trademark infringement, and unfair competition. The case proceeded to trial, and the jury returned a verdict for Plaintiffs and awarded substantial damages, including for counts on which the court had already determined liability at summary judgment….
Hartman is a real-estate investment professional and podcaster who formed two companies, Platinum Properties Investor Network Inc. and The Hartman Media Company LLC, to promote real estate investment through his investor network. Hartman Media owns the valid, registered service marks "Jason Hartman" and "jasonhartman.com."
Charles Sells ("Sells") owned and operated a competing real-estate investment advisory company, the PIP Group, LLC, along with his wife, Elena Sells ("Lena"), PIP's director of operations and 49% owner.
In 2018, Hartman's businesses were on a "steady upward trajectory," earning a spot on Inc. Magazine's list of the 5,000 fasting growing companies. Sells, meanwhile, was trying to combat negative online reviews of PIP, which he blamed in part on Hartman, who previously had invested in and was openly critical of PIP's tax-lien investment business. Sells was convinced that Hartman was behind some negative reviews, though Sells admitted at trial he had no evidence to support those claims. Sells and Hartman were also involved in separate litigation.
In May 2018, Sells began a smear campaign against Hartman, intending to "crush[ ] this douche" and "put[ ] him out of business completely." Sells testified that his goal was not only to destroy Hartman's business, but also to destroy him personally and emotionally. To accomplish these goals, Sells set out to create a "very documented, very exposing website" to disseminate negative information about Hartman and his companies. For the "technical side" of things, he relied on Young Chung, the founder of digital marketing agency Blindspot Digital, whom Sells had hired to improve PIP's own website a few months earlier. With Chung's help, Sells registered multiple online domain names that were confusingly similar to Hartman's name or his companies, so that they would show up on internet searches for Hartman. Chung then built a website hosted on the domain "jasonhartmanproperties.com," where the other [similarly named] domains Sells bought redirected. Sells used offshore entities and false contact information to register the domains and host the jasonhartmanproperties.com website. And he created content for the site with assistance from Stephanie Putich, PIP's sales and marketing coordinator.
