Four of the six online reviews New Zealand-founded toymaker Zuru went to court over in the United States were removed before court proceedings were initiated.

Earlier this week, BusinessDesk reported on a decision by Magistrate Judge Alex Tse of the US district court for northern California where Tse denied an application by Glassdoor – a workplace review platform – to quash a subpoena from Zuru.

The decision means Glassdoor will have to hand over copies of the reviews to Zuru, posted between Oct 12 and Nov 25 2021, as well as identifying details of the anonymous reviewers – such as their names, email and IP addresses. 

Zuru said it needs the information to bring defamation proceedings against the authors in the high court at Auckland.

Contents of reviews

Glassdoor – which prides itself on protecting the anonymity of its users – has yet to respond to questions from BusinessDesk about whether it will appeal the decision. 

Zuru declined to add to an earlier statement issued this week, meaning it didn’t address a question about whether it had initiated defamation proceedings.

BusinessDesk found out new details about the case by obtaining court documents lodged in the US, including declarations by Mat and Nick Mowbray – the brothers, billionaires and co-chief executives who founded Zuru.

BusinessDesk has chosen not to publish the contents of the reviews.

In his declaration, Nick Mowbray characterised various comments made about Zuru, its leadership and about him and his brother in the reviews as "false" and defamatory.

“Zuru and I have been dedicated to and guided by certain core values, including ‘integrity, creativity, accountability, quality, adaptability, passion, and unity’,” he said.

“We go to great lengths to foster and maintain exceptional workplaces for our employees, and Zuru and I consider Zuru employees our ‘Zuru Family’. 

“We believe that maintaining a family-centric culture of respect and commitment to our employees will ensure that Zuru has the right foundation to move boldly into the future.”

Zuru wanted to take defamation action against the person or persons responsible for the reviews "as soon as possible", Nick Mowbray said.

Job offer spurned

The US court documents include copies of correspondence between the legal teams at Zuru and Glassdoor.

In a letter dated Dec 9, 2021, the legal counsel for Zuru said the company first became aware of the reviews in November 2021 via a prospective employee.

“In declining Zuru’s job offer, the candidate cited a sudden and massive influx of negative Glassdoor reviews, which the job candidate believed were posts made by different people,” the lawyer said.

However, the documents make it clear that Zuru believed the posts could be the work of one person or authored at the behest of one person.

The first letter sent by Zuru to Glassdoor on Nov 24 referred to “strong evidence that a single person is posting multiple negative reviews”, citing “the same style of writing and word choice”, and that at least two of the reviews were from Auckland and the timing of the posts.

Glassdoor rejected this thesis.

In a public statement earlier this week, the company said: “the unflattering workplace experience reviews describing working at Zuru were authored by multiple former Zuru employees”.

See you in court

In the Nov 24 letter, which has the subtitle “Potential Single Person Posting Multiple Inaccurate Glassdoor Reviews”, the Zuru legal counsel said: “If Glassdoor is not inclined to investigate and/or remove the posts, then we may need to initiate litigation, on the basis of defamation and other grounds, and request discovery so we can learn what is going on here.

“Hopefully, your internal investigation will confirm what we believe (a single person is posting multiple negative reviews), and you remove the posts on your own.”

In their reply on Dec 6, Glassdoor noted “the threat to initiate litigation against Glassdoor if we do not comply with your takedown demands”, before alleging that “at least one high-ranking Zuru executive has recently submitted an apparently fraudulent and deceptive review for publication on the Glassdoor site”.

(A follow-up letter from Zuru said the company had checked and wasn’t aware of any Zuru executive making such a post. BusinessDesk also asked about the allegation, but the company declined to comment).

In the Dec 6 letter, Glassdoor advised it had re-moderated the reviews in question and three of them were no longer on the site. It didn’t provide a specific reason why the posts were removed.

Glassdoor also noted the company provided an option for employers to respond to reviews when they signed up with a free employer account (FEA). In the letter to Zuru, it pointed out that “Zuru has signed up for and re-registered for an FEA on multiple occasions in recent years”.

Glassdoor also warned about the expense of litigation, adding it could have “unintended consequences: it attracts more attention to the reviews themselves, especially because the media like to cover lawsuits about Glassdoor”.

Not good enough

In the letter of Dec 9, Zuru's legal counsel requested that Glassdoor remove the three remaining reviews, characterising them as “spam posts”. He also outlined the harm caused to the company.

“As we hope you appreciate, inaccurate spam posts, which resulted in a declined job offer, caused actual harm to Zuru.”

The legal counsel accused Glassdoor of potentially engaging in false advertising by making “false representations about being a website of truthful, non-spammed reviews”. Zuru had “standing to bring a false advertising claim against Glassdoor”, he said.

The Dec 13 response from Glassdoor noted, “with considerable regret, your derisive and conclusory use of the term 'spammed' with respect to the reviews”. 

The company had taken a further look at the remaining three reviews, the letter said, and had decided to take one of them down while it was reassessed (leaving just two online).

'Alert'

In January 2021, lawyers acting for Zuru in the US filed papers asking the court for an order granting leave to obtain discovery for use in foreign proceedings (the signalled NZ defamation action).

Documents filed with the court by Zuru’s lawyers say Glassdoor had refused to remove the remaining two reviews and it had refused to provide any information about the person or persons who had made the reviews.

A search of the Glassdoor website for Zuru on Friday reveals none of the original six disputed reviews remains online, however, the company’s page is now tagged with an 'alert' warning users of the legal action.

Of the 80 reviews, 86% of employees would recommend working at Zuru.

Zuru was co-founded by New Zealanders Nick and Mat Mowbray. Their sister, Anna Mowbray, later joined the company, which has quickly become one of the biggest toymakers in the world, headquartered in Shenzhen, China.  

The siblings own the famous Coatesville mansion north of Auckland, which was formerly leased by internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom.