A federal judge in White Plains on September 30, 2026 refused to dismiss defamation claims against Thryv, the company that owns Yellowpages.com, brought by a licensed massage therapist from Orange County, New York, whose free business listing appeared on the directory beside the phrases "Russian Massage in Newburgh, NY," "Nude Gay Massage in Newburgh, NY" and "Exotic Massage in Newburgh, NY." The 34-page opinion and order, entered as document 48 in Velez v. Yellowpages.com LLC, case 7:26-cv-00019 in the Southern District of New York, also denied Thryv's bid to move the case to Texas under its website terms of use, dismissed the Thryv employee named in the suit for lack of personal jurisdiction, and threw out the emotional distress claims with prejudice.

In Short

A massage therapist says the Yellow Pages website put her business next to sex-related massage labels she never offered, and she sued the company behind the site. A judge decided her claim that this damaged her professional reputation can go forward, and that the company could not force the case into a Texas court just by pointing to terms buried somewhere on its website. Directory and listing companies now have a federal ruling saying that a business owner who complains about a false label, and gets ignored, may be enough to support a libel claim at this early stage.

What the court decided

United States District Judge Jessica G. L. Clarke signed the opinion and order on September 30, 2026, in White Plains. It resolves six separate motions filed by two defendants: Thryv, Inc. and Daniel Storey, a Thryv employee. The outcome, according to the conclusion of the order, breaks down this way:

  • Thryv's and Storey's motions to strike declarations filed by the plaintiff and her lawyer were denied.
  • Their alternative motions asking the court to disregard those declarations were granted in part.
  • The motions to transfer the case to the Northern District of Texas were denied.
  • Storey's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction was granted, and he was dismissed without prejudice.
  • The motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim were denied as to the defamation counts.
  • The same motions were granted as to negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) and intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), which were dismissed with prejudice.

The court also dismissed Count Sixteen, which was not a standalone claim but a request for compensatory and punitive damages of $15 million. "New York does not recognize a separate cause of action for punitive damages," the opinion states. The demand itself remains available as relief if the defamation claims succeed. The clerk was directed to terminate ECF Nos. 18, 25, 30 and 42, and the court said it would separately issue a notice of an initial pretrial conference.

The practical result is that Thryv now has to litigate a libel per se claim in New York federal court, under New York law, over how its directory labelled a single small business.

The listing at the centre of the case

The plaintiff is Laurie Velez, a licensed massage therapist who lives and works as an independent contractor in Orange County, New York. According to the complaint as summarised by the court, she "was listed on [the Website] as a licensed massage therapist."

Some time before February 7, 2025, Velez contacted Yellowpages.com LLC to update that listing. She spoke with Storey, whom the complaint identifies only as an employee of the corporate defendants. Then, on or about February 7, 2025, she searched for herself on Google. According to the opinion, she saw "her massage business listed on the Website as 'exotic,' 'Russian,' and 'nude, gay massage.'"

Screenshots attached to the complaint, at pages 41 to 44, show Yellow Pages "associating Plaintiff's name and work address with the phrases 'Russian Massage in Newburgh, NY,' 'Nude Gay Massage in Newburgh, NY,' and 'Exotic Massage in Newburgh, NY,'" the court wrote. Velez alleges the statements "were false, inaccurate, and not true."

Several days later she contacted the defendants "to have her business listing corrected and/or removed." According to the complaint, the listing continued to be published without change. That detail - a complaint made, and nothing done - turned out to matter more than anything else in the opinion.

The opinion opens with a line that captures the dispute: the search terms were "sexually suggestive, which is most decidedly not Plaintiff's line of work."

How the phrases came to be attached to her listing is not explained anywhere in the 34 pages. The complaint does not say whether they were generated automatically from category and location templates, typed in by a staff member, or produced some other way, and the court did not need to decide that question at the pleading stage.

Who was sued, and a name spelled wrong

Velez named five defendants: Yellowpages.com LLC, YP LLC, YP Holdings LLC, Thryv, Inc., and "Daniel Sorty." The complaint describes the corporate defendants as "digital advertising agenc[ies] providing business listings and marketing solutions" that operate www.yellowpages.com.

Thryv's own motion simplified the corporate picture. According to a footnote, Thryv told the court that it "is the sole surviving entity following a series of mergers involving the three other named [entity] defendants, Yellowpages.com, LLC, YP, LLC, and YP Holdings, LLC."

The individual defendant's name was misspelled. In his declaration, he told the court: "My name is Daniel Storey, and I am one of the defendants named in the above captioned lawsuit. My name is misspelled in the case caption as 'Daniel Sorty.'" The caption on the opinion still reads "Sorty," but the court refers to him as Storey throughout.

From Orange County to federal court

The procedural history runs across ten months, according to the opinion:

Velez filed her complaint in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Orange County, on December 4, 2025. It pleads three claims - defamation and defamation per se, NIED, and IIED - against each of the five defendants, producing 15 numbered counts, plus a sixteenth seeking damages.

Thryv removed the case to the Southern District of New York on January 2, 2026, on diversity grounds. On February 17, 2026, the court found that complete diversity existed among the parties.

On February 9, 2026, Thryv moved to transfer the case to the Northern District of Texas, or alternatively to dismiss it under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Velez's lawyer, Lawrence D. Lissauer, filed a declaration in opposition on March 2. A week later, on March 9, Thryv moved to strike that declaration and filed its reply.

Storey, represented by the same counsel as Thryv, moved on April 17, 2026 to dismiss under Rules 12(b)(2) and 12(b)(6), or alternatively to transfer. On May 11, Velez filed two identical copies of her own declaration, along with a second Lissauer declaration. Storey moved to strike those on May 22, and Velez's counsel answered on June 8 with a third declaration, filed in two versions.

The Texas clause that did not hold

Thryv's central procedural argument rested on paragraph 6.1 of the Yellowpages.com terms of use. That provision, quoted in the opinion, reads:

"Exclusive venue and jurisdiction for all claims and disputes that are not subject to Informal Dispute Resolution . . . shall be in the state and federal courts located in Tarrant County, Texas, and you hereby consent and submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of those courts and waive any defenses or objections based on the jurisdiction, venue, or convenience of these exclusive venues."

To back the clause, Thryv filed a declaration from Karl Good, its "Manager of Client Care" and "custodian of records." Good stated that "[a]ll users of Thryv's Yellowpages.com website and all business owners who provide information to Thryv in connection with their free business listings that appear on the website are subject to the terms of use published on the website." He added that "[t]he Terms of Use are hyperlinked and accessible from the YellowPages.com website," and that "[a]s a user and business listed on the Yellowpages.com website, Plaintiff agreed to be bound by the Terms of Use provided thereon."

The court found that was not enough. Under the Second Circuit's four-part test from Starkey v. G. Adventures, the first question is whether a clause "was reasonably communicated to the party resisting enforcement." Thryv failed at that first step.

"Defendants have provided no information about the placement, sizing, and coloring of the Terms of Use hyperlink on the Website and if and how users like Plaintiff actively manifest their assent to the Terms of Use," Judge Clarke wrote. As a result, the court "cannot ascertain whether this hyperlink was made available to users while signing up for their services, whether users were required to scroll through the Terms of Use, or otherwise."

The opinion called Good's statement "conclusory" and "simply insufficient."

Browsewrap or clickwrap - Thryv did not say

The court noted that Thryv never established which kind of online agreement its terms were. A browsewrap agreement, in the Second Circuit's definition, lists terms "via a hyperlink at the bottom" of a website and requires no affirmative action beyond using the site. A clickwrap agreement requires users "to click an 'I agree' box after being presented with a list of terms and conditions of use."

For browsewrap, the test is whether "a reasonably prudent person would be on inquiry notice of the terms," which depends on the design and content of the interface. For clickwrap, Thryv produced "no evidence that Plaintiff affirmatively manifested assent." And even if the terms were clickwrap, the court said, Thryv still had not shown reasonable notice.

The court added a further point that is likely to matter to any directory serving small operators. Citing Fteja v. Facebook and Berkson v. Gogo, it observed that browsewrap terms have generally been enforced against businesses or "sophisticated commercial entities who are repeat players," not individuals. "Here, Plaintiff, as an independent contractor, is clearly not a sophisticated commercial entity that was likely to be aware of Defendants' terms," the opinion states.

The same reasoning sank Thryv's attempt to apply Texas law. The terms of use say disputes "will be governed by and construed in accordance with, Texas law." Because Thryv had not shown assent, the court did not apply that clause. And since Thryv's own motion cited "only to New York federal and state cases," the court applied New York law to every claim.

This is the second time in two months that a technology company has lost a bid to pull a case into Tarrant County, Texas, through website terms. In August, a federal judge in San Jose refused xAI's request to move a Grok privacy class action to the Northern District of Texas, finding the sign-up and chat screens did not give reasonably conspicuous notice of its forum selection clauses. The online contract question cuts in more than one direction, however: in September, a California judge rejected Anthropic's argument that Reddit's user agreement was an unenforceable browsewrap, inferring knowledge of the terms from Anthropic's conduct. The difference in Velez is that the party asserting the contract - Thryv - offered almost nothing about how its terms were presented.

Why the Thryv employee was dropped

Storey's exit from the case turned on New York's long-arm statute, which has a specific carve-out for defamation.

Storey told the court he is "a permanent resident of the State of Iowa," and that "[a]ll contact between myself and the Plaintiff was in my capacity as an employee of Thryv, and consisted of a single phone conversation that resulted from a call placed by the Plaintiff to Thryv."

Velez told a different story. In her May 11 declaration, she said she spoke to Storey by telephone on multiple occasions beginning in October 2024. During those calls, according to the declaration, Storey "showed [her] various advertisements and did illustrations on the Yellow Page web site," and the two "agreed on a listing which was subsequently published." She said Storey represented that "he was [her] designated agent for Yellow Pages" and "was familiar with the New York market." She also stated that Storey was "not happy" because she wanted a free, rather than paid, advertisement.

None of that was enough. Sections 302(a)(2) and 302(a)(3) of New York's Civil Practice Law and Rules both exclude "a cause of action for defamation of character." The court applied that exclusion not only to the defamation counts but also to the emotional distress claims, because they "arise[] from the same set of facts as a pleaded defamation claim."

That left Section 302(a)(1), which covers transacting business in New York. The Second Circuit has said courts construe that phrase "more narrowly in defamation cases," and that "the single act of uttering a defamation, no matter how loudly, is not a transaction of business." Posting material on a website accessible in New York does not, without more, qualify. The "something more" standard requires that at least part of the content was "created, researched, written, developed, or produced in New York."

Even assuming multiple phone calls and the claim of New York market familiarity, the court said Storey's conduct did not meet that standard. It pointed to SPCA of Upstate New York v. American Working Collie Association, where New York's highest court found no jurisdiction over a defendant who made three phone calls to the New York plaintiff, made a $1,000 donation, twice drove to New York, and posted about the plaintiff online. "And unlike the defendant in SPCA, there is no allegation that Storey ever set foot in New York as part of his work with Plaintiff," Judge Clarke wrote.

The court also rejected the argument, raised by Velez's counsel, that Storey's dealings with other Yellow Pages advertisers in New York could supply jurisdiction. Conduct unrelated to the alleged defamation is "too attenuated." Lissauer had argued repeatedly that "[w]ithout discovery, dismissal based upon CPLR section 302(a)(1) is inappropriate." The court denied any request for jurisdictional discovery.

Storey's dismissal is without prejudice, which means the ruling concerns where he can be sued, not whether the allegations against him have merit.

The libel per se analysis

The core of the ruling for Thryv is the court's finding that Velez adequately pleaded libel per se - a category of defamation where injury is presumed and the plaintiff does not need to plead specific financial losses.

Under New York law, a libel claim requires a written defamatory statement of fact about the plaintiff, publication to a third party, the applicable level of fault, falsity, and either special damages or libel per se. The court went through each.

Particularity and publication. Velez identified the statements, the approximate date (around February 7, 2025), the publisher (those operating the website) and the audience (the public, since the site is publicly accessible). That satisfied both the first and second elements.

Fault. Because nothing suggested Velez is a public figure, she needed only to allege gross negligence, defined as conduct "that evinces a reckless disregard for the rights of others or 'smacks' of intentional wrongdoing." Here the court leaned on the notice allegation. "If true, Defendants, as operators and managers of the Website, should have had regard for the accuracy of its business listings, especially when personally contacted by a listing's owner," the opinion states. "At this stage, because Defendants were on notice as to the erroneous listing, but failed to act, Plaintiff has sufficiently alleged gross negligence."

Falsity. Velez alleged that she does not offer massages of these types, which was enough at the pleading stage.

Per se. New York recognises four categories of defamation per se: charging a serious crime, injuring someone in their trade or profession, claiming a loathsome disease, and imputing unchastity to a woman. The court relied on the trade or profession category.

"[T]he terms associated with her business listing ('exotic,' 'Russian,' 'gay,' and even 'nude') impugn the basic integrity of a legitimate therapeutic massage business and suggest instead that the plaintiff is offering sexualized services," Judge Clarke wrote. "Especially when considered together, these explicit and unambiguous terms clearly color Plaintiff's business in a salacious light and suggest that she offers services designed to provide sexual gratification - even a form of prostitution."

The court reasoned that "an average, reasonable consumer would not engage such a masseuse when desiring a legitimate massage therapist." It drew on Pierce v. Better Holdco, a 2023 Southern District case, to hold that the listing imputed misconduct to the business and "clearly would affect reputational injury to her as a licensed therapist."

The defamation counts - One, Four, Seven, Ten and Thirteen - therefore survive.

Why the emotional distress claims failed

Both emotional distress theories were dismissed, and both on two independent grounds.

For NIED, New York generally requires a breach of duty that "unreasonably endangers the plaintiff's physical safety, or causes the plaintiff to fear for his or her own safety." None of the three recognised contexts - bystander, direct duty, or "special circumstances" such as a negligent HIV misdiagnosis or mishandled remains - applied. The claims were also duplicative of the defamation counts.

For IIED, the bar is conduct "so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency." The court found the listing statements "fall well short of a malicious campaign of harassment or intimidation." And again, Velez pleaded no facts beyond those supporting her defamation claims.

These were dismissed with prejudice, which means they cannot be refiled.

What the opinion does not address

Several questions that would interest the directory and local search industry are absent from the 34 pages.

The opinion contains no discussion of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the federal provision that shields online services from liability for content provided by third parties. The opinion does not say whether Thryv raised it; the motion to dismiss, as the court describes it, focused on New York defamation and emotional distress law. Whether the phrases were created by Thryv itself or supplied by someone else would bear on any such defence, and that remains unexamined. The Third Circuit in 2024 limited Section 230 protection for TikTok's algorithmic recommendations, finding the immunity did not cover a platform's own conduct beyond passive hosting.

The opinion also does not say how many people saw the listing, whether it still carries the phrases, or what Velez's business lost. Those are factual questions for discovery, which can now begin against Thryv. Because the court found libel per se, Velez does not need to prove specific financial losses to keep the claim alive.

Finally, the ruling is a pleading-stage decision. The court accepted the complaint's allegations as true, as it must on a motion to dismiss. Nothing in the opinion establishes that Thryv was in fact grossly negligent or that the listing caused harm.

Why this matters for marketers and local businesses

Business directories have been a core part of local marketing for decades, and the listings they publish are often syndicated, scraped or indexed by search engines. Velez found the phrases by searching her own name on Google - a detail that illustrates how directory pages travel well beyond the directory itself.

The ruling arrives as automated systems produce more descriptions of businesses that the businesses themselves never wrote. PPC Land has tracked a series of defamation suits over machine-generated claims. In 2025, Minnesota solar contractor Wolf River Electric sued Google for more than $110 million over AI-generated statements that it had been sued by the state attorney general, which had not happened. Conservative activist Robby Starbuck filed a $15 million defamation suit against Google in Delaware in October 2025, claiming its AI tools wrongly tied him to sexual misconduct accusations.

The Velez complaint does not allege that artificial intelligence produced the Yellow Pages phrases, and the opinion says nothing about how they were generated. But the court's reasoning on fault is relevant to any publisher of business information, automated or not: once the business owner complained and the operator "failed to act," the court treated that as enough to plead gross negligence. That places weight on how directory operators process correction requests.

Control over how a business appears online is a recurring theme in PPC Land's local search coverage. Google's own documentation has long stated that businesses cannot pay for better local rankings and must maintain accurate profiles. In June, PPC Land reported that Google Maps had begun asking users whether businesses paid for reviews, with one business's data showing 1,045 review deletions in December 2025 alone. In Germany, businesses have used Digital Services Act reporting tools to remove critical reviews from Google, Tripadvisor and Trustpilot. The disputes in each case concern who controls the words attached to a business, and what happens when those words are wrong.

The venue ruling carries its own message for platforms with self-service listings. Thryv's terms of use say every business owner who supplies information for a free listing is bound by them, including a Texas forum clause. The court did not reject that idea outright. It found that Thryv had not shown, with evidence about the interface, that a sole proprietor ever saw or agreed to those terms. For companies that rely on hyperlinked terms to channel litigation to a home court, the opinion is a specific list of what was missing: placement, sizing, colouring, and whether any assent mechanism existed at all.

Defamation suits involving online reviews and creator content also continue to reach federal courts. A fitness equipment maker, for example, sued a Connecticut YouTuber in 2025 over a negative product review, combining defamation with Lanham Act false advertising claims.

What happens next

The court said it will separately issue a notice of an initial pretrial conference. With the transfer motion denied, the case stays in White Plains. With Storey dismissed, Thryv - as the sole surviving entity of the corporate defendants, according to its own filing - is the defendant that must answer the defamation counts.

The $15 million demand remains in the complaint as requested relief tied to those counts. Whether any of it is recoverable depends on evidence not yet before the court, including how the phrases were attached to the listing, how long they remained, and what was done after Velez asked for them to be corrected.

Timeline

  • August 27, 2024 - The Third Circuit limits Section 230 immunity for TikTok's algorithmic recommendations in Anderson v. TikTok.
  • October 2024 - According to Velez's declaration, she begins speaking with Thryv employee Daniel Storey by telephone about her Yellow Pages listing.
  • On or about February 7, 2025 - Velez searches her name on Google and finds her listing tied to "Russian," "Nude Gay" and "Exotic" massage phrases in Newburgh, NY.
  • Several days after February 7, 2025 - Velez asks the defendants to correct or remove the listing; according to the complaint, it stays unchanged.
  • March 11, 2025 - Wolf River Electric files its defamation suit against Google over AI-generated statements in Minnesota state court.
  • August 2025 - Reports emerge of German businesses using Digital Services Act tools to remove critical reviews.
  • October 22, 2025 - Robby Starbuck sues Google for $15 million over AI-generated claims.
  • December 4, 2025 - Velez files her complaint in Orange County Supreme Court, seeking $15 million.
  • January 2, 2026 - Thryv removes the case to the Southern District of New York.
  • February 9, 2026 - Thryv moves to transfer the case to the Northern District of Texas or dismiss it.
  • February 17, 2026 - The court finds complete diversity among the parties.
  • March 2, 2026 - Velez's counsel files his first declaration in opposition.
  • March 9, 2026 - Thryv moves to strike that declaration and files its reply.
  • April 17, 2026 - Storey moves to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction or transfer.
  • May 11, 2026 - Velez files her own declaration describing multiple calls with Storey.
  • May 22, 2026 - Storey moves to strike Velez's declarations.
  • June 5, 2026 - PPC Land reports that Google Maps is asking users whether businesses paid for reviews.
  • June 8, 2026 - Velez's counsel files a third declaration.
  • August 13, 2026 - A San Jose judge denies xAI's bid to move a Grok case to Texas over faint terms.
  • September 2026 - A California judge rejects Anthropic's browsewrap argument against Reddit.
  • September 30, 2026 - Judge Clarke denies transfer, dismisses Storey, keeps the defamation claims and dismisses the emotional distress claims with prejudice.

Summary

Who: Laurie Velez, a licensed massage therapist in Orange County, New York, against Thryv, Inc. (the sole surviving entity of Yellowpages.com LLC, YP LLC and YP Holdings LLC) and Thryv employee Daniel Storey. United States District Judge Jessica G. L. Clarke decided the motions.

What: The court denied Thryv's motion to transfer the case to Texas under its website terms of use, dismissed Storey for lack of personal jurisdiction, kept Velez's libel per se claims over Yellow Pages listing phrases including "Nude Gay Massage in Newburgh, NY," and dismissed her emotional distress claims with prejudice. The complaint seeks $15 million.

When: The opinion and order was signed on September 30, 2026. The listing was discovered on or about February 7, 2025, and the suit was filed on December 4, 2025.

Where: The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, in White Plains, case 7:26-cv-00019, document 48. The listing concerned a business in Newburgh, New York.

Why: The court found Thryv offered no evidence of how its terms were shown to listed businesses, that phone calls from Iowa did not amount to transacting business in New York for a defamation claim, and that sexualised labels on a therapeutic massage listing, left in place after the owner complained, were enough to plead libel per se injuring her in her profession.