Dr. Armani Lawsuit against the Hair Transplant Network

As a valued stakeholder in this patient based community, you have a right to know about actions that affect this community. I am writing to inform you that Dr. Alvi Armani has filed a lawsuit against this community. Yes, here we go again. Yet another doctor does not feel that me or certain other members of this forum community have the right to express our opinions or share our experiences. Fortunately our forefathers had the good sense to make the first amendment protecting free speech the very first amendment. Many people, including me, have expressed numerous reservations online about Dr. Armani and his questionable ethics, deceptive marketing practices, as well as issues with his technique, etc. etc. etc. Two posters, one of whom claimed to be a patient of Dr. Armani, were banned on Hair Loss Help when they expressed reservations about Dr. Armani,his practice and his results. They then came to this forum and exercised their right to share their experiences and concerns. One of Dr. Armani’s online representatives then contacted us. We encouraged them to exercise their right to reply and refute any claims that they felt were not accurate. However, instead of replying they chose to sue this community. The willingness of this community to allow these posters to exercise their right to free speech on this forum is one of the reasons for this lawsuit. Perhaps Dr. Armani has the mistaken notion that I will be intimidated by his lawsuit and that I will back down. He’s dead wrong. I’m prepared to go the distance. The freedom of expression that we all enjoy on this forum is not free. This is not the first lawsuit of this kind and it won’t be the last. Perhaps with the $14 per graft that Dr. Armani charges he can afford to shovel money at his large law firm. But no matter how much money doctor Armani spends, he will fail to disband the first amendment and our rights to continue expressing our genuine and truthful opinions and experiences. If this lawsuit is not immediately withdrawn I will be required to justify in detail the numerous reasons why I believe Dr. Armani and his marketing operations are unethical. This may include providing dozens of links to topics on multiple discussion forums, which demonstrate that the ethical concerns I have about Dr. Armani are widely shared by both patients and doctors. I will also present opinions from leading physicians detailing why they believe Dr. Armani’s presentation of his surgical services is deceptive. If any members of this forum community are threatened by a clinic for expressing their genuine and honest opinions and experiences please contact me. This community will stand ready to aid in your legal defense, while continuing to give you a forum for expressing your sincere opinions. I also invite Dr. Armani and his staff of paid online representatives to join this discussion and present their point of view. This patient based community has fought an uphill battle over the past ten years to make physician accountability and free speech the established norm. No lawsuit is going to take this away. Onwards and Upwards, Patrick Hennessey, Publisher of the Hair Transplant Network