Guilt by Association Can Get You Sued: Google and Defamation

An Australian jury has found Google liable for damages following on a successful defamation action by a Melbourne man who argued that he had been defamed by the Search engine after it linked him wrongly to gangland crime. The man aged 62 claimed Google’s web and image search results had caused damage to his reputation such as to give rise to his action. The 62 year old  had already won a related case against Yahoo.

The facts giving rise to the case occurred in 2004, when the man was shot in the back by a man wearing a balaclava (a crime which was never solved). As a result of the attack a Google search for the man brings up images of other people who appeared in news reports and the man claims the pictures show murderers and a drug trafficker which could lead users to believe he was a criminal and could injure his reputation.

As a result of the suit Google was forced to cough up more than $200,000 in damages.

This case is certainly an interesting development and could open many other plausible assaults on the Google and other search engine providers, especially in these days when the first place people seek information about you is in a search engine like Google, Yahoo, Seek or even social media sites like Facebook and Linked Inn.

It becomes interesting to consider at what point in the context of the internet is the individual responsible for his fate and at what point does the Internet Service, Search Engine or Service become liable.