A man is falsely accused of being involved in various incidents. Businessmen turn away from him, his career is destroyed. Now he has successfully sued Google, which did not want to remove the false accusations.
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Google and a man from Canada have been disputing for years over a series of search results. In these, the man was falsely referred to as a criminal. He sued Google because he believed that the search engine had ruined his career.
Friends, colleagues, and business partners could have found links about him with the search engine.
Man is falsely accused, Google does not want to remove links
Which post was involved? A businessman searched for his name with the search engine and found a post that falsely accused him of child abuse. The article about him was published in April 2006, which is now 17 years ago. And that caused quite a stir:
- Business partners wanted nothing to do with him.
- His son, who worked in the same industry, had to distance himself from him.
- His company suffered significant losses.
But the founder of this website steadfastly refused to remove the post. The owner of the site stated that he would never remove posts and demanded that the man provide proof of his innocence, that he had never been charged with the crime.
The man asks Google for help: Since the businessman could not have the post removed in this way, he turned to Google to have the link to the article deleted. This went on for years, as sometimes Google deleted the links, but they later reappeared.
Google argued that it could not be held liable for third-party content and had no obligation to remove the links. However, the Supreme Court did not follow this reasoning.
How did the lawsuit turn out? Initially, the plaintiff demanded 6 million US dollars in damages. However, the court did not grant this. Instead, the man was awarded 500,000 dollars for moral damages. This is around 450,000 euros.
Because the former businessman was personally burdened and lost a lot of money due to the defamation, stated the court.
In addition, Google must remove all links to the corresponding post in the Canadian city of Quebec and may not display any information about the case for 45 days.
Another company is now being sued for a lot of money:
