Adelaide researcher Dr Janice Duffy takes on internet giant Google in Supreme Court trial
IN a South Australian-first, internet juggernaut Google is being sued by an Adelaide academic who claims she has been defamed by a US-based website it links to.
IN a South Australian-first, internet giant Google is being sued by an Adelaide academic who claims she has been defamed by a US-based website it links to.
Former SA health researcher Dr Janice Duffy has been battling Google and Google Australia for the past six years after defamatory material was posted on the website that she claims has left her “unemployable’’.
Despite repeated requests, Google has not removed all links to the website ripoffreport.com — a “shaming’’ platform that allows anyone to post reports about people whom they suspect are behaving in a criminal or dishonest manner, regardless of its factual accuracy.
The case, which could have significant ramifications for all search engines if Dr Duffy is successful, will start in the Supreme Court before Justice Malcolm Blue on Monday after four years of painstaking directions hearings and discovery manoeuvres by both sides.
Dr Duffy, 59, who is representing herself because she has no money to continue paying lawyers, said she “had no choice but to take the company to court’’ in an effort to have the material removed.
She said while Google had removed some links after she commenced legal action, “it was never removed completely’’ and the website had subsequently returned it under other URLs.
“I only ever wanted it removed; that’s all I asked from day one,’’ she said.
“That’s all people who are bullied want, for it to stop.
“This fight has destroyed me financially, emotionally and physically.’’
Dr Duffy said she had been unemployed since she was forced to leave her SA Health position in 2010 after her colleagues learnt of the false claims about her on the website, and she believed she had not been able to find work since because of it.
She said that she had since suffered intense depression and often contemplated suicide because of the situation, but was determined to have Google remove the links and seek compensation through the court action.
“I have not been able to obtain employment since these posts were made. The first thing a prospective employer does is Google your name and it’s there, so that’s as far as I get with them,’’ she said.
Dr Duffy said the website charges people up to $10,000 per page to remove offending material, but she could not afford this as she had spent all of her savings and superannuation fighting Google in court.
She still owes her former lawyers $100,000.
In the Queensland Supreme Court in April, Brisbane businessman Jarrod Sierocki won $287,788 in damages against two men who had posted defamatory material on the same website, ripoffreport.com, that is at the centre of Dr Duffy’s case.
While Mr Sierocki successfully sued the authors of the material, Dr Duffy cannot do so because she does not know the authors of the material defaming her.
In its defence, Google claims its activities do not render it “a publisher at all, or in the alternative, the publisher of the matters complained of’’.