Dr Janice Duffy preparing second Google defamation claim, less than a year after $115,000 victory
GOOGLE has failed to remove — and has continued to publish — false and damaging claims about an Adelaide academic despite a $115,000 defamation judgment, a court has heard.
GOOGLE has failed to remove — and has continued to publish — false and damaging claims about an Adelaide academic despite a $115,000 defamation judgment, a court has heard.
Counsel for Dr Janice Duffy are preparing to mount a second lawsuit against the global internet giant, less than a year after claiming victory.
They say the company has failed to learn from its loss and continues to let harmful, vicious accusations against her be spread by its patented search engine algorithm.
But Google has hit on two fronts, not only denying the new allegations but challenging its original loss in the state’s highest court, seeking to have it overturned.
Dr Duffy, 59, filed her lawsuit in 2011 in response to claims made about her on “shaming” websites that allow posts regardless of their factual accuracy.
She asserted she had sued Google to have links to the material removed because, for two years, it refused her written requests to take action on her behalf.
Google denied any wrongdoing, claiming it had disseminated the material “innocently”, was not its publisher, was justified, and protected by both qualified privilege and contextual truth.
In October, the court rejected Google’s arguments and found it had defamed Dr Duffy, awarding her $115,000 in damages in December.
On Thursday, Ted Guthrie, for Dr Duffy, asked the Supreme Court to permit a second lawsuit — because, under state law, an entity cannot be sued twice without judicial approval.
Her legal team will assert that, 10 days after the judgment, Google had yet to remove links to the material, that it has “been re-indexed under new URLs” and is therefore still accessible.
They will further assert the auto-complete on some Google search engines continues to link users to the defamatory material and claim that constitutes “further publication” under the law.
Mr Guthrie also asked a portion of the $115,000 judgment — frozen pending Google’s appeal — be released to finance his client’s second lawsuit.
Peter Campbell, for Google, said he had yet to receive instructions from his client regarding the proposed second lawsuit.
He suggested it would be more practical for the court to waive its fees and then adjourn Dr Duffy’s second claim until the appeal had been finalised.
Justice Malcolm Blue noted the court’s filing fee was $2520, making it a “relatively small” amount for Google to pay, and ordered the money be released.
He adjourned further consideration of the proposed second lawsuit to a date to be set, after the Full Court’s decision on Google’s appeal.
