The owner of a Hepburn Airbnb property has folded in a high-stakes legal battle to compel internet giants Google and TripAdvisor to identify several guests who he claimed left potentially defamatory reviews of his luxury accommodation.
David Penman, the owner of Clifftop at Hepburn, has withdrawn his Federal Court case against the popular review websites and agreed to pay a significant portion of their legal costs.
Airbnb property owner David Penman in 2020.Credit: Simon Schluter
A TripAdvisor spokesman hailed the court orders, made on August 21, as a “win for the travel community”.
“TripAdvisor is built on the premise that it is important to allow travellers to easily share and read authentic reviews – both good and bad – to help guide decision-making when planning trips,” said Mark Scodie, the assistant general counsel for TripAdvisor.
Scodie said it was the company’s “duty” to contest Penman’s legal bid and protect the anonymity of reviewers on its website.
“If businesses were permitted to pressure customers to remove critical opinions, the result could be withholding information from TripAdvisor’s community of travellers, thereby resulting in a less-informed travelling public,” he said.
David Penman’s property Clifftop at Hepburn, which was the subject of the bad reviews.
The collapse of the case delivers a major slap down to Penman, who had previously vowed to unmask those behind the negative reviews and pursue them in court for defamation.
“This is a fake review as this guest has never stayed with us. Another in a number of recent fake reviews aimed at damaging our brand as much as possible. The Federal Court claim that has already been filed will unearth the author of this review even if they are hiding behind a VPN [virtual private network],” Penman posted on Google Reviews in May.
Penman’s company had asked the court for Google and TripAdvisor to release the names, phone numbers, email addresses and metadata associated with the accounts, along with internet protocol addresses, according to legal documents.
Penman and his lawyer, Zac Griffiths, did not respond to requests for comment.
Clifftop at Hepburn claims on its website to have been “crowned No.1 from 55,000 rental homes”. Penman has fiercely defended his business’s ranking and reputation, but has previously crossed the line on occasions.
He was fined $2500 without conviction in Moorabbin Magistrates’ Court in May last year, after pleading guilty to using a carriage device to harass a former guest, who said his award-winning guesthouse was “Just OK” while leaving a two-star review out of a possible five stars.
In an expletive-laden message left on the woman’s answering machine on May 1, 2021, Penman was heard saying: “You obviously didn’t do your research about the defamation case on Google ... don’t bother removing your review, don’t bother offering to settle. I’ll see you in f---ing court, you better have a lot of money.”
Penman was also placed on a diversion order in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court in February 2022, after admitting to sending a barrage of threatening messages to another former guest in June 2021.
That guest had claimed in a review on TripAdvisor that his booking had been abruptly cancelled following a minor dispute over the price of a second room. Penman took exception to the claim.
The court heard in that case that in one email, Penman wrote: “Tomorrow 25,000 people in Melbourne are going to know ... what a scumbag you are”.
Google did not respond to requests for comment from The Age.
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