A prominent Canadian businessman has been ordered to pay Google $500,000 for neglecting to remove a defamatory search result containing his name.
The individual, whose identity cannot be disclosed, filed a lawsuit against Google for sharing a link to a post that falsely accused him of being a child molester.
According to the plaintiff, his life and business suffered greatly as a result.
Google declined to comment on the matter.
In a ruling issued late last month, a judge in the Canadian province of Quebec ordered the technology company to pay the businessman C$500,000 ($371,652; £298,200) in damages, stating that the defamatory post had turned his life into a “walking nightmare.”
Judge Azimuddin Hussain wrote in his ruling, “Like Franz Kafka’s character Josef K. in The Trial, the Plaintiff awoke one day to discover himself accused of a crime he did not commit.”
“In the case of the Plaintiff, he was accused of having been previously convicted of a particularly heinous offence,” he wrote.
The unidentified businessman in his early seventies accused Google of disseminating the defamatory post via its search engine.
He stated that he uncovered the post in 2007 after conducting a search for his own name. Since then, he reported that prospective clients have withdrawn from agreements due to the post.
His acquaintances testified that they refused to help him find employment because they believed his reputation was irreparably damaged.
One of the man’s reputedly prominent sons testified that his girlfriend’s parents refused to meet his father because of the post.
According to the ruling, the individual repeatedly requested that Google remove the post over the course of several years.
Google removed the post from its Canadian search results in 2009, but it reappeared in 2011 and remained on the US version of the site.
The post subsequently reappeared in 2015. The man wrote to Google again requesting removal, but the company refused.
In his decision, Judge Hussain stated that the case poses “unprecedented questions” in Quebec law regarding the extent of a company’s liability when it shares false and defamatory internet posts of individuals on its search engine.
As Google had already determined that the post was sufficiently defamatory to warrant removal from its Canadian website, the judge ruled that the company committed an error in allowing the link to reappear.
The plaintiff is said to be a lawyer and businessman who once assisted in a high-profile US Senate investigation and worked on the campaign of a former Canadian prime minister.
According to the ruling, he then pursued a prosperous career as a real estate broker and developer.
The judge wrote about the businessman, “Before, he was a colossal personality, full of arrogance and self-confidence.” He wrote that after the post, the man “became a shell of his former self, prone to anger, reclusiveness, excessive drinking, and suicidal ideation.”
Google argued during the trial that Quebec defamation law did not apply to the case and that it was not required by US law to remove the damaging post from its search engine.
In response to inquiries from the BBC, the California-based business declined to comment on the matter.
Instead, it highlighted its existing protocols and procedures for identifying potentially detrimental content.
Google’s website states, “We treat inappropriate content seriously” and provides a link to a form where users can report content for removal.
Another post on Google’s website explained that the search engine uses “automated systems to discover content from the web and other sources” and that the company has “carefully developed” policies to identify potentially detrimental content.
