An Adelaide woman has won a second defamation case against Google, after a court found the search engine knowingly put derogatory comments about her online despite her winning $100,000 from the company in a similar case in 2015.
South Australia's Supreme Court found that Janice Duffy, 66, was defamed by the comments in search results published on google.com.au in 2015 and 2016.
However, Google will not have to pay damages for search results on google.com because the judge found it could not be proved beyond the balance of probabilities that they were seen in Australia.
The amount of damages and costs owed has still to be determined.
Dr Duffy won her first case against Google in October 2015, with a judge ruling that the tech company was liable for defamatory material about her that appeared in its search results from a second American website called Ripoff Report.
The former researcher for SA Health took Google to court a second time a year later over search results that appeared on the website between October 2015 and October 2016.
Judge says Google should have been proactive
During the trial, Dr Duffy told the court the comments made her feel "absolutely sick, mortified and humiliated", and she suffered "extreme embarrassment and distress" knowing they could be seen by personal and professional acquaintances when they searched her name.
Google claimed a defence of "innocent dissemination" — because it could not know of defamatory search results without being notified of them.
But Auxiliary Justice Sydney Tilmouth found the company had "the means at hand to easily locate them if it had wanted to" despite Ripoff Report apparently deliberately repeatedly changing the structure of its website to avoid search results disappearing.
"It was entirely reactive rather than proactive in the removals process," he said.
"In truth, Dr Duffy and her legal advisors (when they were engaged) were effectively stuck on a never-ending treadmill from which she could not escape: of identifying complete URLs; securing removal by Google; only to find the same posts with altered URLs inexorably reappearing whilst Google stood by doing nothing itself."
Justice Tilmouth found in his judgement handed down on Friday that search results on google.com.au were defamatory, and that Google was "proven to have participated in the communication" of the results "so as to render it liable as a secondary publisher".
He also dismissed the company's second defence of triviality, that Dr Duffy "was unlikely to sustain any harm".
Difficulty in bringing case to court
Dr Duffy represented herself during the trial and said she was happy but exhausted having begun her first case 11 years ago.
"If by speaking out, this brings out the issue or puts the issue on the public agenda, I will feel much better," she said.
"There is nowhere for people to go in Australia — eSafety [Commission] won't help in cases of defamation, the police can't do anything and the lawyers say, 'Oh, just get a lawyer, take Google to court'.
"You try to take Google to court and 11 years later Google have spent several millions of dollars trying to force you to go away and back down.
"People need help."
Google Australia was contacted for comment.
