Defamation by investors - defamation against a company and defamation against directors

In a case that is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK concerning online defamation by investors against a company, online defamation and social media specialist solicitor firm Cohen Davis won damages for its PLC client, a gold mining company Red Rock Resources (RRR) after the company was defamed on social media by one of its small yet vocal investors.

Questions about defamatory online reviews

Many people genuinely believe and even insist that review websites are there to enhance consumer’s ability to make the right choice or to educate them in choosing; a reputable supplier, a builder, an estate agent or even a holiday provider - and they are dead wrong. The truth is that the vast majority of those who operate review websites have clever systems that are aimed at benefitting them financially by encouraging visitors to their website to write negative reviews. This is often achieved by attacking and consequently destroying the reputation of good, honest and well established businesses across the UK.

Are fake reviews legal in the UK?

Writing a fake online review has never been easier. A fast growing industry of online review ‎websites leaves very little hope to those business owners who want to play it fair. ‎

The number of fake online reviews is constantly growing. A significant number of fake online ‎reviews are written by business owners who often act in despair after becoming ‎victims of fake online reviews.‎

Meet Gary. Gary was a small investor in listed public companies who held shares in a gold mining company RRR PLC. As an active investor, Gary used to be involved in online investment forums such as Interactive Investors.

Company directors often prefer to remove damaging webpages from public sight by using a discrete method to push the derogatory webpages down in the search results of Google.

This method often results in satisfactory resolution of many of the issues that negative webpages may bring on a company generally and on its sales team in particular.

Every organisation needs to carry out reputation risk analysis on a regular basis.

But at times of online reputation crisis, risk analysis is even more crucial than ever and needs to sit at the heart of the reputation recovery strategy. A reputation recovery strategy that encapsulates continuing reputation risk analysis will typically follow these steps:

Internet defamation, is becoming more and more a survival issue for a growing number of individuals and organisations across the UK.

In most cases where we are instructed to remove defamation from the internet, we do so successfully and without putting our clients through expensive litigation. In most cases we can facilitate the removal of defamatory web pages through an affordable, yet persuasive Cease and Desist letter or by negotiations.

Even if the offending website is located outside the jurisdiction of the English Courts, a well drafted letter might still be sufficient to have the defamatory content removed.

However, more and more internet service providers such as Google and Bing ask for a court order before they agree to remove defamation from their websites, unless we can point their legal departments to specific breaches of their own terms and conditions of use. 

In 99% of the cases, Google will remove defamatory webpages upon receipt of a copy of a claim form. This often meets our client's objectives, which means that there is no longer a need to pursue the matter further and at additional costs.

Read more: Obtaining injunctions against Google

Case Study:

Meet Rodney.

As a busy director of a small company that prides itself in excellent customer care, Rodney was surprised to discover an anonymous blog post on Blogger, which referred to him and to his company as 'fraud' and 'scam'.

Rodney believed that the blog post was created by a competitor but he was unable to prove this. Rodney wrote to Google several times and asked them to remove the defamatory blog post but he never received a reply.  He then contacted a number of defamation solicitors who advised him that bringing a court action to order Google to remove the blog post will cost him between £15,000 - £20,000, which was his company's entire annual marketing budget.

Rodney's company was turning just over £500,000 per annum so he now had to make some important financial decisions. Should he invest the entire marketing budget in a court action, which might or might not be successful or perhaps should he use the money to manipulate the search engines so that the defamatory blog be kept away from public view?

By working with Rodney, we helped him to identify a practical solution to his problem.

Instead of embarking on a full legal action for defamation, we advised him to apply for a limited court order which told Google to provide information about the identity of the blogger (order known as Norwich Pharmacal Order) at the approximate cost of £2,000. Upon receipt of a copy of the application, Google immediately removed the blog post.

Rodney's goal of removing the defamatory blog was achieved and at the same time, his action sent a clear message to his competitor that he was being serious about pursuing the identity of those who defame his company.  

Review websites are either Industry Specific or Multi Area. They create an image of a service for the public good whilst in fact, they are commercial enterprises, they are not altruistic. Their commodity is YOUR reputation, and it's free of charge. Review websites often claim to have a right to publish without responsibility for content. This claim is false; in many cases operators of review websites are also the publishers and often the editors of the posts and are therefore liable to you for defamation.

When was the last time you searched online for information about ‎your own company? If the answer to this question is ‎‎“never” then you are not alone. But you also need to read on…‎

Many organisations spend little or no time in researching ‎themselves on the internet. This makes sense on the face of ‎it; what could you possibly learn that you don’t already ‎know? ‎But it is precisely this subconscious dismissal of the notion ‎that you could find something out that you don’t already ‎know that enables negative ‘information’ from going ‎undetected for so long and causing so much damage.