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'Bankrupt' Australian Surgeon Sues Google For Auto-Complete
An anonymous reader writes "Australian surgeon Guy Hingston is suing Google in the U.S. for 'auto-complete' defamation. Typing in his name brings up 'Guy Hingston bankrupt' in the auto-complete. The association seems to have come about because Hingston purchased an aviation group CoastJet which went bankrupt two-and-a-half years later. Hingston himself was also bankrupted. Hingston claims this association has cost him customers and is suing Google for $75k, plus court costs. Google has often found itself the target of litigation over auto-complete searches. Are auto-complete results even useful? Should Google be policing the auto-complete suggestions?"
Under Australian Law the Truth is a Defence to Defamation. You don't even need to show "public interest", just that what was said was "substantially true." http://www.thenewsmanual.net/Resources/medialaw_in_australia_02.html
But he's suing in America which has even stronger free speech laws! Good luck with that!
It wasn't overturned, his lawyer said it was annulled: "Separate documents obtained from Insolvency Trustee Services Australia show Dr Hingston was bankrupted on August 4 2009. Dr Hingston's lawyer Philip Beazley said that bankruptcy had been annulled."
...
http://www.itsa.gov.au/dir228/itsaweb.nsf/docindex/Bankruptcy-%3EPersonal+Insolvency+Information-%3E5F.+Annulment What is annulment?
Annulment is the cancellation of a bankruptcy.
There are three ways a bankruptcy can be annulled:
* The creditors’ debts including interest and trustee’s fees and expenses are paid in full.
* Your creditors accept a composition or arrangement which is an offer of something less than payment in full.
* Application to the court in some limited circumstances.
Effects of annulment.
* Your annulment is recorded on the public record, the National Personal Insolvency Index (NPII) database, forever.
* Assets not needed by your trustee to pay your creditors, expenses and fees will be returned to you.
etc
Here is the statement of claim. http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1221&context=historical
... ", into the Google search engine as a search, the words "Guy Hingston Bankrupt" appears. When the link(s) is clicked on, the article{s) to which the user is directed has absolutely nothing to do with a bankruptcy associated with Dr. Hingston. Dr. Hingston is not bankrupt. Any association with Dr. Hingston and a bankruptcy is in false light and/or defamatory. Dr. Hingston has directed numerous inquiries and made numerous requests, both oral and written, to Google for immediate action to resolve the foregoing issue to no avail."
"10. When an individual computer user types "Guy Hin
My compliments to his lawyer who resisted padding this out to 30 pages.
"Google's machine learning algorithm" is itself a misleading phrase, since Google refines their algorithm using actual people and is quite capable of refining it to avoid causing this guy problems--they just didn't do it to him. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/06/07/194210/google-outlines-the-role-of-its-human-evaluators http://slashdot.org/story/12/11/27/1435219/googles-manual-for-its-unseen-human-raters