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French Blogger Fined For Negative Restaurant Review

Posted by Soulskill on from the enjoy-your-streisand-effect dept.

An anonymous reader sends an article about another case in which a business who received a negative review online decided to retaliate with legal complaints. In August of last year, a French food blogger posted a review of an Italian restaurant called Il Giardino. The restaurant owners responded with legal threats based on the claim that they lost business from search results which included the review. The blogger deleted the post, but that wasn't enough. She was brought to court, and a fine of €1,500 ($2,040) was imposed. She also had to pay court costs, which added another €1,000 ($1,360). The blogger said, "Recently several writers in France were sentenced in similar proceedings for defamation, invasion of privacy, and so on. ... I don't see the point of criticism if it's only positive. It's clear that online, people are suspicious of places that only get positive reviews."

10 of 424 comments (clear)

  1. Barbara Streisand award by ocsibrm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When are these businesses going to learn that when you lawyer up against negative reviews, it suddenly becomes *newsworthy* and only makes the situation that much worse. Maybe if they spent their legal fees on training for their waitstaff, they wouldn't get those negative reviews to start with. Crazy thought, I know.

    1. Re:Barbara Streisand award by ray-auch · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Full blown Barbara Streisand indeed. They apparently wanted the blog changed because the restaurant name in the title was putting the negative review high in the search results.

      So instead, you google it now (il giardino lege cap ferret) and the first search results (at least from UK) are google+ reviews and yelp reviews (mostly 1 star, all since court verdict), and tripadvisor reviews, again with a low score due to whole pile of 1-stars added since the court verdict. Oh, and links to news of the court verdict.

      Lawyer-up, load-up, point down, pull trigger.

    2. Re:Barbara Streisand award by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yep, people make snarky comments, but when I read stuff like this, it just places France lower and lower on my list of tourist destinations, and makes me prioritize other European countries where I've never heard of this crap happening, such as Germany and Denmark. It's not just this case with this restaurant; it seems I regularly see negative stuff in the press about France (remember the case of the Google Glass-wearing guy getting beaten by the staff at McDonald's in Paris? Or how about the big anti-gay protests? Or the recent news item about a bunch of Muslims attacking a French synagogue in response to Israeli activity in Gaza? Or the general problem of lots of poor and violent Muslims in French cities?), whereas I almost never hear anything bad about most other (northern/western) European nations.

  2. TripAdvisor by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's some TripAdvisor's reviews on that particular restaurant.

  3. So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Reading few analysis about the judgement : the court did not make the condemnation for the article but only for the title ("A place to avoid in Cap-Ferret : Il Giardino"). The court did not order a single modification to the article content, only of its title (plus the fine). The author of the post also decided to not be defended by a lawyer during the court audition (which would have probably changed the outcome of the judgement according to other specialized lawyers). Also, this decision could have been broken in a second court if the author made the decision. Instead she voluntarily removed the article from her blog. Finally, this decision can not be referred to for future cases in France (do to the nature of the case).

    So yes, of course, seemingly against free-speech decision but not really as dramatic as many of you try to depict it.

  4. Re:I wanted to write about this place by ShakaUVM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can, you just need to phrase it right -

    "I love how you can always find a table there!"

    "You never need to tip the servers!"

    "The bartender was at his best when serving Bud Light!"

  5. My advice to her by Rashdot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't write a court review.

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  6. Re:Too true... by Pieroxy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    French here. The lady owner of the blog did not choose to lawyer up and went there to defend herself. The restaurant just wanted her to change the title of the blog post which was along the line of "The place to avoid at Cap-Ferret: Il Giardino" (where Cap-Ferret is the name of the town the restaurant is in). They just wanted the name of the restaurant removed from the title because it was 2nd place on Google and was starting to be detrimental to their business. She removed the blog post entirely on her own. It appears she doesn't intend to counter sue.

    It pretty much looks like something that would not have happened if the defendant was properly represented.

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  7. Re:Livin' in the USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had RTFA. http://www.arretsurimages.net/breves/2014-07-08/Critique-de-restaurant-blogueuse-condamnee-id17677
    Says she didn't take a lawyer (she didn't think she had the time to get them up to speed with what was going on) and won't appeal. A lawyer (maître Eolas) that does a lot of vulgarisation about french justice says that he doesn't know of another judgement against a noncommercial personal blog, and he thinks the problem might be that she didn't get a lawyer.

    The actual review is on the webarchive. Reviewer and her mother used to go to that restaurant and have a good time. That time wasn't great, food came as the same time as apéritifs. Reads quite factual, and it is tagged as a piece of personal experience.

  8. Re:Too true... by countach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Properly represented? You shouldn't even be in court in the first place to need representation just because you made a comment about a restaurant.

    And if this blog article comes up "too high" in Google's search for the town, can you seriously blame the blogger? Blame Google if you want to blame anyone, but don't blame the blogger because of Google's page rank algorithms.