Australian man Jarrod Sierocki won a record payout last year over the appearance of online slurs.
He now alleges Google has made the material available again.
A Brisbane businessman has upped the ante in a defamation lawsuit against Google, seeking aggravated damages after the internet giant allegedly backflipped on its removal of search results highlighting online slurs against him.
Jarrod Sierocki was awarded a record defamation payout by the Queensland supreme court last year after suing a disgruntled former business partner and client over character attacks on sites including the controversial US-based ripoffreport.com.
Sierocki last week filed an amended claim in a separate suit against Google, claiming defamatory material it removed weeks after the landmark damages ruling was “subsequently again made available” through its search engine.
He is now seeking damages of $750,000, together with aggravated damages – which have no limit in Queensland – for “hurt” compounded by Google’s alleged backflip on the search engine results.
Sierocki’s claim says the search engine continued to publish the material despite Google being “aware, or ought to have been aware” it was defamatory because it was served with a copy of the judgment against his former associates.
He claims it also did so despite being given a copy of a permanent injunction Sierocki obtained against publication of the material, which included false claims he was “an adulterer, a fraud, a criminal, a liar, a conman and a sociopath”.
The court papers state Sierocki has asked Google to remove the slurs from its search engine results nine times since 2013.
His claim also seeks a fresh injunction against Google further publishing defamatory material.
Sierocki’s lawsuit, first launched in 2013, is the first of its kind against Google in Queensland. But it is one of a growing number of legal attempts worldwide to hold the popular web search engine to account for what it highlights for readers.
In April 2015, Justice Peter Flanagan awarded Sierocki damages of $260,000 plus $37,788 interest against former associates Paul Klerk and Brent Thompson.
The payout amount was four times as large as the previous highest amount awarded by a supreme court judge under a Queensland defamation regime that has capped damages awards since 1995.
But Sierocki is unlikely to receive any of the payout after pursuing both Klerk and Thompson into bankruptcy.
When Klerk and Thompson launched attacks on Sierocki’s reputation via ripoffreport.com, the site forced the pair to acknowledge the material could not be removed even at their own request.
Flanagan, who heard evidence from a forensic computer scientist, said he accepted the ripoffreport.com posts against Sierocki were “extremely difficult, if not impossible, to remove”.
“Even today, Google has [Sierocki] listed on the first page of the image search results with a picture of a person with a black hood over their head with two holes for the eyes and one hole for the mouth which looks something like a Klu Klux Klan hood,” Flanagan said in a written judgment on 17 April last year.
Google filed a notice of intention to defend Sierocki’s original claim in 2013. It is yet to file a response to his amended claim.
