Google : An Interesting Case Against Google And A Claim Of Defamation By Andrea Davison
- The claimant acts in person. She claims in her Amended Particulars of Claim to have been an intelligence adviser to the Trade and Industry Select Committee investigating the supply of arms to Iraq, an issue which she herself investigated, and she says that she gave evidence in secret to Sir Richard Scott's inquiry into the supply of arms to Iraq and expects to give evidence to the Chilcott inquiry. She told me in the course of her submissions that she used to work in the intelligence services. When she retired, she became a Mental Health Advocate doing voluntary work with the mentally ill in North Wales, and she now runs a small business which provides services to businesses, such as mail, telephone and fax forwarding. She complains of a number of allegations published on the internet, on websites ultimately hosted by the fifth defendant, Google Inc., which provides the platform Blogger.com. These proceedings concern, in part, a blog hosted on Blogger.com by the second defendant, which carries articles written by the second defendant and contributed to by the third defendant, which the claimant alleges to be defamatory of her.
- On 20th January 2011 the claimant obtained an order from Master McCloud giving her permission to serve the fifth defendant out of the jurisdiction, namely in the United States. Her application did not make it clear on which ground in paragraph 3.1 of CPR Practice Direction 6B she relied, but it now seems clear, and she confirms, that she was intending to rely on paragraph 3.1(9), which enables the court to allow service out of a claim in tort where damage has been sustained within the jurisdiction.
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2011/3031.html
