The High Court on Wednesday found Google was not the publisher of a defamatory article by The Age about Victorian lawyer George Defteros, as it was a search engine that only provided hyperlinks to such content.
"In reality, a hyperlink is merely a tool which enables a person to navigate to another webpage," the judgment said.
Google took the matter to the High Court after Victoria's Court of Appeal refused its attempts to overturn a defamation finding in 2021.
The Victorian court found Google was the publisher of the defamatory article because its search results were instrumental in communicating the content to readers.
But a majority of High Court justices found Google did not help The Age communicate the story to third party users and said the search engine's results just "facilitated access" to the story.
"The appellant [Google] did not in any way authorise the article to be written or published. And there was no submission that the appellant had ratified the communication of the article," the court said.
The High Court rejected Mr Defteros' claim that search results "enticed" the person searching the website, finding a person would already be looking for information before the result is received.
"It is difficult to see how this level of excitement could be said to be generated by the words of the search result," the court said.
Mr Defteros had clients including gangsters Alphonse Gangitano and Mario Condello, and underworld identity Mick Gatto.
He was charged alongside Condello with the conspiracy to murder and incitement to murder killer Carl Williams, his father George and another man.
These charges were later dropped and he successfully sued Google in 2016, arguing its publication of a 2004 article by The Age about his arrest on conspiracy and incitement to murder charges had defamed him.
Google was notified of the defamatory article in February 2016, 11 years after it was published by The Age, but did not remove it until December that year.
In 2020, Supreme Court Justice Melinda Richards ruled the article implied that Mr Defteros crossed a line from professional lawyer to confidant and friend of criminal elements and ordered he receive $40,000 in damages.
Mr Defteros has been ordered to pay Google's appeal costs.
19°C