Brussels, 19/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 16 January, the AFP agency announced that in December 2014, the Internet giant, Google, had had a ruling made against it for the first time by a French court. Google indicated that, “the decision by the European Court of Justice (in May 2014) raises a number of questions… In this particular case, the court asked us to withdraw this link, which we have done”.
The plaintiff pointed out that the first result for searches for their name and forename on Google were directed to an article on their three-year prison sentence (three months without parole) for fraud, which went back to 2006. According to the complainant, the existence of two links to the incriminating article published on Le Parisien newspaper website, could damage their job seeking opportunities. After having their right to be forgotten refused in September by Google, which judged that the article in question was in the public interest, the plaintiff went back to the courts. In a ruling made on 19 December last, the High Court in Paris ordered the US multinational to withdraw these search engine links within the following 10 days.
The court particularly took into account the eight-year period between publication of the article and the filing of the complaint. The judge also based their decision on the fact that the sentence for fraud was not included in the plaintiff's legal record, a document potential employers could have access to and therefore should not be included in search engine results. The court therefore ruled that the plaintiff's “request to be delisted is therefore upheld”. Costs were awarded to the plaintiff against Google but requests for other damages made by the former were rejected. Since the European Court of Justice's recognised the right to be forgotten, France has been one of the main European countries to request that these links be withdrawn, with this figure standing at 50,000 requests in the country at the present time. (SP)