Australian Real Estate Agents File Defamation Claim Against Google

Two real estate agents in Victoria, Australia have filed suit against Google. Mark Forytarz & Paul Castran claim defamation due to articles painting them in a negative light that can be found on the search engine. So…they’re filing suit for links. Here are Mark Forytarz’ search results.

The articles, found on Melbourne Indymedia, claim that Mark Forytarz bullied a mentally challenged man into selling his home in order to earn a $200k+ commission. The article further alleges that Paul Castran used fake bidders to inflate the prices of properties he sold.

Forytarz & Castran claim that the article paints them both in a negative light, and that they have suffered embarrassment & humiliation as a result. They asked Google to remove the links to the article a year ago, but Google did not comply.

So…this begs a few questions:

1) Why aren’t they suing Melbourne Indymedia? (Could it be a lack of Google-deep pockets?)
2) Why haven’t they launched a counter-PR campaign, explaining their side of the story?
3) How has this not been thrown out of court?

Original here