The High Court has ordered that a website which allows consumers to ‘name and shame’ lawyers whose services they are unhappy with to close after ruling its publisher had breached libel, data protection and harassment laws.
Solicitorsfromhell.co.uk has now been shutdown and its publisher Rick Kordowski permanently barred from republishing some information contained on the site in the future. He was also banned from transferring control of the personal data contained about solicitors named on the site to others.
The Law Society, representing all firms and solicitors in England and Wales, led the calls for the injunctions against Kordowski. It successfully claimed the comments on the website contained “malicious and defamatory allegations about solicitors” and that personal data contained on the site had been processed unlawfully. It also successfully argued that Kordowski had caused harassment to the lawyers because the postings had caused them distress and alarm.
Mr Justice Tugendhat said that Kordowski was a “public nuisance” who was “in effect a vexatious litigant who is a defendant”. The judge rejected his claims that solicitorsfromhell.co.uk provided a “public service”.
Kordowski had said the ‘blacklist’ of firms and solicitors contained on the site helped people choose legal services and encouraged members of the public to “expose wrongdoing” in the legal profession.
The judge rejected Kordowski’s claims that the comments contained on the site were protected by a general right to freedom of expression. Kordowski had failed to claim “any defence known to the law of libel” in order to justify the comments about lawyers and firms on his website, he said.
“He has not pleaded truth or honest opinion, and although he mentions [the right to freedom of expression] and public service, he has not formulated any defence of qualified privilege on a basis recognised by the law,” the judge said.
