An Australian citizen received damages worth AUD 200,000 from search engine giant Google on November 12, 2012. A jury found that the internet giant defamed Milorad Trkulja, after it found that Google had published material linking him to mobsters.
Trkulja, who is now 62 years old was shot in the back in the year 2004 in a crime which was never solved. Trkulja had accused the search engine of defaming him with material published by the internet company, which according to him implied that he was a major crime figure in Melbourne and had been a target of a professional hit.
On searching for Milorad name on Google’s search engine, references to the city’s gangster’s list surfaced, including crime boss Tony Mokbel. Even a defunct site known as Melbourne Crime, which had narrated gang related incident also showed up in searches, leading to gross defamation according to Milorad’s lawyers.
In 2009, Trkulja’s lawyers wrote to the search engine giant demanding action against the questionable content. However, a spokesperson from Google said that the content of the sites that showed on Google’s search results were controlled by the site’s webmaster’s and not by Google themselves, however the jury ruled in the 62-year-old’s favor and found that the internet site had been on notice and did not act on the issue since October 2009.
