‘Right to be forgotten’ court win

Result has huge implications

A legal victory over the “right to be forgotten” has important implications for primary online publishers, say lawyers.

Carter-Ruck represented two businessman – convicted of criminal offences years ago – who argued their convictions were now legally “spent” and they had been rehabilitated.

The law firm said the claims were “ground-breaking” and “unprecedented”.

Yesterday in London, Mr Justice Warby ruled in favour of one of the men, identified as NT2, who was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for “conspiracy to carry out surveillance”.

He said that an “appropriate delisting order” would be made in his case, which related to complaints about 11 “source publications”. The judge rejected the claim brought by the other man, NT1, who complained about three links returned by Google providing information about his conviction for “conspiracy to account falsely”, for which he received a sentence of four years.

Google contested both claims.

The men complained of results returned by Google Search that feature links to third-party reports about their convictions. Their claims, said the judge, were based on the “right to be forgotten” or, “more accurately” the right to have personal information delisted or de-indexed.

Carter-Ruck said the judgment had “important implications for primary online publishers”.

It had “wide-ranging and general implications for take-down requests and subsequent action in relation to inaccurate personal data and references to spent convictions on the internet”.

The judge said the delisting claims were not an abuse of process as Google alleged.