Name and Shame
Have you ever named and shamed somebody, online or been tempted to or encouraged
somebody else. You need to be careful, with this one though because as the name
suggests name and shame the reason for posting making it publicly known is to
lower people’s impression of the person. who you’re posting about and it might be
something true that you’re posting but, you have to be really careful because in
Australia not every state has truth as a defense to defamation and in other
countries where you know if it’s on the internet people can access the material
it might be defamation in another, country so and if you’re encouraging
people to name and shame others online, be careful as well because you could be
taken to have given them advice legal. advice and if they rely on it they could
then sue you because it’s cost them to, defend a defamation action and it could
be tens of thousands of dollars. So I was in a business group on Facebook the
other day and I saw a lady had paid a man to take videos of her course and she
was very unhappy she said the videos, were terrible quality and she’d paid him
a lot of money and he refused to refund her the money and so on the one hand she
really wanted a refund but then on the other hand she was saying should I let
everybody know what he’s done should I explain how difficult he was to work
with how unprofessional he was and should I tell you who it is you want to
know. And a lot of people said yes to us I don’t want to use the same guy but a
lot of people said name and shame him name and shame him. And it’s a little bit
like a mob mentality but the reality is that if you do go ahead and name and
shame that guy even if he did completely mess it up you could be opening yourself
up to the up to defamation, so in that situation the answer to her question is
No! don’t name and shame him. Take him to court or go to mediation
QCAT if you are in Queensland small claims kind of court. The process is simple it’s easy
small businesses use it all the time to recover money he hasn’t provided what he promised and
that’s really the solution rather than risking your own livelihood and your own
money and your own reputation by being involved in in the the wrong side of a
defamation action. So my advice is don’t name and shame. And please don’t encourage
others to do it online My name is Cathryn Warburton and I’m the legal Liones
