A judge has awarded a Brisbane businessman a record payout for defamation, including character attacks that will permanently appear on a controversial US consumer watchdog website.
Jarrod Sierocki and his business Insolvency Guardian have been granted damages of $260,000 plus $37,788 interest after being targeted by a disgruntled former business partner and client in online material suggesting he was “an adulterer, a fraud, a criminal, a liar, a conman and a sociopath”.
The payout was four times as large as the previous highest amount awarded by a supreme court judge under a Queensland defamation regime that has capped damages awards since 1995.
Paul Klerk and Brent Thompson, Sierocki’s former partner and client respectively, attacked him on websites including the US-based ripoffreport.com, which forced them to acknowledge the material could not be removed even at their own request.
Justice Peter Flanagan, who heard evidence from a forensic computer scientist, said he accepted the ripoffreport.com posts against Sierocki were “extremely difficult, if not impossible, to remove”.
Hence the online slurs against Sierocki could “never be truly driven underground”, Flanagan said in a written judgment delivered on 17 April.
“Even today, Google has [Sierocki] listed on the first page of the image search results with a picture of a person with a black hood over their head with two holes for the eyes and one hole for the mouth which looks something like a Klu Klux Klan hood,” he said.
“This picture is hyperlinked to the ripoffreport.com website which I have already observed is permanent until it ceases to operate.
“As at the date of swearing this affidavit, namely 14 March 2015, the first plaintiff is aware that there are still at least three entries on Google alleging that he is a conman, a thief and a liar.”
Sierocki is running a separate damages lawsuit against Google for featuring the publications in its search results.
Klerk, who also set up a number of websites which published the slurs, was found to have separately defamed Sierocki by emailing his wife and claiming he had “had an extra-marital affair, took illegal drugs [and] was an evil person”.
Sierocki and his wife said that they had been “consumed by humiliation and embarrassment” over the online slurs, which had been constantly raised by Sierocki’s business associates and read by family in Germany, Serbia, Poland.
The distress had triggered depression and led to Sierocki “crying himself to sleep”.
He had been forced to resign from a Freemason’s lodge, the Knights Templar and the Knights of Malta, as well as his post as chairman of the Brisbane Spartans basketball club.
Former Olympic basketballer Shane Heal, a client of Sierocki’s, gave evidence that he was contacted by a person advising him to “stay away from Jarrod Sierocki, he ‘rips people off and he can’t be trusted’”.
Although Heal later became a coach for a new women’s national basketball league team bid spearheaded by Sierocki, he “did become very wary of him for a long time” after reading the allegations on the internet via a Google search.
Sierocki’s barrister Alex Nelson told the court that the “grave and widespread allegations” had left “a permanent stain” upon his client’s reputation and “vindication” called for “a very large award”.
Flanagan said the size of the payout was partly intended to convince people they should ignore the slurs against Sierocki.
Nelson submitted that, given the grave and widespread allegations together with the permanent stain that they would leave upon the plaintiffs’ reputations, vindication was the most important feature and called for a very large award.
Neither Klerk, whose solicitors withdrew from representing him during the case, nor Thompson apologised over the defamatory material or attended court for the damages assessment.