Expat in Thailand David Hanks to pursue new cyber harassment cases against Google

David Hanks

Google is likely to face a High Court trial in the UK next year in a cyber harassment case to be brought by an expat living in Thailand who will seek to block 'disgusting' blog comments.

David Hanks, has filed criminal indictments against Google  in Thailand already for a 'disgusting' post on Google's 'Blogger' platform, and now intends to sue in the UK.

Lawyer for Hanks, Nattawat Damnaphoen said ' The Thai criminal court is now expected to order our documents be served in the US, and this may delay the case, but we will work to achieve our goal'.

Daniel Hegglin

This follows news that Daniel Hegglin, a former Morgan Stanley banker, told the High Court last week that internet search results in Google search contained “abusive” material about his client which seems to be “increasing” and “proliferating” despite Google’s attempts to deal with the issue as it removed URLs, forcing Hegglin to file in the High Court.

Hanks has now foreshadowed that Google is to be sued in the UK under the UK data protection act.

“This is not a right to be forgotten case at all'  said Hanks today ' this blog post is so disgusting and so obviously false that we are amazed Google did not remove it - they told us to get a Court order, so we will'.

Google now seem to be facing a raft of cases globally as Albert Yeung, a Hong Kong based tycoon has similarly recently filed a case in the Hong Kong High Court over 'autocomplete' entries.

Albert Yeung

Earlier this year the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that European citizens should have the right to ask internet search engines to remove embarrassing or sensitive results for queries that include their name in the so-called 'right to be forgotten' ruling.

The case is not the first to be brought in the UK against Google, a previous litigant in Tamiz v Google brought a case for defamation in which Google was held to be a 'sceondary publisher' in certain circumstances.