Kiefel
CJ
Bell
J
Keane
J
Nettle
J
Gordon
J
19.
51
Finally, the Court of Appeal referred to page four of Annexure B, which,
as mentioned, was the page in respect of which McDonald J drew the conclusion
that it was certainly arguable that a reasonable search engine user would look at
the compilation of images and assume that Mr Trkulja was a convicted criminal.
The Court of Appeal took the entirely opposite view66:
"It may be regarded as the high water mark of the material relied upon by
the plaintiff, because of the fact that the return of images included the
plaintiff and three criminals. Pausing, and underlining the random nature
of the images displayed, the four images in the particular sequence are the
first four images from the left on the top line of page five of Annexure A
…
The heading under which the thumbnails on page four appear is
'Images for Melbourne underworld criminals – report images'. It is a
similar heading to that which appears above the compilations of images on
pages two and three of Annexure B. A reasonable user of the internet,
aware of the unpredictable results which are generated by an image
search – well exemplified by the 20 pages of Annexure A – would
immediately apprehend, in our opinion, that the thumbnails on page four
of Annexure B were of no different character. They could not convey the
defamatory imputations pleaded by the plaintiff.
But there is a further matter. … It is scarcely conceivable that
assumed secondary publication prior to [notice being given to Google on
or about 3 December 2012] would not attract a successful innocent
dissemination defence. But according to the plaintiff's particularised case,
it is impossible to say whether page four of Annexure B (and the same is
the situation with page five of Annexure A) was published after the giving
of notice."
52
Those conclusions are unacceptable. As has been observed, the test of
capacity of a published matter to defame is, in this case, whether any of the
search results complained of are capable of conveying any of the defamatory
imputations alleged. It is not, as the Court of Appeal stated67, whether "any of
the defamatory imputations which are pleaded [are] arguably conveyed". To
express the test as the Court of Appeal did runs the risk (which appears to have
66
Google Inc v Trkulja (2016) 342 ALR 504 at 599 [401]-[403].
67
Google Inc v Trkulja (2016) 342 ALR 504 at 597 [389].
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