2 WĘGRZYNOWSKI AND SMOLCZEWSKI v. POLAND JUDGMENT a number of politicians. The journalists had alleged that the applicants, who were lawyers, had made a fortune over the years by assisting in shady business deals in which these politicians were involved. The journalists had alleged that the applicants had taken advantage of their positions at the expense of the public purse by obtaining unjustified benefits from the manner in which they had carried out their professional roles as liquidators of State-owned companies in bankruptcy. 7. The court observed that the journalists had failed to contact the applicants and that their allegations were, to a large extent, based on gossip and hearsay. It noted that journalists had a right and an obligation to inform society about important issues and that they enjoyed freedom of expression, guaranteed by the Constitution. However, the authors of the article had failed to take the minimum steps necessary in order to verify the information contained in the article by at least getting in touch with the applicants and trying to obtain their comments. The allegations had not been shown to have had a plausible factual basis. The journalists had smeared the applicants’ good name and reputation. The court allowed the applicants’ claim in its entirety, by ordering the journalists and the editor-in-chief to pay, jointly, PLN 30,000 to a charity and to publish an apology in the newspaper. 8. The defendants appealed. On 24 April 2003 the Warsaw Court of Appeal dismissed their appeal, endorsing the findings of fact and the reasoning of the first-instance court. The obligations imposed by the courts were subsequently complied with by the defendant newspaper. 9. On 7 July 2004 the applicants sued again the newspaper under the same provisions of the Civil Code (see paragraph 6 above). They alleged that they had recently found out that the article remained accessible on the newspaper’s Internet website. They submitted that the article was positioned prominently in the Google search engine and that anyone seeking information about them had very easy access to it. The article’s availability on the newspaper’s website, in defiance of the earlier judicial decisions, created a continuing situation enabling a large number of people to read it. The applicants’ rights were thereby breached in the same way as had occurred through the publication of the original article. It rendered the protection granted by the judgments in their favour ineffective and illusory. The applicants sought an order requiring the defendants to take down the article from the newspaper’s website and publish a written apology for their rights having been breached by way of the article’s continued presence on the Internet. They sought compensation in the amount of PLN 11,000 for the non-pecuniary damage. 10. In their reply to the statement of claim, the defendants submitted that the case was res judicata, The applicants had already obtained a judgment in their favour. Moreover, the article had been placed in the archive of the website. Readers would therefore be aware that the article had been