In a right-to-be-forgotten case, the anonymous claimant sought an order against Google Inc to block access to a blog website on which an old news story appeared about the applicant’s conviction and sentence years before.

The case was dismissed because the claimant, who appeared for himself, had sued the wrong Google company and had not served the application properly. Google had not taken any action to take down the information because they were hosting third party content. Google was not the creator or mediator of the content and had suggested to the claimant that the dispute be resolved directly with the individual who posted the content.

The claimant sued Google Inc and served the papers on Google UK Ltd at its principal place of business in the UK. The proper defendant should have been Google LLC located in the United States. That would need permission from the court to serve the court papers outside the UK which had never been asked for.

This case illustrates some of the difficulties in suing companies that provide platforms for others to use, suing foreign residents and the difficulties in acting for yourself in complicated legal proceedings.

[The case is ABC v Google Inc [2018]]