High Court rules againt restaurant reviewer

[James]

There's an interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding a High Court ruling yesterday that a Sydney reviewer defamed a restaurant by giving it a bad review. Both the reviewer and the publisher will possibly face large fines as a result.

This sort of thing is one of the reasons that I occasionally feel I have to pull down a review from this site that is overly harsh: as much as I hate to do it, it's simple fact that defamation is against the law.

The thing is that in reality a lot of defamation goes on every day: if you tell someone at morning tea that the place you went out to the night before was a shocker, that forms slander. The limited audience of such a comment protects your views, but put them online for the world to see and whammo! You've opened a can of worms.

So why isn't every reviewer sued every time they write something negative? The main defense that reviewers use is "Fair Comment". In order to be seen as fair comment a review should provide opinion and present the facts upon which that opinion is based. And even facts are problematic as the onus is on the reviewer to prove that they are true if it ever gets to court.

But this ruling brings up even more problematic questions in my mind: the main one being the subjectivity of taste when reviewing food. I might say "I don't like this pasta because the sauce is too tart" while another will love it for the same reason. So how would I form a defense against defamation? I don't know. I'd probably have to hire a lawyer.

What do you think about this? Do you ever consider the legal aspects of what you're writing when you submit a review?
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“Blessed are the Cheese Makers!” - Jesus, in the Life of Brian