Restaurant review leads to high court libel case

14 February 2007

Restaurant review leads to high court libel case

A Belfast restaurant has been awarded £25,000 in damages after receiving a negative review.  A
jury in Belfast upheld a claim by the Italian restaurant, Goodfellas, that the Irish News's review
was "defamatory, damaging and hurtful". The newspaper is to appeal against the judgment, arguing
that it could set a worrying precedent which “If this stands it could be the end of serious
restaurant reviews," says Matthew Norman, a newspaper restaurant critic for 15 years. The Irish
News review, published in 2000, was written by Caroline Workman, who trained in London restaurants
and is a former editor of the Bridgestone restaurant guide. She was critical of the quality of the
food, drink, staff and the smoky atmosphere at Goodfellas, giving it a rating of one out of a
possible five. Owner Ciarnan Convery, who opened the restaurant in 1991, claimed the article was a
"hatchet job". And the jury, of four men and three women, took just 90 minutes to agree with him.

The Irish News sees this as a damning blow to free speech. There is an assumption that reviews are
subjective and in publishing them, newspapers are presenting rather than condoning the views
expressed in them. A defence to defamation is to prove that the defaming statement is true.  This
is difficult with reviews as they are subjective, giving the opinion of the reviewer. There is not
necessarily, therefore, a right or wrong answer.

Many previous cases give examples of this, and in most cases the result was appealed in favour of
the newspaper or reviewer:

§ Matthew Norman's famous war of words with Richard Shepherd, owner of Shepherd's
restaurant in Westminster. Norman, then writing for the Sunday Telegraph magazine, in 2004
described the restaurant as "the eighth circle of hell" and topically referred to the soup with
the lines "were it found today in a canister buried in the Iraqi desert, it would save Tony
Blair's skin". Shepherd threatened to sue for libel, but the case ended where it started with
hurtful words rather than legal sticks and stones.

§ In 2003 McDonald's sued a well known Italian food critic, Edoardo Raspelli, over an
article in La Stampa that claimed the burgers were rubbery and fries tasted of cardboard. He
defended his actions, saying he had defamed burgers rather than the restaurant chain. The court
suggested they settle.

§ In the United States there have been a string of actions against restaurants dating
back to the 70s and 80s. Most of these saw success at first instance with juries being sympathetic
to disgruntled restaurateurs, but were soon turned on appeal, the courts being unanimous in their
view that free expression should prevail and that reviews were opinion rather than fact.

§ In the 1981 case of Havalunch v Mazza, a student had written a negative yet humorous
review after taking exception to the BLT sandwich she had eaten. A jury had initially awarded the
restaurant $15,000 damages but this was overturned on appeal. The court concluded that "reasonable
latitude in humour and style is accorded newspaper reporters in writing reviews of restaurants".

§ Mr Chow of New York sued a French restaurant guide, Gault Millau, for asserting that
his pancakes were 'the size of a saucer and the thickness of a finger". Having been treated to
some lovely pancakes and Peking duck in court, the jury found in Mr Chow's favour and he was
awarded $20,000 libel damages. But the US Court of Appeals ruled that the critics comments had
been free speech and that the opinions expressed by the reviewer would be understood by readers to
be no more than his subjective beliefs. .

Expression of opinion is, however, different to untrue facts or expressions of malice, which can
be challenged. The difficulty with reviews is proving the facts to be unfair as different people
have different tastes - or that the review as a whole is malicious. Where a review is malicious
and false then an action for malicious falsehood may be more appropriate than libel. An appeal may
see this case overturned, which restaurant reviewers and their editors would view as a victory for
free speech.

Jane Coyle