MONTREAL—Officially, anyway, there’s no way to know the identity of the man behind a recent landmark court decision against Google, which both Google and the man are now appealing. That’s because there’s a publication ban on his name, for reasons that will become apparent in a minute. In the documents, he’s referred to as “A.B.”

But I was four pages into the decision when I figured out who A.B. was. It was the unredacted details of the case that tipped me off, the sum of which paint a picture of a man who, over the course of a half-century, has been involved in some of the most consequential events in U.S. and Canadian history—though exactly which events, I can’t say here. I recognized his voice when he answered the phone. “I have no comment to make on anything,” he said in a polite rasp.

His case against Google may well constitute another one of those monumental events. In March, Quebec Superior Court Justice Azimuddin Hussain ordered the company to pay the man $500,000 for “moral injury” because it repeatedly failed to remove links to a despicable lie about him—a lie that nearly caused the man to end his life. And his victory against the company has put a rare, made-in-Quebec dent in Google’s immunity from the things appearing in its search results.

The man’s ordeal began in April 2007 when, confounded as to why many of his ostensibly successful business meetings were leading to dead ends, he Googled himself. Among the first entries under his name was a link to Ripoff Report, a long-standing online clearing house for complaints about allegedly shifty individuals and businesses. The link led to a post falsely accusing the man and a business partner of being “con artists” and “pederasts,” and saying—again, falsely—that the man himself had been convicted of child molestation.  

Alarmed, the man set about getting the post removed. Ripoffreport.com, which is based in Arizona, wouldn’t budge. It has a strict no-removal policy, even if, as the court found, the report in question had no basis in fact. So the man’s lawyer instead asked Google to have the post removed from the company’s search results. Though Google does not dispute the characterization of the post as defamatory, the company nonetheless invoked Section 230(c) of the U.S. Communications Decency Act, the 1996 legislation protecting internet companies from legal ramifications in the United States of content provided by users of their sites. 

“Google,” wrote Justice Azimuddin Hussain in a pithy description of the company’s hubris, “variously ignored the Plaintiff, told him it could do nothing, told him it could remove the hyperlink on the Canadian version of its search engine but not the U.S. one, but then allowed it to reappear on the Canadian version.” 

Meanwhile, the man descended into hell because of what kept popping up on the ubiquitous search engine. Opportunities in New York City, where he lived and worked, started drying up. A potential job at a crisis-management firm fell through because, despite his spotless criminal record, those words were sitting there for all to see. He lost an advisory board position at a prominent public policy think tank because of it, the court decision noted. Women turned down dates after Googling him. He wondered how many potential clients avoided him because of what they read under his name on Google. His relationship with his two sons suffered. Riddled with anxiety, he withdrew, drinking heavily. He often thought of killing himself. 

The man eventually moved back to his native Quebec, wanting to rekindle old business relationships. He was also aware of the province’s defamation laws. Justice Hussain described the man’s situation as “Kafkaesque”, but—to use another weighty analogy—I realize now that he had a sword of Damocles dangling above his head after he’d moved back to Montreal. His reputation, after all, was but a Google search away. And because Google’s removal in 2009 of the Ripoff Report material applied only to Google’s Canadian portal, that sword stayed very much in place. In 2014, one of his sons called the police, concerned about his father’s mental state. 

The following year, the man discovered that the Ripoff Report attack had reappeared on Google.ca, resulting from Google’s interpretation of a 2011 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that linking to defamatory information does not make one legally responsible for it. In 2022, he complained to the company yet again when he saw that a Google search of his name yielded a link to the missive on another U.S.-based complaints-based clearing house. Google didn’t remove the link. Like so many victims of revenge porn, the man found himself at once pleading with a tech platform to remove offending content while watching in horror as that content migrated to other sites, rendering its removal that much more challenging.

At the very least, Justice Hussain’s decision sets a precedent for Google in Canada. From the outset, the company has maintained its long-standing position that it does not control the content posted on web pages; that it’s up to the operators of those sites to remove defamatory material. But as McCarthy Tétrault senior counsel Barry Sookman pointed out to me, the decision compels the company’s Canadian operations to comply with Quebec legislation obliging “technology-based documentary referral services” (bureaucratese for search engines) to promptly remove illicit material once they become aware of it. “The effect of this could be that Google will take this more seriously, and will change its policies now,” Sookman, who wasn’t involved in the case, told me. 

It would seem the company already has. I asked a relative in the U.S. to Google the man’s name. Nothing regarding the Ripoff Report entry came up, at least not on the first page. I then asked my U.S. relative to add certain words to the search. Sometimes the man’s name came up, sometimes it didn’t. I asked Google Canada spokesperson Lauren Skelly if the man’s name had been removed for U.S. users of its search engine. She didn’t respond.

In any event, the consequences of the case for Google may extend beyond Canada. In early May, the man’s lawyers filed an appeal, arguing their client is entitled to punitive damages of $5 million in addition to the compensatory damages already awarded. They also want the delisting of the Ripoff Report posting to apply worldwide, David Grossman, the man’s co-counsel, told me. Google has since cross-appealed, claiming Justice Hussain erred in applying Quebec law and that the company “is not required to remove defamatory material from search results under U.S. law.”

The fight will continue, then, even as the man himself just wants to disappear.

Martin Patriquin is The Logic’s Quebec correspondent. He joined in 2019 after 10 years as Quebec bureau chief for Maclean’s. A National Magazine Award and SABEW winner, he has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Walrus, Vice, BuzzFeed and The Globe and Mail, among others. He is also a panelist on CBC’s “Power & Politics.” @MartinPatriquin