Court dismisses suit against Google Inc by Sindhuri’s hubby

BENGALURU: Holding that Google Inc is intermediary and cannot be held responsible for third party information, a city civil court dismissed a suit filed by businessman and IAS officer Rohini Sidhuri’s husband Sudhir Reddy who had accused the web service provider of being involved in “scandalisation of sensationalisation of half lies” after the death of civil servant D K Ravi.

Judge Basavaraj of the XLI Additional City Civil Court said Google does not publish any material on the internet and if any illegal material is found, then the third party websites are liable for action and Google is not.

“There cannot be any cause of action against Google Inc and cause of action shown in the plaint is illusory and based on an obvious misrepresentation of Google Inc’s role. Hence the suit against it has to be dismissed”, he said.

However, the plaint cannot be rejected as there are 37 defendants (various news and media entities) in the suit, the judge said.