Google confirmed this Friday that he was sentenced in Mexico to pay him some $245 million a man for allowing the publication of a blog that accused him without evidence of various crimes.
In a brief statement sent this Friday to the AFP news agency, Google Mexico confirmed the sanction for “moral damage” after litigation filed by a lawyer accusing the internet giant of allowing such publication.
“We regret the sentence (…), which we consider arbitrary, excessive and without any foundation. Google will defend itself to the last resort“, states the statement.
This ruling, issued on June 13, “undermines freedom of expression and other fundamental principles and we trust that the federal courts will act in strict accordance with the law,” the statement adds.
The plaintiff is the lawyer Ulrich Richter Morales, who accuses Google of having allowed the dissemination of a blog that points to him as guilty of alleged crimes such as money laundering, influence peddling and document forgery.
“Speechless,” the lawyer wrote this Friday on his Twitter account, who reproduced the press releases regarding this ruling.
Richter demanded since 2015 that Google remove the blog from the Internet, with eight short entries from 2014 and that it can still be consulted.
Given the refusal, Morales Ulrich filed a lawsuit for moral damages, which he won in the first instance in 2021 and which Google appealed. This case could go all the way to the Supreme Court.
The US firm, based in Mountain View, faced similar lawsuits in other countries.
On June 6, an Australian court ordered New South Wales Premier John Barilaro to pay $500,000 in damages for claiming he was defamed in videos of a comedian posted on Google-owned YouTube.
Google lost another million due to discrimination
Last Tuesday, it was also confirmed that the giant search engine will have to pay 118 million dollars to resolve a class action lawsuit that accuses it of discriminating against women through their salary and their rank in the central offices that the company has in Mountain View, California, in the United States.
The settlement covers approximately 15,500 female employees who have worked in California since September 2013, details a press release published late Friday by the law firms that won in the class action: Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and Altshuler Berzon. The company also agreed to allow third parties to conduct a gender-responsive analysis of its hiring and compensation practices.
“After nearly five years of litigation, both parties have agreed that resolving the case without admission (of liability) or conclusion is in everyone’s best interest. And we are very happy to reach this agreement,” a spokesman told AFP news agency. of Google.
The complaint was filed by former Google workers in 2017 before a San Francisco court, where they claimed that the internet giant paid women less than men in the same positions, and that they were appointed to lower-ranking positions even though they had experience. and qualifications equivalent to men, under the pretext of being based on their previous salaries.
With information from AFP
DB
