Removal of unlawful accusations

If an unlawful accusation is expressed on the Internet, then its removal can be demanded in provisional court. In general, interlocutory proceedings judges (interim relief courts) don’t often proceed to granting these types of claims, since this represents a serious infraction on the freedom of speech. Therefore, in interlocutory proceedings in which the removal of an unlawful accusation is demanded, it is extremely important that the elaboration of why the accusation is unlawful and must be removed be as fully documented and complete as possible.

Penalty in the event of accusations via Internet

A penalty must always be linked to a conviction for the removal of an accusation from Internet, since the convicted party could otherwise easily decide to ignore the decision. The amount of the penalty is not unlimited; a maximum is nearly always linked to this. If a lawyer demands too high a penalty, then the court can limit this. This often involves penalties of between € 1000 and € 2000 per day, with a maximum of between € 50,000 and € 100,000.

No penalty in the event of removal of an accusation in error

Removing an unlawful accusation from a website may appear simple, but it often goes wrong in practice. Consequence: the forfeited penalties are demanded. One familiar example of this is a court case from 2012 against (the magazine) Quote. The monthly was ordered to remove an article from the website Quotenet and had also done so. But because of a technical error when launching the new website, the particular article was once again available. The interlocutory court found in that case that no penalty sums were to be forfeited since no purposeful acts or acts of intent on the part of Quote employees could be said to exist.

Rectification

In addition to removal, rectification of the accusation can also be demanded in interim relief measures.