The Taipei Times reports (thanks to Vadim Novik for the pointer):
After visiting a Taichung beef noodle restaurant in July 2008, [defendant Liu] had dried noodles and side dishes, Liu wrote [on the blog] that the restaurant served food that was too salty, the place was unsanitary because there were cockroaches and that the owner was a “bully” because he let customers park their cars haphazardly, leading to traffic jams….
The High Court found that Liu’s criticism about cockroaches in the restaurant to be a narration of facts, not intentional slander.
However, the judge also ruled that Liu should not have criticized all the restaurant’s food as too salty because she only had one dish on her single visit.
Health officials who inspected the restaurant did not find conditions to be as unsanitary as Liu had described, so the High Court also ruled that Liu must pay NT$200,000 to the owner for revenues lost as a result of her blog post.
The ruling is final.
4C says:
Could we apply this ruling to the FDA, Michelle Obama, and Mayor Bloomberg ? They’re ALWAYS saying things are too salty ….
June 23, 2011, 5:01 pmBill Poser says:
Leaving aside the question of whether it is reasonable to treat this as a crime rather than a pure tort, I can’t agree with the court’s reasoning with regard to saltiness, for two reasons. First, unless she alleged that it was really loaded with salt to the point of inedibility, being “too salty” is a matter of personal taste. Second, in the case of a blogger who presumably was reporting on a single visit to a restaurant, the reader should be aware that she is basing her evaluation on at most a few dishes tried on a single occasion and that her experience may therefore not be representative. A professional restaurant reviewer could reasonably be held to the standard proposed by the court since such critics do typically visit several times and bring friends so that they can try a variety of dishes, unless the review indicates otherwise, but it isn’t reasonable to apply such a standard to a blogger who does not purport to be presenting more than a personal experience.
June 23, 2011, 5:44 pmTatil says:
That is not proof that the conditions were not as described when she was there. They could have cleaned up for the inspectors. This ruling is awful. $7000 fine for a blog post, that sounds more or less accurate. I hope the restaurant loses even more money based on this negative publicity.
June 23, 2011, 5:53 pmCalderon says:
The report is ambiguous, but it could be read to indicate that Taiwan’s laws on this issue are the exact opposite of the US. Under US law, the only thing that a reviewer could be liable for (civilly, not criminally) would be seeing cockroaches if that statement were false. Yet the report says “The High Court found that Liu’s criticism about cockroaches in the restaurant to be a narration of facts, not intentional slander,” which could indicate that Taiwan’s law protects alleging facts, but not alleging opinions.
June 23, 2011, 6:11 pmLaura Victoria says:
Most importantly, I don’t think we’ll be seeing any Top
June 23, 2011, 7:30 pmChef finals held in the Orient in the near future.
Randy says:
But at least the blogger proved that the restaurant owner is indeed a bully.
June 23, 2011, 11:32 pmJuly 14 roundup says:
[...] Taiwan: “Jail Time (And $7000 Fine) for Saying a Restaurant’s Dishes Were ‘Too Salty’” [Volokh] [...]
July 14, 2011, 1:10 am