Being a sex worker does not mean you can't have a private life, says judge as Cohen Davis obtains a privacy injunction for its escort client.

In yet another ground breaking case, Cohen Davis’ team has obtained one of our most important judgements this year, whilst securing a privacy injunction for one of our clients, a London Escort.

This case, involved a sex worker who had both false and private information posted about her on the internet. She became the subject of a campaign of harassment, which included the tagging of dozens of pornographic videos with her name. The harassing posts also included references to her sexuality, to her sexual preferences as well as false claims that she was having unprotected sex.

This followed by further false allegations that she was an HIV/Aids positive. Cohen Davis brought

After 13 years of suffering harassment at the hands of her troll, Paul Curran, harassment lawyer Yair Cohen helped Lindsey Goldrick Dean get her life back.

In a landmark case, Cohen Davis Solicitors have taken the place of the police to finally put an end to the longest recorded campaign of harassment in the UK.

The case, which was concluded on 9 July 2018 at the High Court in London, saw another online trolling victim wins damages and a court order to restrain her troll from ever harassing her again.

Yair Cohen a lawyer from Cohen Davis Solicitors who specialises in harassment law and helps harassment victims win cases where the

In our younger days, some of us did things we later came to regret. We wronged people or made them upset. Guilty as charged. We can't turn back the wheels of time, however and usually we mature and move on to better and greater things.

But what if, out of the blue, an indiscretion from 10, 20, or 30 years ago suddenly resurfaces, wreaking havoc on our family life, our business, our achievements, our good name? It resurfaces because someone causes it to, in order to destroy everything we have worked for.

Online harassment can occur even if the information published is true

 This is another ground-breaking internet law case by Cohen Davis solicitors. Lawyer Yair Cohen instructed by a former senior employee at the United Nations to put an end to harassment on the internet by another UN employee.

Protection from Harassment interim injunction obtained by Cohen Davis in favour of former senior UN employee  RADA-ORTIZ and ESPINOSA VADILLO [2015] EWHC 2175 (QB).

Meet Jesus Espinosa Vadillo, a former United Nations' (“UN”) temporary employee. In 2014 JEV, who worked as an interpreter at the UN's International Maritime Organisation (“IMO”), felt aggrieved about the way he believed he was being treated by his department manager.

Cohen Davis solicitors welcome clients who wish us to take on their harassment cases on a no win no fee basis. Because of the high number of cases where volnurable victims experience harassment on the internet yet the limited number of solicitors who are true specialists in handling online harassment cases, we have developed a criteria to enable those who wish us to represent them on harassment cases on a no win no fee basis, to try and determine in advance whether their case is likely to be eligible for a no win no fee representation.

Can I obtain an injunction against Google?

The first UK Google injunction was obtained in 2011 by Yair Cohen.  The order required Google to reveal personal details of individuals who were defaming a UK business on the internet.

The claimant, who was seeking the injunction against Google was a news publishing group, Wyvern Media, which at the time was servicing tens of thousands of customers each year. Despite Wyvern's genuine attempt to satisfy them all, a small number of customers remained disgruntled.

Defamation by investors - defamation against a company

In a case that is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK concerning online defamation by investors against a company, online defamation and social media specialist solicitor firm Cohen Davis won damages for its PLC client, a gold mining company Red Rock Resources (RRR) after the company was defamed on social media by one of its small yet vocal investors.

Cohen Davis has won in the case of Phipps v Britton an apology and substantial damages from Paul Britton and his company Origin Design Ltd after they defamed, harassed and cyberbullied our client in a series of websites they created about him. This was a case where the victim felt he had been blackmailed on the internet to settle a debt. The apology took the form of a statement in open court read before His Honour Judge Moloney QC on Wednesday 20 May 2015.

Discovering the identity of internet commentators who post abusive and defamatory content online and who use an anonymous identity to defame you or your business, is often a hugely challenging, if at times impossible task and one that continues to be a global problem for victims of such internet abuse. The police in any jurisdiction will typically be very limited in being able to assist in circumstances of anonymous internet abuse and from

GYH v PERSONS UNKNOWN [2017] EWHC 3360 (QB)

Cohen Davis Solicitors acting for the Claimant

Being a sex worker and advertising yourself as such on the internet does not mean you can't have a private life, says judge as Cohen Davis obtains a privacy injunction for its escort client.

The client, who advertised herself as an escort hadn’t lost her right to keep information in relation to her sexuality private. Cohen Davis brought the proceedings and an application for a privacy injunction on behalf of our client, who was also granted by the High Court a right to anonymity. She is only known as GYH. Our privacy lawyers took the legal proceedings against "persons unknown" as, despite extensive efforts, we

"When harassment occurs on social media we will obtain an injunction, anonymise our client and allow her to continue with uninterrupted use of her social media account."

This can be particularly beneficial if you are a celebrity or if you depend on the social media account for work.

Protection from Harassment and a privacy injunction obtained by Cohen Davis in favour of our client in the case of DDF v YYZ (unreported, 5 June 2015).

In the case of DDF v YYZ, Cohen Davis obtained an injunction against an unknown Instagram user who harassed and cyberbully our client via the social media website Instagram. Our client, who we anonymised in the court order, was working in the entertainment industry and was relying on Instagram for his work as well as for personal communications.

An important ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU might mean that you and your children could ‎have a right to have information deleted from the internet.

The ruling came after Mario Costeja Gonzalez, a Spanish man, complained that a search of ‎his name in Google brought up newspaper articles from 16 years ago about a sale of property ‎to recover money he owed.

Defamation by an ex-employee. What can I do about it?

It is not uncommon for disgruntled former employees to go on a campaign of defamation against their former employer’s company.

The defamation normally occurs through blogs, emails and by initiation of discussion groups in forums aimed at throwing as much dirt as possible at the former employee's company.

Meet Gary. Gary was a small investor in listed public companies who held shares in a gold mining company RRR PLC. As an active investor, Gary used to be involved in online investment forums such as Interactive Investors.

Is it possible to remove defamatory web pages from Google?

Interesting data was recently released by Google concerning the removal of offending web content from the products it owns.

The data is focused on government requests to Google to remove content. It is not clear if the information that Google has published includes court orders in civil matters, where the court, in effect, acts as a government agency.

Our client was employed as a manager by a company in the financial services industry. An article in a national newspaper (also published online) revealed some of the practices employed by that company and effectively had made our client a scapegoat to the company’s alleged wrongdoing.

When news broke out about the company’s alleged practices, it allowed our client to become a scapegoat and did nothing to try and defend its practices or our client’s position as an employee

How SEO is used to spread defamation

Everyone has a soft spot. Being called a certain bad name in public could cause you a lot of damage and harm your career.

For example, a doctor might be described as "negligent", a solicitor as "incompetent", a builder as a "cowboy", or a teacher as "stupid". Such labels would be regarded by any of these people as a personal attack on their reputation and integrity.

But perhaps the most harmful insult of all was suffered by a top civil servant who was a social worker for the Children’s Service at a district council in the north of the country.

Have you recently suffered defamation by competitors?

Online defamation by competitors is not unheard of. Below is one classic example of defamation by competitors of a small family business. 

Jeff Clark, a husband and a father of three children ages 3, 6, and 10, has always loved cars. He has been fixing them since he was 12, and has worked in local garages around the Manchester area for many years.

It is possible to ease the pain caused by online defamation through principles of tactical transparency. There are numerous examples of organisations that for a period of time suffered sustained attacks on their reputation but nevertheless managed to come out at the end of the dark tunnel cleaner, stronger and loved by their customers.

It is estimated by researchers that between 16 to 20 per cent of social media reviews are fake. We believe however that the real number is much higher.

We believe that between 50 to 65 per cent of all online reviews are fake.

A research by Harvard Business School entitled“Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud 24 September 2013” points to an emerging industry of fake review creation, which is primarily being driven by business owners who either leave positive reviews for themselves, negative reviews for their competitors or a combination of both.

Internet defamation, is becoming more and more a survival issue for a growing number of individuals and organisations across the UK.

In most cases where we are instructed to remove defamation from the internet, we do so successfully and without putting our clients through expensive litigation. In most cases we can facilitate the removal of defamatory web pages through an affordable, yet persuasive Cease and Desist letter or by negotiations.

Even if the offending website is located outside the jurisdiction of the English Courts, a well drafted letter might still be sufficient to have the defamatory content removed.

However, more and more internet service providers such as Google and Bing ask for a court order before they agree to remove defamation from their

When was the last time you searched online for information about ‎your own company? If the answer to this question is ‎‎“never” then you are not alone. But you also need to read on…‎

Many organisations spend little or no time in researching ‎themselves on the internet. This makes sense on the face of ‎it; what could you possibly learn that you don’t already ‎know? ‎But it is precisely this subconscious dismissal of the notion ‎that you could find something out that you don’t already ‎know that enables negative ‘information’ from going ‎undetected for so long and causing so much damage.