On Sat, 07 Jul 2007 16:25:33 +1200, bob >
magnanimously proffered:

>http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/s...0449681&pnum=0
>
>Restaurants Story
>
>Reviewers criticise at their legal peril
>5:00AM Thursday July 05, 2007
>By David Usborne
>
>Everybody wants to be a critic, but be warned. Praise what you see -
>or taste - and the creator will love you forever. Slam it, however,
>and they might just try to bite back.

Seems like an epidemic:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/...104023,00.html

Critics up in arms as restaurant review judged defamatory

What does this mean for restaurant critics? Read Matthew Evans' full
review and have your say on our food blog.

Barbara McMahon in Sydney
Friday June 15, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Australian food critics were left spluttering into their napkins today
after a court decided that an unfavourable review of a Sydney
restaurant was defamatory, opening the way for the owners to claim
damages.

The critics said the decision could lead to reviewers of theatre,
music, literature and art fearing to speak their minds in case they
too were sued.

The case centres on a review of Coco Roco restaurant, published in the
Sydney Morning Herald newspaper in 2003. Matthew Evans, then the
newspaper's chief food critic, dined at the restaurant twice and was
not impressed.

He said the flavour of oysters soaked in limoncello "jangled like a
car crash" and that a sherry scented apricot white sauce that
accompanied steak was a "wretched garnish" that he scraped off.

Awarding the restaurant only nine points out of 20, he concluded that
"more than half the dishes I've tried at Coco Roco are simply
unpalatable", and that the food was overpriced.

Coco Roco closed three months after the review and the owners, who had
spent more than A$3m (£1m) refitting the restaurant blamed it on the
reviewer, saying that customers had been put off by Evans's words.

The affair has been in the courts for months and in the latest ruling,
the high court of New South Wales found that the review was an attack
on the restaurant as a business. "Business capacity and reputation are
different from personal reputation," the judgment said. "Harm to the
former can be, as here, inflicted more directly and narrowly than harm
to a person's reputation."

The Sydney Morning Herald's current chief restaurant critic, Simon
Thomsen, said the judgment meant that now "anything short of
hagiography will be defamatory". Veteran Australian food critic Leo
Schoolfield said the ruling set a bad precedent. "If a poor review
leads to diminished returns at the box office of the theatre, are we
now going to say that it is due to the review and not to the quality
of the work," he asked.

David Griffiths, executive chef at Wildfire, one of Sydney's best
restaurants, said it was laughable to suggest that one bad review
could close a restaurant. Matthew Moran, the head chef of another
popular restaurant Aria, said his restaurant had benefited from
constructive criticism of food critics like Mr Evans.

Further hearings will be held so that the newspaper can put forward
its defence and for the court to decide if the owners of Coco Roco are
entitled to damages.

The court's decision comes after a jury in Belfast, Northern Ireland,
upheld a restaurant owner's claim that a review in the Irish News was
defamatory and awarded him £25,000 earlier this year.


--

una cerveza mas por favor ...

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