Advising on a campaign of harassment made against our client via Google reviews and Tik-Tok

We were instructed to act for our client who is a not-for-profit care company operating in the Southeast of England, who were subject to a prolonged series of defamatory and harassing statements made by a resident’s relative.

The resident’s relative posted a series of videos on TikTok, where she had over 100,000 followers, in which she made a series of false and meritless claims against our client. The resident’s relative also started a campaign of harassment against our client by inciting the public to leave negative Google reviews, with a view to causing our client reputational damage and financial loss.

This resulted in a large volume of one-star Google reviews being left by individuals that had no first-hand dealings with our client, severely damaging our client’s business and reputation and causing them to suffer substantial financial loss of six figures.

We acted quickly to redress the situation and after sending Google a letter requesting removal of the negative reviews with an explanatory schedule of how each review violated both Google’s policy guidelines and the law, we were able to get the negative reviews removed for our client. Additionally, we sent a robust cease and desist letter to the perpetrator who removed the videos posted on Tik-Tok and ensured that our client had no more dealings of this nature with them in the future.