First Libel Sentence against a Blog in Croatia

13 February 2008

The Vukovar District Court ruled that Damir Fintic, administrator of the vukovarac.net web-site, shall pay an amount of 71,000 Kuna to Dragica Stengl, the wife of former Mayor of Vukovar Vladimir Stengl, as compensation for the psychological suffering caused by an article published on the web-site.

Fintić emphasizes that he was sued for libel over a text signed by the anonymous blogger �special agent�, which was published on vukovarac.net, although, as Fintic repeats, he was not the author of the disputed article.

After the Municipal Court in Vukovar reduced the compensation from a total of 250,000 to 15,000 Kuna, and ruled that the procedural costs will be paid by the Stengl�s, the District Court ruled, on the appeal filed by the Stengl�s, that the initial compensations will be increased by 35,000 Kuna, to the amount of 50,000 Kuna, while the other claimed compensations were returned to the Court of the First Jurisdiction, for repeated trial.

This is a legal precedent, being the first court decision regarding slander and libel published on an internet website which, according to Fintic, is not a portal or a medium, and he himself was not the author of the offensive blog. Orhideja Martinovic, a lawyer specialized in media law, says that, although there is the responsibility of the publisher of the mediu, i.e. the host of the portal, the real problem is that the responsibility should be held by the perpetrator of the offence.

- It is a problem, of course, to determine who did it. There are situations when it is simple, but as a rule, the responsibility for the offence lies with the perpetrator, says Martinovic.

Another problem lies in the fact that the case was tried in accordance with the Law on Obligations, not the Law on Media or the Law on Electronic Media. On the other hand, the said laws aren�t adapted to the development of internet and the risks its expansion brings about.

- if something is used to dissipate racial, sexual or other hatred and intolerance, or to incite to a criminal action, then the institutions should act. Everything else should remain in the free sphere, especially if it was anonymous, Fintic himself says.