The judge of the world court Nazareth Elad Tal punished a resident of Migdal HaEmek for a complaint in the "Facebook" about the poor quality of the products of a local pizzeria.
The court ordered the woman to pay the owner of the pizzeria 15,000 shekels of compensation and reimburse him for legal costs.
The owner of the pizzeria demanded compensation of 100,000 shekels. He said that the post dealt a heavy blow to his business, built by heavy family labor, and eventually the pizzeria had to be sold. According to the plaintiff, he suggested the disgruntled client to go and get another pizza or, if she wanted, take back her 50 shekels, but the woman preferred to write about the "raw" and "inedible" pizza that had to be "fed to cats."
The judge admitted that the problems of the pizzeria probably were caused not only by a negative response in Facebook, but called this review one of the factors that undermined the business.
The court considered that the defendant's actions were not an innocent expression of emotion: she could not clearly and consistently explain the purpose of writing a negative review, and "was confused in the testimony." The fact that after the filing of the lawsuit the woman removed the post, the judge interpreted as an awareness of guilt. The vocabulary of the post included expressions of physical disgust, which, according to the court, exacerbated the damage. Aggravating circumstance, the court found that the respondent provided the post with tags, thereby increasing the number of views and "likes".