An interesting legal story came out of Northern Ireland last week:

A Belfast court yesterday upheld the right of restaurant reviewers to ply their trade without the risk of libel claims. The Northern Ireland court of appeal overturned a decision to award damages of £25,000 against the Irish News for a scathing review of Goodfellas pizzeria.

The first dance through the courts lead the pizzeria to be awarded damages, but now justice has tipped back the other way. This is great news for reviewers everywhere, whether you’re working for a newspaper, writing a guide or a member of a community like TrustedPlaces.

As long as a review is honest, where fact is clearly seperate from fiction, there should never be any fear of legal action. Here’s what we have to say about this on our FAQ:

No, you can’t get in trouble for writing a bad, honest review of a place. As long as your review is honest and doesn’t criticize the place using vulgarity or obscenity we will all value your review.

We’d hope that restaurateurs and owners would also value the occasional bad review. The reviews by TrustedPlaces members remind them what they are doing well, create more business and pinpoint areas for improvement.

TrustedPlaces, of course, features bad reviews along with the great ones and everything in between, but we don’t depend on a single voice or point of view unlike tradional reviews found in guides or newspaper. One person’s ‘dive’ may be another person’s ‘home away from home’ and this is reflected in the diversity of reviews that sites like TrustedPlaces receive.

We’ll leave the last word to the Irish News reviewer Caroline Workman though as we couldn’t agree more:

“Nobody likes a bad review, but if I can’t write honestly, good reviews are pointless.”

Photo credit: Lady Justice by nyghtowl (CC license)