We won the lawsuit for violation of personal rights before the Obolonskyi District Court of Kyiv. The Court ruled in favour of Lyudmyla Kozlovska, the Head of the Open Dialogue Foundation, in her dispute with the NGO ‘Stop Corruption’.
Download the court decision
The Court found that the information in one of Stop Corruption’s online publications on www.stopcor.org posted in 2018 in was not only unreliable, but also degrading to the dignity,and professional reputation of the President of ODF. The Court also ordered the NGO Stop Corruption, rather than the owner of the website, to pay Ms. Kozlovska the moral compensation of UAH 50,000, and to publish an apology on its website within 10 days, starting from the date when the decision comes into force.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska was represented by lawyers from the Ario Law Firm, namely Senior Partner Yulian Khorunzhyi, and Counselor Nataliya Shvets.
According to Mr. Khorunzhyi and Ms. Shvets, in Ukraine, registering information on the Internet to nominal owners is a fairly common practice , which makes effectively appealing against information of paid nature virtually impossible.
“Given that information is spreading very rapidly nowadays, especially on the Internet, the plaintiff faces a new challenge: to identify the proper defendants in the case. That is, not only the author of the disseminated false information but also the actual owner of the website where this information was disseminated,” said Natalia Shvets.
“The proceedings on the protection of the honour, dignity, and professional reputation of Lyudmyla Kozlovska were opened by the Court at the end of 2018. Finally, in 2022, a decision was made. The complexity and duration of this case are due to the fact that our team was searching for the real owner of the Internet website of the NGO Stop Corruption, since according to the established practice in the field of registration and use of domain names on the Internet, the actual owner of the website may be a person other than the registrant of the domain. Given that the author of the disputed publication was not mentioned, our task, as lawyers, was to find this owner, and therefore our lawyers carried out a rather extensive and lengthy work on collecting evidence,” says Yulian Khorunzhyi, Senior partner of the Ario Law Firm.
In order to determine the identity of the website’s owner, the attorneys at the Ario Law Firm sent a corresponding application to the Internet Consortium Ukrainian Numbers and Address Operation Center. Thus, the lawyers learned that the domain was registered as public that does not belong to the Ukrainian Internet, and that the domain name registrant and hosting provider are foreign entities.
The Ario Law Firm filed a motion to the Court requesting access to the required information abroad. The Court granted the motion and sent a Court order to the US Department of Justice. After receiving the requested information, the lawyers found that the registrant of the domain name is a nominal individual who is not directly related to the activities of the web resource.
“We, as required by the Court practice, filed a motion to the Court to involve the identified individual as a co-defendant in this case, although the main task remained unchanged – to try to bring to justice the actual owner of the Internet resource, namely Stop Corruption. Thus, in the course of the case, on the basis of all other evidence, including the resources of this NGO on the Internet, we tried to prove that the actual owner and moderator of the site is the NGO Stop Corruption, and not this person. Accordingly, it is this organisation that should be responsible for slandering Lyudmyla,” said Natalia Shvets.
“Ukrainian judicial practice is far behind the current Internet realities. For the sake of understanding, it should be noted that Ukrainian Courts in such cases are guided by the Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court dating from 2009! For now, only in the Court of first instance, we managed to prove our position and change the practice that the formal owner of the site should be responsible, while the person who exercises the real powers of the owner of the resource is brought to justice. We understand that appeal awaits us in the future, and the Supreme Court will put an end to this decision. However, if the Supreme Court takes our arguments into account, it will mean completely new approaches in the Ukrainian courts to resolve disputes with the owners and authors of Internet resources on the protection of honour, dignity and business reputation,” said Yulian Khorunzhyi.
Aide-mémoire: on 10 October 2018, the media, starting with the website of the Ukrainian civil organization StopСor, reported that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had opened an investigation against the President of the Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF), Lyudmyla Kozlovska, in the city of Uzhhorod in the region of Zakarpattia, which allegedly took place on 25 September 2018. However, the allegations in reality concerned a dubious notification about Lyudmyla, which has been submitted to the local SBU by none other than StopСor.
Known for its controversial and unverified editorial, in 2018 cited false information about Lyudmyla Kozlovska’s alleged actions against the territorial integrity of Ukraine and a related investigation into it by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Source: ario.law
Read:
- Statement re. alleged SBU investigation concerning Lyudmyla Kozlovska (updated 26.11.2018) (October 12, 2018)
See also:
- Joachim Brudziński loses libel case over ‘money laundering’ claim (August 3, 2023)
- We have won the court case against Dominik Tarczyński (August 15, 2022)
- Maciej Wąsik loses libel case over Foundation’s ‘ties to Russia’ claim. Court ordered apologies (August 5, 2022)
- “Gazeta Polska” and Tomasz Sakiewicz lost the dispute in court with the Open Dialogue Foundation (April 25, 2019)
- 20 lawsuits filed against Law and Justice. Interim measure against TVP (October 11, 2019)
