Critic sued for criticism

[IdleRich]

I'm sure you've all heard that a court in New South Wales has ruled that a review of the Coco Roco restaurant (in the Sydney Morning Herald by Matthew Evans) was defamatory.
As far as I can find out there seems to be no question that he lied or that he maliciously slandered the restaurant, in other words they weren't suing him for anything other than the fact that he gave them a bad review (and their claim that that bad review put them out of business).
What does that mean for critics in Australia and could this happen in the rest of the world?

 

[Mr. Tea]

That's fucking stupid.
The kind of story that your read and think "Only in America...", except this time it's not.

I was reading a copy of Smoke the other day (which I quite enjoyed, btw) and this guy was saying, more or less, "We've gone from the idea that you should respect someone's right to hold an opinion to the belief that the opinion itself has to be respected". Which I think is spot on. Look at the trouble Glen Hoddle got in when he made public his (admittedly barking) spiritual beliefs about reincarnation, which - as far as I'm aware - chime quite closely with the beliefs of a couple of billion people around the world.