Jock Anderson

A bizarre case which has the Irish legal fraternity in turmoil and is now back before the court.

It involves a popular controversial website called www.rateyoursolicitor.com and an item that appeared on it which described a young female barrister as the “village bicycle.”

Jayne Maguire filed for defamation a few weeks ago after taking issue with the comment about her put on the website by male lawyer.

As a result Irish media and bloggers have had a field day with the extraordinary case, which focuses on a blunt-talking website many lawyers, who wish it hadn’t been born, want permanently shut down.

There’s even debate as to whether www.rateyoursolicitor.com is still alive.

See if you can find it.

The Dublin-based Irish Independent newspaper reported on September 16 that an American domain name provider - Godaddy.com - had suspended access to the site after an Irish High Court issued an order to remove the offensive material about Ms Maguire from the site.

Godaddy.com apparently suspended access to the www.rateyoursolicitor.com portal within 24 hours of an injunction issued by Judge Michael Hanna.

Ms Maguire claimed that John Gill, of Drumline, Newmarket on Fergus, defamed her by posting offensive remarks on the site.

According to The Limerick Blogger, Mr Gill, who is chairman of the Victims of the Legal Profession Society, set up the site with a couple of other folk after being screwed by various lawyers in the past.

The Limerick Blogger, who raises the question of who should be responsible for comments posted by people on a website, reckons Mr Gill claims that Ms Maguire told him it was a colleague of hers who posted the remarks.

According to the website www.castlebar.ie Mr Gill denied that anything concerning Ms Maguire was published or posted on his site.

RateYourSolicitor.com invites folk to rate their lawyer as Poor, Average, Good with one, two and three star rating or an Avoid rating.

The site was set up last March to allow Irish users of legal services to communicate their experiences of solicitors and barristers.

The site provided the public with an opportunity to name and shame, or name and fame, the lawyers they had experience of.

It features a map or Ireland, enabling people to click into any county and see what’s being said about whom, or add their own comments.

Contributors to the site pull no punches.

Lawyers have even been accused of posting nice things about themselves.

It appeared to be hugely popular but a couple of months ago a number of lawyers were lining up at court to try to get the site taken down from the world wide web.

In an Irish radio interview on September 5 Ken Murphy, the director of the Irish Law Society, described www.rateyoursolicitor.com as “vile, venom and vitriolic abuse.”

Mr Murphy said the site contained words like “scumbag, crooked, corrupt, conman,” it made personal references to the colour of hair, and even “the size of part of a particular female solicitor’s anatomy.”

But according to Irish website www.indymedia.ie sites such as www.rateyoursolicitor.com and www.crookedlawyer.com have allowed hundreds of people, including many lawyers, to anonymously or otherwise, describe actions of good lawyers but also to describe serious abuses taken against them by bad lawyers.

Many people have used their own names to describe how named solicitors destroyed evidence, perjured themselves, altered documents and divulged privileged information on clients.

According to www.indymedia.ie people have described how families have been torn apart and lives made miserable by “incompetent, greedy or plain crooked lawyers.”

“None of these allegations have so far attracted defamation suits, probably because firstly, the allegations are true and the truth is not libel.”

“But secondly, defamation is a jury trial. These crooked lawyers know that if their abusive deeds were put before a jury of non-lawyers, they would find themselves on trial, rather than those who they accused of defamation.”

“Now, out of the blue conveniently, a harmless defamation case has come forward…”

Indymedia says the profession of barrister is nowadays a very crowded one for young practitioners to get established in and suggested Ms Maguire’s action appears to be a novel way of “becoming better known round the law library in order to get a few briefs.”

“She apparently objects to the fact that her fellow male young lawyer referred to her on the website as the “village bicycle” and she wants its taken down and she wants damages,” says Indymedia.

But which part of the term Ms Maguire objects to is not yet clear.

“It may be the word “village” since she has obviously put that behind her to practise law in the big city.”

Then again, it might be the word “bicycle,” since she has probably also put that low level mode of transport behind her as well.”

“I wonder: should her young colleague have called her an “urban SUV” instead?”

www.indymedia.ie says www.rateyoursolicitor.com is still accessible through www.crookedlawyer.com 

The case was due back in court on October 5, Irish time, so watch this space for an update.

Feedback on this story to jockanderson@ihug.co.nz