Correction of reputation, neutralization of negative reviews

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

The impeccable reputation of a legal entity is a convincing guarantor that allows you to attract new commercial partners, promote your own brand, and expand sales markets. Any negative impact on the reputation carries the risk of lowering the growth rate of the enterprise and significantly reducing the profit received.

Right to protect goodwill

The reputation of an enterprise and organization is protected by various legislative acts. Among them:

• The Civil Code of the Russian Federation, in part one, legally protects the company's reputation and allows it to be defended by all permissible methods.
• The ruling of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated May 23, 2006 emphasizes the importance of court decisions in restoring the honor of a legal entity and in material compensation for reputational losses.

Correction of the reputation of legal entities of all forms of ownership lies within the scope of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. And the civil courts deal with issues of compensation for risks or restoring the good name of the company. Not fixed at the legislative levelinterpretation of the phrase "business reputation". But practicing lawyers and businessmen mean by this concept a set of reliable data about a particular economic enterprise or commercial organization. This information allows you to get an idea about the business, professional qualities of the company's employees, about decency, compliance with contractual relations, and so on.

Legal value of goodwill

In the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the phrase "business reputation of a legal entity" occurs only three times. Based on Art. Article. 152, 1027 and 1042 we can draw the following conclusions:

• The goodwill of any legal entity is an intangible good.
• The reputation of a company, firm, organization can be transferred, this is its difference from the reputation of an individual.
• Correction of the reputation of legal entities and individuals is carried out by identical methods.

Transfer of the reputation of a legal entity

If the first and third points above need no explanation, then the second can be discussed in more detail. The reputation of the firm can be alienated along with tangible and intangible property. The first can include stocks of goods, semi-finished products, buildings, workshops, etc. Intangible property includes trademarks, developments of various projects, research results, patents for inventions. When transferring ownership, the well-deserved reputation of the company automatically passes to the new owner. Since the transfer of ownership, all concerns related to the preservationreputation, fall on the shoulders of the new owners.

As you can see, the reputation of an organization is a standard asset that has a direct impact on the business activities of a given legal entity. An impeccable reputation significantly increases the company's profit, attracts new partners and investors. The negative one becomes a barrier between representatives of the company and its potential customers.

Who handles image restoration cases?

According to Article 33 of the Arbitration Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, cases on the protection of reputation in the field of economic activity are under the jurisdiction of arbitration courts. An appeal to the court takes place if it is necessary to correct the reputation due to the damage caused to it. These circumstances can arise in three cases:

• Fact of widespread information about the legal entity.
• The obviously defamatory nature of this information.
• Inconsistency of the disclosed information with the real facts.

The resolution of the Plenum of the RF Armed Forces reveals these points in more detail. Thus, the dissemination of information may include the placement in the media, on the net, in public speeches, during interviews of various statements relating to this enterprise. Discrediting information is deliberately untrue facts that are stated by the slanderer. False data may relate to various sectors of the enterprise - non-payment of taxes, low-quality products, violations of clauses of business contracts, non-payment of invoices for obligations, and so on. Such actions lead to a loss of reputation of a legal entity, and representatives of an enterprise or organization have the right to demand compensation from the slanderer.

Facts and opinions

As this paper emphasizes, a distinction should be made between value judgments and subjective opinion and false statements of fact that can be directly verified. Judgments and conjectures cannot be verified, which means they will not be the subject of legal proceedings.

If the matter of correcting the reputation goes to court, the plaintiff has the right to require the defendant to take direct action to refute the false information. For example, publicly acknowledge your mistakes, correct or cancel the publication that caused the trial.

Image restoration

If an organization suffers losses due to the dissemination of defamatory information, then the correction of reputation through a court decision can be performed with compensation for material damage. In this case, the plaintiff's lawyers may face some difficulties. The fact is that in court we will talk about lost profits. And even if you bring in all the witnesses and piles of unsigned contracts, the real damage will still be impossible to assess.

It is easy to earn a reputation as an unscrupulous partner, but it is much more difficult to restore justice. Even with a fair verdict and compensation of any amount as material damage, the news of dishonestyrepresentatives of this company will spread far and wide, and no defendant will be able to compensate for all losses.

Criminal liability

Controversial Russian judicial practice allows for the protection of the reputation of an enterprise with the help of certain provisions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. In particular, we are talking about Art. 42 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, which describes the cases in which a legal entity can be recognized as a victim. For example, this article refers to such offenses:

• illegal use of a brand or trademark;
• illegal receipt or disclosure of commercial, banking or tax secrets.

Protecting business reputation, law enforcement officers can initiate a criminal case with its subsequent transfer to court. And the legal entity, for its part, has the right to present a claim for compensation for the harm caused. Within the framework of civil proceedings, such compensation can be both material and non-material. Among the latter are an official refutation of false information, public apologies, and so on. But within the framework of criminal proceedings, the issue of material compensation is not considered.

Legal regulation

It is impossible not to admit that at the moment most of the legal levers responsible for correcting business reputation are hopelessly outdated. Issues of compensation for material damage require special study and consolidation in the form of a separate article of the Civil Code of ourcountries. As part of possible changes, it will not be superfluous to work out the terminology, which should correspond to current security requests. For example, there is still no unambiguous explanation of the term "moral damage" and the corresponding legal assessment of this concept.

At the moment, lawyers are operating on the information letter of the Presidium of the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation dated 1999. More than 15 years have passed since its publication. Many provisions are no longer relevant in the realities of today's economic environment. Amendments to this normative act or the adoption of a new legal document will have a beneficial effect on the legislation of our country and will relieve tension in matters of compensation for moral damage.