In its ruling of January 12, 2018, the Regional Court of Hamburg decided that Google must delete certain 1-star ratings (Ref.: 324 O 63/17).
This is particularly the case if the review of a company is more or less anonymous and contains no commentary.

Innkeeper receives 1-star rating on Google and requests deletion

A Hamburg operator of a restaurant filed a complaint.
He had received a 1-star rating from a user with the pseudonym “A.K.“.
The reviewer did not leave a comment.
The innkeeper first asked Google to check the customer properties of the user “A.K.” and to delete the review if necessary.

After being informed by Google that the rating did not violate Google’s guidelines in any way and that the 1-star rating could not be deleted, the restaurateur filed a lawsuit.

Google Policy: Reviewer must have been a customer

The innkeeper saw the negative 1-star rating as a violation of personal rights.
It could not be established that the reviewer had ever actually been a customer in his restaurant.
However, according to the Google guidelines, a review must

reflect the actual experience with a company.

Reviews may not be published,

to influence the rating (in stars) of a company.

1-star rating on Google constitutes an expression of opinion

As a result, the Hamburg judges agreed with the restaurant owner’s statements.
It is true that a 1-star rating is also an expression of opinion that is permissible in principle.
After all, the interests of personal protection take a back seat to freedom of expression.
This is only to be assessed differently if the rating constitutes abusive criticism or formal insult.

However, freedom of expression in the media reaches its limits where there are no actual points of reference for a particular opinion that incriminates another person.

If there are no actual points of reference on which an opinion is based or if the actual points of reference are untrue, freedom of expression must regularly take a back seat to the conflicting protected right.

Right to deletion for 1-star ratings without a recognizable reference point

In the case of the innkeeper, the court assumed that there had been no customer contact due to the lack of a reference point and that the user was therefore not entitled to submit a review.

Unfortunately, poorly rated companies cannot rely on this judgment.
In the past, for example, the Regional Court of Augsburg (judgment of July 17, 2017 – 022 O 560/17) ruled that such a deletion claim does not exist.
Not even if the reviewer had never been a customer or – as in this case – a patient.